The Social Shoutout! Snapmaps and Facebook/Instagram Collaboration on Pages Manager

A lot has happened in Social Media Land over the past week, so in our latest blog, we explore some of the latest changes and what they might mean for marketers and consumers alike.
Snapchats new exciting feature ‘Snapmaps’
Despite the recent rough month that Snapchat has had with declining app downloads of almost 40%; the release of a new exciting feature called ‘Snapmaps’ is hoping to attract new users and retain old ones. They announced this new feature on Wednesday which will allow users to share their location in hopes of having more social environments to engage with people close by. The main prospect is new adventures and maintaining the close relationships of the users within the app. They have taken the concept of a map and flipped it upside down.
But is this a good idea with 60% of users under the age of 25, many young teens? Alternatively, you can search the map in ‘Ghost mode’ – when this is enabled your friends will not be able to see your location, but you can see theirs. So, there are ways to disable the feature, but you may want to hop into your privacy settings within the app and ensure you’re revealing as much as intended. The sneaky little feature that we love is we can now see exactly where all the celebrities are hiding! Talk about a small world.
Snapchat collaboration with Shazam
Shazam, being one of the world’s most recognised apps for identification of music has partnered with Snapchat bringing the magic of Shazam to Snapchatters. Users can identify their favourite songs by just a simple press on the camera screen of the Snapchat app by which the app will listen until the song playing is recognised. Once the song is recognised, the app will display the name of the song, as it would within the Shazam app, giving you the option to play the song, access lyrics and even watch the video. The convergence of the two apps has seemed to bring everything together under one roof. It is now easier to pass your favourite music onto your friends, just hit the send button to pull up your contacts and send away!
Snap and Chat with up to 16 friends
This great new group chat feature means that you can create custom stories for up to 16 people without it going out to all your Snapchat friends. You can decide who you add to the group and who will be able to view your snaps. All messages in the group will disappear after 24 hours, so it still has the same features but can be used in a different way. It is great for special occasions or big events for people who are attending or showing people further afield things going on. All you need to do is tap the create story to get started! Just think, WhatsApp group filled with photos that don’t clog up that all important storage space!
Facebook/Instagram Inbox on Facebook Pages Manager
You know how we mentioned having everything under one roof? Well, Facebook and Instagram have also done just that. Facebooks latest update has changed the basic ‘messages’ tab into an inbox, meaning brands will be able to manage all of their messages from various social media platforms in one place (moving between each social platform to look at messages can be time-consuming and complicated). The inbox enables you to manage Messenger messages, Facebook posts, and Instagram comments while in the same app. This innovative new feature is set to be a reliable and useful tool for helping the organisational aspects of social media of developing business’ worldwide. There was no timeline for the rollout, but this has now begun and is looking to be with everyone very soon.
Social media is evolving day by day, and with each update, we are learning more. Stay tuned for our next instalment of all things social media on World Emoji Day on July 17th!
Written in collaboration with Greenhead College student, Paris Thomas as part of Work Experience Week.