In social media news this week, a new app blindfolds you from your retweets, Instagram introduces a feature to control time but parts ways with Apple, and Youtube helps the daily lives of multitaskers.
Finding the Gems in the Twitter Junkyard
A new app has been released that hides retweets from your Twitter timeline. Blindfold gains access to your Twitter through your permission then offers the option to hide or show retweets. It is supposed to rid a user’s timeline of meaningless retweets by clearing out Twitter’s digital junkyard to provide individuals with reposted tweets that they ‘need to know about’ instead. The app claims to value Twitter users’ mental wellbeing by cutting out the pointless stuff. Therefore, it doesn’t clear your timeline of retweets completely, but does aim to remove those that are deemed witless, unworthy or retweeted by users seemingly by mistake. The app only works on desktop at the moment, so your phone is still subject to irrelevant retweets for the time being.
Instagram Puts a Refreshing Spin on Time
Instagram still seems to be ignoring everyone’s pleas for a chronological timeline, but is providing some useful tools to try and parallel its old style…or at least refresh it. The app is currently testing a new feature that lets you control when your feed refreshes, so you won’t miss out on your friends’ posts. The feature is supposed to stop the feed taking you back to the top and will aim to show you the newer posts after the refresh by simply clicking the ‘New Posts’ button. Although Instagram aren’t reverting to their old ways, it seems it is trying to listen to its users at least in part. I don’t know about you, but I think the update will be rather refreshing!
The Insta Break-Up
As Instagram says hello to its new features, it says goodbye to the Apple Watch. Apple has turned its focus to new apps and their developers by pushing updates that will render the Instagram app useless on their digital device. Nevertheless, it won’t come as a huge surprise to those that used it as there wasn’t a huge amount of time and effort dedicated to the app on the Apple Watch platform – it had a long way to go compared to its mobile and desktop versions.
Multi-tubing…
Youtube has finally answered the prayers of multitaskers everywhere. The video site is currently testing a feature that keeps the video you are watching on the screen, even if you click off it. It allows you to play and pause and to go through to the next video. The feature is being tested for desktop and only works if you stay on the platform. This means you can scroll and search for your next watch, but if you leave Youtube, then you leave the video you were viewing behind with it.
