We’re now, (scarily) into the first week of April, where has this year gone? After a lovely four-day week, courtesy of the bank holiday, we’re back to Friday again which means it’s social shout out time!
Social media platforms have had all sorts of issues in recent weeks. This week, we’re talking about how Instagram has changed to support mental health issues associated with their platform. How Facebook has implemented new data controls in a bid to reassure its users. How Snapchat has received bad press recently and what they are doing to try to get people back on the app, and finally how brands fooled us with this year’s April Fool’s day.
The social media platform is attempting to alleviate mental health and wellbeing issues which can often be affiliated with the platform.
Instagram has created a ‘Wellbeing Team’, which is devoted to fostering a better sense of happiness for their users. The entire focus will be to make the community a safer place; a place where people feel good, and it is one of their biggest priorities.
According to The Quartzy, over the past year, a company spokesperson revealed that they have reassessed priorities and rolled out some new features that will support a much more positive Instagram community. These include content moderation tools, such as offensive comment filters which instead of having to manually delete them, automatically hide them. Users can also make their own comment filters. Instagram have also made the move to examine anonymous reports of posts made by individuals who might need access to mental health support and put them in touch with groups that over aid.
A positive move made by the platform, in what is becoming a more talked about issue across social platforms and will help to safeguard users and hopefully keep numbers up, which in turn will be beneficial to businesses and their content sharing in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, we’re seeing a huge shift in social media marketing which is putting some of the major strengths of social media advertising at risk. But are these new changes and controls a bit late to stop the misuse of data?
In response to the scandal, Facebook has announced a range of new measures that will limit the amount of data that can be accessed by third-party providers. This includes significant data available from Facebook’s Events, Groups, and Pages APIs as well as requiring approval for access to Facebook Login.
In addition to this, Facebook will also be sending out a new privacy update which will appear at the top of all user feeds. This will include a quick link to see which apps you use and the information you’ve shared with those providers. But is it all too little, too late?
Following on from a number of bad press incidents which have included a third party game hosted on the platform promoting domestic violence by asking whether you would “rather slap Rihanna or punch Chris Brown”, Kylie Jenner announcing she no longer used the platform (which wiped @1bn off Snapchat’s stock market value) and the fallout from a recent redesign which resulted in more than 1.2 million people petitioning for the changes to be reversed, could Snapchat be turning a corner with the announcement it is rolling out a feature which enables up to 16 people to take part in live chats?
The feature, which will roll out in the next few weeks follows on from TV ads airing in the US with messaging undertones around family, it clearly demonstrates that Snapchat is wanting to increase users by broadening its demographic. This hasn’t gone down well with existing users though with many claiming that “Snapchat is the place where you trade dumb jokes with your friends, non-essential thoughts, or show off the trashy nights you don’t want to be preserved past a five-second timer,” wrote Megan Farokhmanesh.
So, could we be seeing Snapchat’s users and their stock market value dropping further or could it rise from the ashes… watch this space.
Everyone loves a good April Fools prank, and brands are no exception to this. We’ve picked out some of this year’s weird and wonderful best efforts, just in case you missed them.
First up is our favourite; Heinz with their Chocolate Mayonnaise
The geniuses at Heinz knew they would be a hot topic of conversation when they announced they would be combining one of the nation’s favourite sauces (Mayonnaise) with what is most people’s guilty pleasure (chocolate). We love both chocolate and mayonnaise, but this kind of freaked us out. Good job it was just a prank ey…
Second up is Burger King and like Heinz, things got pretty chocolatey over the Easter period. The fast-food chain claimed to be bringing out a chocolate bun and patty with raspberry syrup and vanilla frosting. Sounds intriguing if you ask me!
Finally, we look at Coca-Cola and the extremely odd flavours that they insisted they were going to release.
Coca-Cola claimed that they were launching three new flavours of their much loved, sugary thirst quencher. These being; Avocado, Charcoal and Sourdough. They even said in a statement “Not only do they promise to be the perfect tasty, sugar-free refreshment, but they’ll also double-up as the ideal accessory for any brunch time social media photo – guaranteed to see the ‘likes’ rolling in.” which furthermore had the public believing into this.
The whole idea of Sourdough flavoured Coca-Cola makes us feel uncomfortable, so it’s more than relieving to know that it was all just a prank!