Updates are never ending in the social media world.
What’s new for this week? Here’s a summary of the latest updates in your favourite applications.
Google adds 4 new features to Gmail on its 15th anniversary
Google has turned 15 this week and introduced four new features to Gmail. You can send scheduled emails. You now have the option of selecting the time and date to send your email to the recipient.
Smart Compose is now smarter
Gmail’s Smart Compose feature is now even smarter. Instead of the generic replies that Gmail proposes you have customised replies that adapt to your writing style and recommends replies accordingly.
You can now schedule delivery for an email
Gmail will now allow you to write a message beforehand and schedule a date and time to send an email to the recipient. A scheduled email will automatically get delivered without any manual intervention.
Actionable inbox
You can now quickly take action on the email. You have the option of using different options and taking action all from within the email message. This makes it easier to stay focused on the task at hand.
Smart Compose now supports 4 new languages
After rolling out the smart compose feature, Google has now announced that Smart Compose feature will be supported for email written in Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese.
You may soon be able to scroll through an Instagram video, rewind it and more
Instagram is getting a much-needed feature. Soon, the app might let you quickly jump to a particular second in a video or rewind it, something we are not able to do just yet. For now, one would have to go through the entire video at once or play it again if they missed a part. The new feature of jumping to a particular second inside the video is possible due to a video seek bar, which showed up in an Instagram apk file according to a developer named @wongmjane
Wong showcased the new feature in a gif video in a tweet stating, “Instagram is testing video seek bar”. The video shows how one can simply tap on the video timeline running on top of the particular post and drag it to the particular part of interest. If Instagram is indeed testing this feature, it could come as a welcome change for many!
Facebook Will Now Provide Details as to Why You’re Seeing Each Post in Your News Feed
While Facebook‘s News Feed algorithm has been in place since 2013, many users are still unaware of how it works – or even that it exists at all – which can sometimes lead to confusion as to why some things are showing up in their feed, and why others are not.
To help with this, Facebook is now rolling out a new ‘Why am I seeing this’ option for all posts within your News Feed, which will provide specific insight as to why things appear.
The new listing will outline the key factors which determine what you see, like whether it was posted by a connection whose posts you regularly like. It also provides a broader context on related interests and the popularity of this particular post, another key factor.
This could be a massively helpful tool to help users better understand their Facebook feed. Facebook already provides similar for ads, but this initiative is specifically designed to provide more technical insight into the workings of its infamous News Feed algorithm, and why you’re seeing specific content.
In addition to this, Facebook is also updating its ‘Why am I seeing this?’ listings for ads too, which will now include specific information on ads being shown to users due to data collection processes off Facebook.
Stay tuned to #SocialSpeak for more on the latest social media trends, and for the inside scoop on what’s happening in 2019.
