Social Shoutout: Facebook announce dating service, Instagram to have new features and Twitter advise all users to change their passwords.

The news hit this week that Facebook is building a dating feature, Facebook Dating, that it plans to begin testing later this year. The new service was announced at the social media giant’s F8 conference on 1st May and it soon sent stocks of Match Group (owner of Tinder and OKCupid) plummeting.

The details of the feature are relatively unknown, but during his keynote speech at the F8 conference, Chief Exec Mark Zuckerberg said that it is aimed at “building real, long-term relationships, not just hook-ups”.

Facebook Dating will feature in the main Facebook app, but be completely separate – so you don’t need to worry about your Facebook friends seeing your new dating profile! Potential matches will be recommended based on dating preferences, things in common and mutual friends.

Zuckerberg also stressed that Facebook will be taking extra measures to ensure the privacy of users, commenting at the conference he added: “We’ve designed this with privacy and safety in mind from the beginning. Your friends aren’t going to see your profile, and you’re only going to be suggested to people who are not your friends.”

Instagram’s camera will soon share more than snapshots and Stories, as the photo-sharing platform moves into video chat and more augmented reality filters. On Tuesday (May 1) during the Facebook F8 conference, Instagram announced a list of new changes coming to the platform, including a redesigned Explore section and new options for sharing to Stories. Features like new augmented reality (AR) filters are already being rolled out, while options like video chat and new Explore are currently being tested.

The new effects include both the face filters and “world” effects, which add AR in the rear-facing camera. Instagrammers can find the new effects by spotting them in Stories. When brands launch the new effect, users can tap “try it on” directly from the Story in order to add the effect to the camera’s tray of different AR effects. The platform will also gain a video chat option. The chat option will be available by tapping the camera icon next to the message field.

Instagram’s tests also include a new Explore feed. Explore is keeping the custom-tailored content for each user, but Instagram is also looking at changing the feed into topic channels to make discovery easier.

Sharing content to Stories is also getting a makeover through new third-party app integrations. A recent update is allowing other apps to share directly to Instagram Stories. GoPro and Spotify are the first to add the integration, one for sharing photos and videos from the popular action camera brand to Stories and the other for sharing music to Stories.

Watch this space as the platform continues to develop and let us know which changes you think are the best when it comes to improving Instagram’s features…

Stories consumption is up 842% since early 2016, according to consultancy firm Block Party. There are nearly a billion accounts across Snapchat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger who now create and watch these slideshows.

The stories format is on a path to surpass feeds as the primary way people share things with their friends sometime next year. Users are now considering how every moment can be glorified and adding a narrative of their day. In turn, advertisers need to rethink their message too, not just as a headline and link but think about backgrounds, overlays and giving followers a feeling that lingers even if viewers don’t click through.

To put it into context, WhatsApp’s stories now have over 450 million daily users and Instagram have over 300 million. It is looking to be the format of the future and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg even said last week that the company is focused on ‘Making sure that ads are as good in Stories as they are in feeds. If we don’t do this well, then as more sharing shifts to Stories, that could hurt our business.

Twitter stores passwords as encrypted or “hashed, so that they are masked even to people inside the company.
However, just yesterday Twitter urged all of its over 300million users to change their passwords after a ‘bug’ unmasked all passwords internally. “The passwords were written to an internal log before completing the hashing process”, explained chief technology officer Parag Agrawal.

He then went on to say;”We found this error ourselves, removed the passwords, and are implementing plans to prevent this bug from happening again.”

Twitter has also said that they have no indication of any breach of misuse from anyone.

Looks like an honest mistake if you ask us! But we do recommend that you change your Twitter password, just to be on the safe side.

Social Shoutout: Facebook announce dating service, Instagram to have new features and Twitter advise all users to change their passwords.

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