Social Media Sunday: Facebook Tests Snapchat-style Messages, Pinterest's Image Search, and Twitter's New GIFs
This week in social media, Facebook began testing Snapchat-style messaging in Facebook Messenger. Meanwhile Pinterest introduced a smart, unique visual search feature, Twitter introduced GIFs you can control, and Snapchat is planning on making even more money off of its Lenses feature.
It's time for Social Media Sunday!
Testing Snapchat-Style Ephemeral Messaging
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg must still be feeling the burn from when the disappearing messaging platform Snapchat declined its billions of dollars acquisition offer.
It has already attempted to clone the popular messaging service with Slingshot, and now, according to BuzzFeed, the company is testing the same self-destructing temporary messaging with the Facebook Messenger app. It's not in the U.S. yet though, but if you live in France you can try it out.
"We're excited to announce the latest in an engaging line of optional product features geared towards making Messenger the best way to communicate with the people that matter most," a Facebook spokeswoman wrote to BuzzFeed.
"Starting today, we're conducting a small test in France of a feature that allows people to send messages that disappear an hour after they're sent," she continued. "Disappearing messages gives people another fun option to choose from when they communicate on Messenger. We look forward to hearing people's feedback as they give it a try."
Pushing VR: 360-Degree Videos for iOS
This week Facebook introduced its early virtual reality feature, 360-degree videos, to its iOS app. The company is also pushing 360-degree ads, including some from GoPro, and The Disney Channel.
According to The Verge, Facebook is also working on a tutorial site for the next-generation video format, explaining to beginners how to shoot 360-degree video and upload them to the social network. In addition, the company is working with camera manufacturers to streamline posting to Facebook from their third party apps.
GIFs You Control
Twitter introduced its own new media feature this week called "ScratchReel." The feature is a new take on animated GIFs that allows users to fast forward and rewind through the images at will. As The Next Web reported, ScratchReel is available on Twitter's apps and on the web, where you can manipulate the image by moving your cursor or finger from left to right and back again.
Snapchat
Introducing Lens Store for $0.99 Filters
Snapchatters took to the new Lens feature -- filters, cartoons, and animations that you can layer over your snaps -- quite quickly after it was introduced a couple of months ago.
So much so that now the social media upstart has introduced the "Lens Store" to further monetize the feature beyond the promotional sponsored lenses that it has been selling advertisers for hundreds of thousands of dollars a day.
According to The Verge, Snapchat will give you one free lens per day, but if you buy any lens from Snapchat for just under a dollar, you can keep them forever. Thirty paid lenses will be featured in the Lens Store per day, including some of the most popular to date, like the puking rainbow lens.
Tumblr
Getting in the Instant Messaging Game, Big Time
Tumblr announced a new instant messaging feature on Wednesday. And though it was a soft rollout, introduced only to a limited number of users, according to FastCompany, more than 9 million messages were sent after just the first two days.
As founder David Karp told the audience at FastCompany's Innovation Festival this week, Tumblr messaging spread from just 1,500 Tumblr blogs to 450,000 in the first two days, with about 70 percent of instant messages leading to a conversation. "This has by far and away been the most requested feature," said Karp.
Adding Visual Search
Pinterest just recently added one obviously perfect feature, the Pinterest Shop, where it rounds up all of the site's "buy" button-enabled pins. Now this week, it has added yet another obviously good idea: Visual search.
Since Pinterest is such an image-driven social network, Pinterest worked with the Berkeley Vision and Learning Center to engineer software that allows users to search by image, according to Wired.
But it does more than your usual reverse image search on Google. The new feature allows users to zoom in on specific objects within images and find pins with visual similarities -- for example, a couch in a certain color taken from an image of a living room set.
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