The week in social: Viber buys Chatter Commerce, new LinkedIn platforms, and Facebook GIFs

Facebook introduces Groups for Pages

A brand new feature for Pages to engage their most fervent fans, Groups are now available, and operate much in the same way they do for general user creation. The feature has been in testing since March of this year, and the feature saw official full roll out earlier this week. The goals of introducing Groups to Pages was to allow Page admins to create different types of communities all centered around a brand, a publisher, or whatever the content of the Page is. Facebook has a mission to grow the number of groups from 100 million to 1 billion over time.

More information on TechCrunch.

LinkedIn now has a brand new Windows 10 app

LinkedIn has launched a dedicated app for Windows users, with roll-out starting earlier this week, and with plans to give all markets access by the end of the month. The dedicated app will have faster access to all key features from the service on the web, with notifications that come through the Windows OS.

Read more on AdWeek.

Facebook users may soon be able to make GIFs

Facebook is now testing the option for mobile users to create GIFs straight within the app using the camera function. Although this is the first time that the service will allow native creation of GIFs, support for displaying them has been around since 2015. After that, Facebook added a GIF search to its Messenger app, and according to internal data, 13 billion GIFs have been sent in the last year. The GIF creation feature is presently being tested with a small amount of iOS users.

More information on TechCrunch.

Twitter is cracking down on abusive users

Twitter has made a commitment to stopping abuse on its network. In an official blog post from the company, Ed Ho, General Manager, Consumer Product and Engineering, noted that 10x more accounts that are abusive are being cracked down on every day than one year ago. Abusive accounts now in many cases are put on a restricted use suspension period and give the reason for it, and as a result, these profiles afterward exhibit 25% less complaints, with the majority of accounts never having to go in this state again.

More information on Twitter Blog.

Facebook allows publishers to compare Instant Article and mobile web results

Earlier this week, Facebook introduced a tool that lets publishers compare how Instant Articles perform in comparison to articles loaded via the mobile web. The results would be likely to favor Instant Articles, as the system loads articles much more quickly in Facebook’s native environment. A study by Nielsen that was ordered through Facebook showed that users are less likely to bounce when an article loads quickly, one of the hallmarks of Instant Articles.

Read more on AdWeek.

LinkedIn also launches a new Android app for the Indian market

Along with the dedicated Windows 10 app, LinkedIn has introduced a new Android app for India that uses less data, a fit for a market where the average user still has a 2G connection. Overall data usage on the app is 80% lower, and the size of the application itself is only 1mb. The app provides key features of the overall LinkedIn app such as news feed, jobs, profiles, and more.

Read more on Android Police.

YouTube is removing its editing tools

YouTube used to be home to a host of editing features, but internal data from the company shows that no one is really using these features, so in order to place focus in other areas, the company is scaling back what it offers by September 20th. According to YouTube, about 0.1% of creators make use of the editing features. Certain core features such as the ability to trim videos and add filters.

More information on Mashable.

Viber buys Chatter Commerce

Popular chat app Viber has bought Chatter Commerce, creator of a mobile app keyboard with e-commerce functionality called ShopChat. Viber invested in the company as part of its first round of funding, and now has purchased the San Francisco company outright. The engineering team from Chatter Commerce will be absorbed into Viber.

More information on Reuters.