Facebook is about to get a new feature for ‘Status Updates’ called Lists. The idea of Lists is as literal as the name suggests – make a list of anything and everything.
With the Lists feature, Facebook is hoping to encourage users to share more personal content. These types of posts were the motivator of users to log back in to see what their friends were saying, and Facebook hopes that this would appeal to younger users, which has seen a recent decline in usage. The List also allows for customization with colored backgrounds and even decoration with emojis. Global roll out of the new feature has slowly started on 14 February 2018.
Nothing is Private
Facebook and other social media sites may become less of a casual online persona, but a true extension of oneself, almost inseparable from the other. As netizens may know, anything you’ve posted on your private feed stays private, away from prying eyes and any repercussions, unless you’ve shared them onto the public domain.
However, all that is about to change – when a New York court ruled that you can still be required to hand over your photos and messages during a lawsuit, even if it was set to private. “Some materials on a Facebook account may fairly be characterized as private,” Chief Judge Janet DiFiore of the Court of Appeals wrote in her decision, “but even private materials may be subject to discovery if they are relevant.” Difore added. So folks, watch out what you’ve been posting privately or publicly, nobody’s safe from the long arm of the law.
Snapchat to provide audience insights
For content creators and aspiring influencers, a key draw to posting on social media platforms is the ability to tap into audience insights – data that they can later leverage to partner with potential brands. For Snapchat, the only “insight” that had been available for years was the number of views for Stories that went live. But this all changed last week, when the platform announced that it would be finally expanding its insights to include information such as unique viewers, completion rates, time spent watching, audience demographics, geographic regions, and key topics of interest. However, these insights will only be available to verified Snapchat users for the time being.
As Snapchat continues to face stiff competition from Instagram, this new development could attract top content creators – and therefore more users – back to the platform.
