We Are Social’s Monday Mashup #346

Mashup
stephanie.weise
Snapchat launches Bitmoji widget chat shortcuts for home screen
Snapchat is cracking in on the private messaging front as it’s now letting users instantly start chatting with their best friends on the platform. Users will be able to select their favourite friends, create Bitmoji widgets for them from their personalised avatars and click from their iOS Today screen or Android home screen to launch straight into a chat with that specific friend.

Snapchat started testing this last week in Android beta but it’s officially being rolled out to everyone in the iOS and Android app update.



Snapchat is creating lots of ‘Our Stories’ for March Madness
Snapchat is capturing streams of videos and photos fans take during the NCAA March Madness Tournament. As part of Snapchat’s partnership with Turner, the platform aims to publish more than 30 ‘Our Stories’ during the three weeks of games.

Each arena for the 64 colleges taking part will be wrapped with themed geofilters that fans can put on top of their photos and videos. Content will also include showing the most craziest moments from the games and footage of inside the arenas and parties on college campuses. Capital One will also be running full screen Snap Ads within ‘Our Stories’ and a sponsored lens that will run from April 2nd-3rd.



Facebook expands its Stories feature to more countries
Facebook has expanded its Stories feature test to include more countries. It originally had been tested in Ireland however the feature is now also being tested in Chile, Vietnam and Greece.

It could be rolled out globally soon, so it could only a matter of time before this feature appears on your Facebook profile.

LinkedIn introduces profile photo filters and editing tools
Lets face it – first impressions count. So the picture you’ve got of yourself on LinkedIn is a huge deal. However, there is now no need to get a professional photographer to look like an ultimate pro, as LinkedIn has added photo editing within its mobile app which gives users a quick and easy way to crop and enhance their photos with six different filters and a function to edit the contrast, brightness and saturation of the profile picture.

The end of awkward crops. Hurrah. 



McDonald’s accidentally sends out extremely Anti-Trump tweet
McDonald’s is under fire as it appeared that a tweet slating President Donald Trump had come from their social media team. The brand investigated this and issued a statement that the Twitter account had actually been hacked by an external source. They have now apologised and secured the account. Awks.