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The Week in Social: Twitter features & stats, WhatsApp ads, and more Instagram Story integrations

05 Nov 2018 Majed Alnahwi

Twitter is testing a new feature that toggles between latest and top tweets

The current Twitter timeline was launched in 2016 and is based on a “top” tweets algorithm that attempts to guess which tweets are most important to the user. However, due to popular demand, Twitter is now testing a new button on the home page that will allow users to toggle between a “top” tweets feed and a “latest” chronological feed. While there are pros and cons to each feed setup, adding this feature will give Twitter users the best of both worlds.

WhatsApp plans to show ads within its “Status” Feature

Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp has long been ad free, ever since it was first released in 2009. According to VP Chris Daniels, that is soon to end, as the company intends to monetize its hugely popular Status feature (similar to Instagram Stories). It is expected that the advertisements will be powered by Facebook’s native advertising system. The move comes as Facebook looks to not only generate revenue from WhatsApp but also allow business to better connect with consumers on the platform; and with over 1.5 billion users worldwide, the opportunity to achieve both goals is clear.

Shazam integrates with Instagram Stories

Following Soundcloud’s announcement of an Instagram Story integration a few weeks ago, Shazam announced a similar feature this week. Users with the latest versions of both apps can now share a song they Shazam-ed to their Instagram Stories, the post will have the covert art as well as a link back to the song page in the Shazam app. The integration is currently available on iOS with no timeline for Android devices.

Instagram now let’s you share IGTV videos to your Instagram Story

This week, Instagram announced a new feature allows users to share a preview of any IGTV video in their Instagram Stories. Until now, users could only share a link to an IGTV on business accounts. With this new feature, Instagram is trying to bridge the gap between IGTV and the main Instagram app.

Twitter deletes over 10,000 accounts attempting to discourage users from voting

The accounts were mostly bots posting messages that appeared to be coming from famous Democrat figures. The Democratic party flagged the misleading tweets to Twitter who then investigated the activity. Additionally, the Democratic National Committee has been working with contractors and partners to identify misinformation campaigns, leveraging AI and informatics to analyze social media content. This is seen as a positive step in fighting misinformation on social media, particularly Twitter, who struggled over the past few years with this issue.

Twitter releases data on usage trends since character limit change to 280

Almost a year since the major change, Twitter released some stats on platform usage since the change. Only about 1% of tweets are hitting the 280-character limit compared to 9% of tweets hitting the 140-character limit before the limit switch. Additionally, only 12% of tweets are actually exceeding the original 140-character limit. Another stat Twitter highlighted was the increased usage of the words “please” (54%) and “Thank you” (22%) after increasing the character limit.