The week in social: Yahoo Messenger, YouTube trending, and Swarm coins

Yahoo updates its Messenger product

Earlier this week, Yahoo announced the launch of its messaging platform for mobile devices. Features that come along with the mobile version include group messaging and features carried over from Tumblr, Flickr, and Xobni, also platforms that Yahoo owns. Among these include the ability to send photos, text, and GIFs to users, as well as to un-send content, a spin on what Snapchat offers with disappearing content. One key feature is an offline mode that allows users to continue sending messages, which will be automatically sent once a connection is regained.

Twitter is testing non-chronological timelines

A change that has been rumored to be coming for quite some time, Twitter is finally testing non-chronological timelines for some of its users. Twitter has historically shown every post in the order it was published on a users home feed according to the users they follow, but now some users are reporting seeing tweets out of order. Twitter confirmed that this is currently an “experiement”, as the company continues to seek the best way to surface content that their users want to see.

More information on The Next Web.

YouTube introduces a trending tab

YouTube this week has introduced a new trending tab as a core feature of its service, available on Android, iOS, and desktop. The trending tab allows users to see what the most popular content is across different categories, and the top trending videos can be sent directly to users. YouTube introduced the feature as part of a blog post that highlighted top-viewed content in 2015, as part of #YouTubeRewind, including TV moments and music videos.

More information on YouTube Blog.

Facebook shuts down several standalone apps

Standalone applications that Facebook launched, including Rooms, Slingshot, and Riff, have been shut down alone with the company’s Creative Labs. The apps were shut down on Monday along with the Creative Labs webpage, with a Facebook rep confirming that they had been shut down and not recently updated. The spokesperson went on to note that features of the now defunct apps have been incorporated into the core Facebook experience. Facebook stated it will still continue to support new experiments and initiatives, like the recently released Hyperlapse for Instagram, and Paper reading app.

More information on The Next Web.

Sony debuts Playstation Messages app

For users that have Playstation network IDs, a new standalone messaging app for Android and iOS has been released for users to chat with all of their Playstation friends and contacts. Messaging was previously featured as part of the Playstation app and Sony reported that as it was one of the most used features, they wanted to spin it out into a separate application. Users can sort their contacts by most recently online, or alphabetically, and text, voice messages, stickers, and attachments can be sent.

Twitter testing promoted tweets for logged out views

As many users view Twitter profiles pages, individual tweets, and other content from the platform when not logged in, Twitter is testing a method of advertising for marketers that allows them to leverage this, and additionally spur an additional revenue stream for Twitter itself. Twitter is partnering with with marketers in US, UK, Japan, and Australia, but a blog post from the company cites that more geographies will be included in the test in the near future.

More information on Twitter Blog.

Google introduces shared albums

As an update to the launch of Google Photos this past May, Google is now making available to ability to share albums started by one users with others. The user who created the album can also receive notifications with new media is added. There is no additional setup required to use the feature, and it has currently been rolled out to users on Android, iOS, and web.

Facebook improves the News Feed for users with slow connections

As more multimedia content has found its way onto Facebook in the form of high resolution photos and auto-play videos, users with weak connections have found difficulty in loading the content served by the News Feed algorithm, and according to a post from Facebook, this is happening at an increasing rate for users on 2G connections. The News Feed in these markets, and for users with slow connections will now be updated, and users will be allowed to comment and Like posts when they are offline. The post went on to say that the changes do not affect News Feed ranking.

More information on Facebook Newsroom.

Tumblr Messaging now available to all users

In a short post from the Tumblr staff, it was announced that messaging would now be available to all users, a feature that had just recently debuted and was being carefully rolled out over time. In addition, each new post on Tumblr will have a paper airplane icon that when clicked, allows a user to message that particular post to any other user through messaging. This does not replace the ability to send standard text-based messages.

More information on Tumblr Staff Blog.

Swarm adds gamification to its coin collecting system

Recently, Swarm introduced a new feature that would allow users to aggregate in-app currency in the form of coins for checking in, gaining more coins for checking in with friends, going to new locations, gaining the mayorship of the location, and more. As a way to now spend these coins, users can now cash in coins when they use a sticker on their checkin to upgrade that sticker. Stickers typically grant coin bonuses, so spending coins on an upgrade in effect will improve the coin-earning ability of that user. Upgrading stickers and spending coins is currently available on Android and iOS, with updates coming to the Windows platform soon.