Tuesday Tune-Up #171
Welcome to the first mashup of 2015!
Sydney’s fireworks spectacular streamed live on YouTube
Sydney ushered the New Year with a 12 minute long breathtaking fireworks display over the Harbour Bridge. An estimated 1.6 million people viewed the spectacular live in and around the city. While more than 1 billion people worldwide watched the show on television, the celebration was also streamed live on YouTube sponsored by Telstra. You can catch a glimpse of it here.
New Year’s resolutions on social
Made any New Year’s resolutions? Twitter users have. The network has compiled a list of the top 10, which includes all the classics:
There may be a few ideas there for Mark Zuckerberg. He’s taken to Facebook to crowdsource his resolution – in the past, these have included learning Mandarin, wearing a tie every day and not eating meat unless he kills the animal himself. That one didn’t make my list.
New Facebook video pages
Facebook has completely redesigned the video section of its pages, making it more like a YouTube channel. A handful of pages already have access to the new layout, which includes playlists and a featured video, but it will be available to everyone in the coming weeks.
Twitter adds ‘while you were away’
Twitter has added a ‘while you were away’ feature, which rounds up what it considers the most important tweets in your network since you last logged in. It’s relatively unusual for a Twitter feature in that it’s non-chronological; we may expect to see more of this in future.
Twitter adds analytics to iOS app
Imagine you’ve just written a hilarious joke that’s been retweeted upwards of three times. Now imagine you’re in the National Gallery at a Turner exhibition and can’t check your analytics. Welcome to my world. Thankfully, problems like these are now a thing of the past – the latest version of Twitter’s iOS app includes a ‘View Analytics Details’ option, which shows interactions and engagement stats.
Overall Twitter usage is still quite low
Twitter’s share of overall internet usage is relatively small, according to investment bank, Morgan Stanley. It’s worth noting that the below doesn’t include time spent in apps, where most Twitter use happens, but it’s still revealing to compare Twitter to the likes of Google and Facebook.
The Death Of Twitter pic.twitter.com/sKdYQCbV5D
— Elena Holodny (@elenaholodny) December 24, 2014
Leaked files show potential WhatsApp video calling
We can now see the possible face of WhatsApp video calling, thanks to files extracted from the raw code of the app hosted on WhatsApp’s website. We’re assuming this means WASSSUUUUP will be cool again, right? Right, guys?
Ads are now on Pinterest
Pinterest has started selling ads! The move has been explained by Joanne Bradford, Pinterest’s head of partnerships, who has said:
On Facebook, you think about friends, and on Twitter you think about news. On Pinterest, you think about what you want to do, where you want to go, what you want to buy.
Makes sense to us. It’s a behaviour that could really help the platform compete for advertisers’ social budgets.
Snapchat adds further funding
Snapchat has added a new funding round of $485m, at a reported valuation of $10bn. In case you’re wondering how much money that is, it’s a large amount of money.
TVTag is heading to the big social network in the sky
In ‘has that not happened already?’ news, TVTag (formerly GetGlue) is to shut down. The network, once synonymous with social TV apps, has almost completely fallen off the radar, kept afloat only by a small number of super users.
Add stickered photos to your Facebook messages
Do you love Facebook stickers? Do you love photographs? We’ve got good news. You can now add stickers to photos and send them via Messenger, using Facebook’s new ‘Stickered’ feature. It comes as part of a few new updates to the Messenger app, which include new frames and sticker designs.
