We Are Social’s Monday Mashup #612

Mashup

9 Jan 2023

kyleloretan

Whatsapp Launches Major New Update

Whatsapp has launched a new tool allowing users to stay online using proxy servers, giving them the ability to avoid internet shutdowns or blocks that are instituted by some governments. The feature comes in response to an influx of global shutdowns, including what’s happening in Iran. Many of the proxy servers have been set up by volunteers, and Whatsapp plans to offer guidance to people on how to set up proxies in order to help others moving forward. The standard Whatsapp privacy policies remain intact as the app continues to be forward-thinking in preserving basic human rights.

TikTok is Testing a ‘Sleep Reminders’ Feature

TikTokers are known for getting lost on the platform and resurfacing after hours spent endlessly scrolling, especially at night. (Guilty 🙋). In an effort to address these concerns, TikTok is testing a new sleep reminders feature that will include the option to set up alerts when it’s your bedtime and to mute notifications during your sleeping hours. Although a positive endeavour, it will still largely be up to the users to have the self control to log off – similar to the ‘stop scrolling’ videos they’ve rolled out in-feed, and the screen time dashboard. It’s unknown if there are plans to roll out the feature more widely at this time.

Snapchat is Shutting Down its Desktop Camera App with Filters for Video Calls

The desktop camera app has allowed users to apply filters – like cat ears and pirate hats – whilst on video calls. The company announced on its support page that the product will be discontinued on January 25th, with no explanation behind the decision. The Snap camera was introduced in 2018 and has been widely used across Skype, Zoom, Google Hangouts, and YouTube, and will no longer be downloadable. SnapAR commented that they are adjusting their web-based investments for the AR creator and developer community, so we’ll stay tuned for any potential future plans for the app.

Long-Form Tweets and Tweet Formatting Confirmed for February

Elon Musk has confirmed that soon you will be able to bold, underline, and italicise words on Twitter…any minute now. The new text-formatting functions come in the midst of several policy changes the company is working on implementing since Musk took over. The character length increase will be the second time in Twitter’s 17-year history that it’s changed the limit, going from 140 to 280 in 2017 to now 280 to 4,000. Does this end the era of Twitter threads?! Share and let us know your thoughts.

We will also be adding simple formatting features like bold, underline & font size later this quarter.

The goal is to allow people to publish long-form natively on Twitter, rather than forcing them to use another website.

Twitter will continue to recommend brevity in tweets.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 9, 2023

YouTube Shorts Experiments with Suggested Hashtags

YouTube is looking to help Shorts creators gain more traction for their clips by suggesting relevant hashtags to add to their Shorts within the upload process. The suggested tags will be based on the common tags and topics associated with each channel, which could be extremely helpful in ensuring you are choosing the right tags for your clips with a targeted audience – and not just the generic, over-saturated tags that will have your content lost. YouTube has stated that a small number of Shorts creators in the US will be included in the initial experiment, running on iOS and Android devices.

LinkedIn Shares Notes on How To Improve Your Mental Approach in 2023

LinkedIn shares how to establish your vision for the year ahead, and the key areas of your life that you want to see improve. The five-step process was first outlined on LinkedIn’s ‘In the Arena’ podcast,’ and aims to help you get a clearer picture of what you’re trying to achieve, and how to build a more positive mental approach to align with your vision. We love a healthy and realistic approach to New Year resolutions!