The week in social: Instagram Story highlights, Messenger Kids, and Pinterest bot

Instagram debuts Highlights and Archive for Stories

Instagram earlier this week introduced ways for users to give their Stories on the platform a little extra life. The first, Highlights, lets users take any piece of content they have added to the Story and put it together in a highlight reel that gets featured on their profile, allowing users to get a flavor for that person’s personality. The other new feature, Archive, automatically saves Stories to a private section of the profile that the user can choose to view or add into a highlight later on. Auto-archiving can also be turned off at any time.

Facebook launches Messenger Kids

Facebook has rolled out a preview of its new Messenger service that is based around helping families connect, called Messenger Kids. The service is presently available only in the US, and was created after research was done with parents and child-friendly organizations throughout the United States. The app can be controlled from a parent’s Facebook account to provide control and safety for the child.

YouTube doubles down on content moderation

In a blog post from company CEO Susan Wojcicki, YouTube stated its commitment to stopping abuse on its platform, detailing out past efforts to deal with inappropriate content and how it plans to strengthen these efforts in the future. The company shared current stats such as how over 150,000 videos were removed since June for shows of extreme violence, and how 98% of those were flagged by the company’s machine algorithms. YouTube is expanding this approach to content such as child safety and hate speech as well.

More information on YouTube Blog.

Twitter launches support for AMP article analytics on its platform

As part of Twitter’s efforts to let users access and experience more quickly, it supports AMP, or accelerated mobile pages on iOS, Android and the web, with a specific example being embedding Tweets inside of AMP articles. As the next phase of support, Twitter is now supporting AMP analytics to help publishers understand more about the audience the views and consumes AMP content from Twitter. Specifically, allowing page views to be recorded and tracked as coming from Twitter as opposed to organic sources.

More information on Twitter Blog.

Facebook Rolled Out Did You Know Feature

This week Facebook released a new feature called “Did You Know”. The feature allows users to ask their friends all sort of questions. Some sample questions include asking friends their favorite superpower, or favorite meal. Friends can create customized responses with funky background colors, Reactions, or photos (among other options). The feature is available to all users no matter if they are on desktop or mobile.

Pinterest Pinned Itself to Facebook Messenger With Its New Bot and Chat Extension

With over 1 million pins shared to Messenger every week, Pinterest has answered its audiences request and created a Messenger bot and chat extension on its platform. This update provides a more seamless way for users to communicate on both platforms. Specifically, on Pinterest the chat extension helps “accessing Pinterest search and related pins quicker and easier than ever,” says Pinterest engineering manager, Hayder Casey. However, searching for pins isn’t limited to Pinterest’s chat extension, users on Messenger are also able to search for pins among topics like, DIY, food and home.

Instagram is testing a standalone app for direct messaging

This week Instagram began testing its standalone Instagram Direct app in Uruguay, Chile, Turkey, Italy, Portugal and Israel. The app will let users share private stories, access filter that are only on the app, Boomerangs, and other creative tools. This update was likely created to challenge Snapchat’s direct message feature, with the goal of lowering Snapchat’s DM feature in a similar manner to how Instagram Stories lowered usage of Snapchat Stories. This app is likely to be rolled out globally next year.

YouTube Millionaires: These are the 10 highest-paid YouTube stars of 2017

YouTube influencers aren’t tied to specific topics, genders or ages and have been making a name for themselves on the platform since 2005. Below is a list of the top YouTube Influencers for 2017:

1. Daniel Middleton – $16.5M

2. Evan Fong – $15.5M

3. Dude Perfect – $14M

4. Logan Paul – $12.5M

5. Mark Fischbach – $12.5M

6. PewDiePie – $12M

7. Jake Paul – $11.5M

8. Smosh – $11M

9. Ryan ToysReview – $11M

10. Lilly Singh – $10.5

More information on Business Insider.

Snapchat and Coach Just Debuted Snapcodes Embedded Into Holiday Pins

This holiday season, Coach and Snapchat have teamed up and developed holiday pins embedded with Snapcodes. The pins will be available in 20 stores across the United States. The pins feature Coach’s mascots inside the Snapchat ghost. To win the pins, users will need to answer a free online or in-store quiz about their favorite Coach mascot. The pins allow users to play Coach’s holiday campaign arcade-style game on the platform. The quiz will also be featured in some of Coach’s holiday Snap Ads and will unlock campaign specific filters on the platform. With Nielsen’s Buyer Insights study saying that “2 in 5 users remember using the app before, during or after shopping, and a quarter saying they’ve looked at Snapchat filters while shopping”, this partnership is likely to prove that Snapchat is able to drive in-store visits.