Sina Weibo drops 140-character limit as Twitter ponders move
While Twitter continues to ponder about dumping its 140-character limit, Sina Weibo has gone ahead to remove theirs.
The Chinese social network is reportedly replacing it with a new format of allowing posts of up to 2,000 characters. “Senior users” will receive this update first on January 28th, followed by all other ordinary accounts a month later.
The service is made available by Alphabet Inc’s Google as part of a partnership with the Indian government to provide better Internet access to the nation. During a visit to the U.S. last September, India Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the project aims to extend Internet connection to 100 railway stations in India by the end of 2016.
Beginning this week, video content will be available on its Android app, followed by its iOS app end next week. This however, will only be available to the U.S., U.K., Germany and Sweden for now. Spotify first announced plans to distribute videos and podcasts last May, involving content providers such as ESPN, Comedy Central, BBC, Vice Media and Maker Studios.
Happn, Tinder’s French Competitor, Introduces Voice Messages Happn, a French mobile dating app, is introducing voice messages to its product.
The new feature is available to both iOS and Android users, and allows Happn users to record and send voice messages of up to one minute, but only to their matches. Happn says this new feature will provide users more means for personal expression between those who have expressed mutual attraction to each other.
Facebook launches Sports Stadium Facebook has launched a new feature similar to Twitter Moments but purely for sports . Users will be able to find out the latest on their favourite game simply by searching for it within the app. They’ll see a live feed from that game, what friends are saying about the match, along with stats and commentary from experts. It’s centred around the NFL right now and only available in the U.S but I’m sure they’ll be covering the fly fishing championships soon.
Twitter’s stock price falls after last week’s outages Were you or a loved one affected by Twitter going down last week? How many puddle watches we could have missed… Well it doesn’t bear thinking about really does it? Of course the outage led to some good things, namely a few blissful moments without the never-ending barrage of bilious drivel produced by Katie Hopkins, but it also sent Twitter’s stock price into a spin, falling almost 14% in a day. This was swiftly followed up with the departure of four top Twitter executives: Katie Stanton, head of media, Kevin Weil, head of product, Alex Roetter, head of engineering and Jason Toff, head of Vine, who according to Jack Dorsey, CEO, are all taking some “well-deserved time off.”
Was really hoping to talk to Twitter employees about this later this week, but want to set the record straight now: pic.twitter.com/PcpRyTzOlW
New Snapchat features uncovered within current app’s code
Some very clever code crackers have spotted new features within Snapchat’s current app code which may indicate that it’s planning to role out audio/video calling and stickers, which would make it more of a competitor to the likes of Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
Pinterest to start video advertising Pinterest has announced its intention to branch out into video advertising to bring it in line with the likes of Twitter and Facebook. The strategy at this stage is to get users used to seeing video on Pinterest organically so the behaviour is formed and then to monetise it by promoting content which Pinterest is most associated with e.g. ‘how-to create 57 different styles of hat with just one shoebox’ etc.
Comcast uses 19 influencers to promote latest cable box In order to promote the Xfinity X1, Comcast has asked 19 of the top Vine stars of the moment to make short films which highlight the feature they like best about the device. The aim was to make a massive amount of content and Comcast was forced to relinquish much of the control over what was created, with each influencer just being given a small amount of ‘seed information’ and interpreting it how they saw fit.
Barneys publishes Instagram look book for Paris Fashion Week As part of Paris Men’s Fashion Week, Barneys New York partnered with artist Doug Abraham and published “Seeing Stars”, which is an Instagram-only look book that gave users a unique opportunity to shop a Givenchy menswear collection. A slight departure from the usual Barneys Instagram content, which mainly consists of quite tame product shots, the collection shows a series of male models bound with tape and rope looking a bit sad but also confusingly sexy.
