In social media news this week, Facebook asks the questions we all want to know, Twitter gets a new look in virtual reality and Instagram makes disappearing pictures a thing of the past.
Facebook – Did You Know?
Thought you knew everything about your friends? Facebook begs to differ with its new ‘Did You Know’ feature. It’s a new section that lets you answer questions about yourself. This gives users the chance to find out more about a person than what their profile states. The feature has a series of personal questions, such as “What’s the most delicious meal you’ve ever had?” that a user can answer – these will appear on the person’s profile so that a follower can click through to see the response. A user can click through questions to find the ones they want to answer with a format that resembles a status. We wonder how long it will be until other users can ask personal questions!
Twitter In VR
A new app called TweetReality puts the world of Twitter into virtual reality. The augmented version of reality takes your Twitter feed and puts it in a 3D grid. You can make your own tweet, explore other users’ posts and receive notifications with your surroundings in the background by using your iPhone camera. Although it is quite basic, the app is an idea that will be furthered as virtual reality develops. Imagine seeing a concert or television show and being able to tweet about exactly what you’re seeing with your followers viewing a visual representation too – you’d never truly be tweeting or living alone.
Disappearing photos? That’s so last year…
In light of the new year, Instagram have added two new features to their app that means images and videos on the Stories section do not disappear after twenty-four hours. The first feature is Stories Highlights, that allows users to group together all the videos and images they have captured on Stories and show it on their profile, meaning anyone can view it at any time. This is a great feature to have as we head into 2018, as a user can view the past year’s good…and bad moments. Instagram’s other new feature also improves the Stories section. It automatically saves your ‘Story’ posts to an ‘Archive’ section, where they can be viewed privately after the twenty-four hours is up. Each archived photo or video will have a date, so a user can remember when they have posted it, meaning 2018 will be a great year for retrospect.
