As the winter simmers down a bit, social media platforms are warming up for a shift in intentions and services. This week brings us a couple of new and improved social media updates. Keep reading for a rundown on all the latest moves.
Facebook is redecorating its living room:
Big moves are being made on social media platform Facebook, as highlighted in a recent blog post published by Facebook CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg. “Zuckerberg laid out why he’s rethinking Facebook as a private living room where people can be comfortable being themselves without fear of hackers, government spying, and embarrassment from old content.” The current mood of social media channels, Internet governance, and data leaks have created scepticism among users. The recent drop in the number of active Facebook users is a clear repercussion of this.
When looking at the roadmap of changes, the main focus seems to be a shift towards a more private, message-based platform following the general shift social media is taking away from permanent feed broadcasting. In his statement, Zuckerberg says: “As I think about the future of the internet, I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today’s open platforms. Privacy gives people the freedom to be themselves and connect more naturally, which is why we build social networks.”
Foursquare heats up the map:
The pioneer of geotagging and location features, the app Foursquare is generally used for place recommendations and reviews, including restaurants, parks, spas – you name it. For this year’s South by Southwest festival in Austin, Foursquare is now piloting a heat map, and they want you to tell them if it’s creepy or cool.
What exactly does that mean?
The new feature, Hypertrending, is a heat map based on people’s real-time movements. “It’s a map of the Austin area that shows the location of all the people with smartphones Foursquare can track, in real-time. It must be noted that the feature will self-destruct in 2 weeks, and there are no future plans to roll it out officially.
The app anonymizes and aggregates the data so that people’s locations aren’t shown individually, but in clusters.” Committing to the privacy and satisfaction of their users, the company is basing this pilot’s success off of the feedback of its users.
That’s what we have for you on this week’s #SocialSpeak, make sure to tune in regularly as we will be back each week with news for you!
