Here is news pertaining to all of your favorite websites and applications used for social networking which will help you stay up-to-date on all the important social media news you need to know.
Facebook has decided to remove the Trending news section of the social network. Facebook had launched the Trending news section four years ago.
“We introduced Trending in 2014 as a way to help people discover news topics that were popular across the Facebook community. However, it was only available in five countries and accounted for less than 1.5% of clicks to news publishers on average,” said Facebook in a news post. “From research we found that over time people found the product to be less and less useful. We will remove Trending from Facebook next week and we will also remove products and third-party partner integrations that rely on the Trends API.”
Going forward, Facebook plans to launch new ways for users to stay informed about timely breaking news. This includes a “Breaking News Label” being tested with 80 publishers across North America, South America, Europe, India and Australia, a “Today In” section that connects people with important news from local publishers and a “News Video in Watch” section on Facebook Watch in the U.S. where people can see live coverage, daily news briefings and weekly deep dives.
Group Audio And Video Calls Starts Rolling Out On Android
At the F8 conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that WhatsApp would soon gain group audio and video calls. This feature has been rolling out slowly over time on iOS and Android.
An Android Police reader known as Reuben found that group audio and video calling worked best on WhatsApp beta 2.18.162. However, the update is being rolled out server side so you may not see it yet even with that APK.
To set up a group audio or video call, you would need to tap on the add contact icon at the top right of the app. And when you receive an incoming call where two or more contacts are already participating, you will see the photo icons of the users who are on the call.
To comply with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Twitter is removing accounts that are were marked as below age 13 at the time of sign up or after. According to Motherboard, this may especially cause some issues for users that signed up before the age 13 and spent years establishing a brand on Twitter. This also presents problems for newer brands that listed when their company was founded as the age.
GDPR rules require Twitter to delete user content before they were age 13. This is tricky because Twitter is not able to separate prohibited tweets from the ones that were sent out after the user turned age 13. So accounts are being banned instead. Users that were banned are able to create new Twitter accounts and handles, but starting from scratch may not be worth it.
YouTube
According to Pew Research Center, teenagers are flocking more towards YouTube more than other platforms. Of the teenagers (ages 13-17) surveyed, 85% confirmed they use YouTube compared to Instagram at 72% and Snapchat at 69%. The percentage of U.S. teens that use Twitter was 32% while Tumblr saw 9% and Reddit saw 7%. However, teenagers are continuing to move away from Facebook.
“Today, roughly half (51%) of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 say they use Facebook, notably lower than the shares who use YouTube, Instagram or Snapchat,” said Pew in its report. “Notably, lower-income teens are more likely to gravitate toward Facebook than those from higher-income households – a trend consistent with previous Center surveys. Seven-in-ten teens living in households earning less than $30,000 a year say they use Facebook, compared with 36% whose annual family income is $75,000 or more.”
