The week in social: Flagship, Twitter polls, and Facebook 360 video

Instagram reaches 400 million users

Instagram reached a new milestone of users, with 400 million total registered. This is an increase of an additional 100 million since December of last year. In total, users are also posting 80 million photos every single day. The majority of users (around 75%), come from outside of the United States.

More information on Mashable.

Facebook introduces 360 degree video

Facebook has officially launched 360 Video. This means is that viewers can ‘choose their own adventure’ when it comes to how they view videos by choosing what angle they watch from (presuming they’ve been filmed with 360 degree cameras in the first place). Due to the technology constraints, it may be difficult for the average user to produce this content, but it is being considered an exciting step in the evolution of content creation.

Pinterest users have saved 92 million holiday pins

Saving pins for the holiday season is an incredibly popular activity on Pinterest, and an infographic released by the company with data compiled between 2013-2014 shows that 38 million users have saved 92 million pins. In addition, year over year the network has seen a 50% increase in the number of holiday pins being saved. Interestingly, 43% of the pins saved are from millennials, and 170 million of the saved pins are for holiday decor, the largest category.

Facebook offers new messaging options for users who decline events

Previously when a user would decline an event invite on Facebook, they had the option to post in a group thread for the event with the reason they could not attend. Now, in an effort to further promote Messenger, Facebook is providing a prompt to have the declining user message the organizer and provide the reason in a private thread. This is not a publicly announced feature and it remains uncertain if it will see wider availability among all users.

New timelocked photo-sharing app Flagship launches

Flagship is a new photo app inspired by the movie “The Hangover”. It lets users take photos that are not view-able or shareable with other users until 12:00pm the day after they are taken. Users create private groups and all recipients then get to see the group content at the same time the day after. Using the app safeguards accidental social sharing meaning no content taken can be posted to social during the night in question. The French startup who launched the app has received $1.5 million in funding for a launch in the US.

Facebook quietly begins to roll out Page updates

ShortStack showed off a preview of some of the changes coming to Facebook Pages on a recent blog post. The changes include smaller profile pictures, and different locations for the Like, Message, Share, and Page Tab links. Lastly, the call to action buttons are far more visible. Facebook’s hope is clearly to help push more users from content to commerce.

Users of Facebook Mentions can now see comments on articles

Content creators and journalists will now be able to see what users are saying about their articles using Mentions, whether or not the article comment mentions the author’s name. Facebook has cited through a Media blog post that this will allow authors to see how the public is reacting to their content. All authors have to do is implement the author tag on their website, inputting a single line of code on the header, and viewing the Mentions feed on the app.

More information on Facebook Media.

Twitter debuts custom Emojis for the Pope’s United States visit

Custom emojis are becoming an increasingly popular trend for Twitter, and the visit of the current Pope to the United States saw Twitter introduce a series of new emojis for hashtags citing his visits to various cities. Users can post about the Pope being in the US, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington DC, and when the associated hashtag is posted, the emoji will show up in line within the post. Twitter also released a list of accounts users can follow for tracking the Pope’s visit.

Facebook updates Notes

Facebook has made new features of Notes official and rolled them out widely to all users. It is now possible to add cover photos to each note, in addition to re-sizing and adding captions to photos. Other features include adding formatting to the text in notes, such as bullets, quotes, and adding headers. While Notes can be viewed on mobile, they can only be created on the Facebook’s desktop web version.

More information on Facebook Newsroom.

Twitter introduces embedded polls into tweets

Twitter has released embeddable polls into native tweets. There has been no official announcement of the feature, and users who have access to it can only choose from a two answer poll, but if it picks up traction, that is likely to increase. The feature works on desktop and mobile, and it is reported that much of the Twitter staff and verified profiles have access to it. Polls are available only directly through Twitter, and third-party services such as TweetDeck do not support it yet.