Snapchat team seems to be testing Story Boost Feature for Snapchat+ users

Everybody loves to picture their moments and share them with the world through popular social media platforms, Snapchat which is one of the popular social media platforms with over 363 million active users has recently released its exclusive subscription which is known as Snapchat+.

To facilitate Snapchat+ users, the team tends to be working on a new feature called Story Boost.

This specific feature would be giving Snapchat+ users an advantage over non-exclusive subscribers by boosting their social media engagement in terms of views. Moreover, the users utilizing this feature would remain anonymous, in other words, it’s impossible to tell if any specific account is using the story boosting feature.

Let’s talk a bit about how this feature tends to bring more value to Snapchat+ users. Your story would be given priority among non-exclusive subscribers and would be more visible to random people to increase your social engagement.

It’s interesting to see how Snapchat is putting its remarkable efforts to bring more content to Snapchat+ and attract people to consume exclusive content.

Right now, this feature is under testing and could take more time to finally arrive on the application, thus we should lower our expectations as a Snapchat team has announced that they are constantly working on this new feature and in these initial stages they were seen refusing to share any news related to the new feature.

Turns out, the audience will have to wait a while to finally test and enjoy this new feature as it looks kind of too far from being implemented any time soon.

But it would be really interesting to see what type of efforts the Snapchat team will do to attract its users to buy a premium subscription.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

New Features Of Status Updates And View-Once Message Privacy By WhatsApp

After blessing with the incredible features of making polls and creating communities, WhatsApp is now headed towards calling out the new features of status updates inside the chat list plus the roll out of a new presentation sheet to view once messages is also on the cards.

WhatsApp follows a ritual of not disappointing its user and always amazes them by introducing super fun features through updates. As I have mentioned the upcoming options above, I must explain more about them and their functions.

Let’s discuss the first feature of WhatsApp beta for the Android update, in which the users will be able to view status updates directly from the conversation list. The process seems to be very easy. Rather than checking users who uploaded a status in the status area of WhatsApp, look at the ring that will appear around the profile picture in the conversation list to determine whether the function is accessible for your account.

Following the installation of the most recent WhatsApp Desktop version, this is finally reaching out to even more people. Many users now have the option to see status updates inside the chat list, and thus more consumers will also have it over the next several weeks.

The name of the second feature is the presentation sheet for view-once messages. The current status of this feature is rolling out. You must be curious about this new feature like what it is for. This feature provides screenshot protection for view-once photos and videos. Which means, this feature has made it impossible for the receiver to screenshot the messages for future reading or sharing them with others.

A question arises: how does it work? The answer is, as users press the view-once button located in the drawing editor, the presentation page containing view-once messages will appear. WhatsApp will notify you whether this function is turned on so that the receiver cannot obtain a snapshot of it. In short, sharing, forwarding, copying, and saving the view-once picture and clip are all disallowed.

The feature is now accessible for beta users having the WhatsApp beta for the Android 2.22.22.3 version, however, the social media platform is now unveiling a new presentation page to showcase these enhancements to certain beta testers. This functionality was previously offered to non-beta clients as well.

I am sure both these features will make room in the hearts of users and WhatsApp will continue to excite these valuable users in the future for sure.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Video Is One Of The Key Factors In Determining The Decisions Of Users

As the title suggests, video emerges as the main catalyst for the action taken by consumers, confirmed by a report from Meta.

Meta platforms incorporated the insights of about 1,000 users and published a report in collaboration with Publicis Data Intelligence which reveals that video, social commerce, and recommendations are the most dominating elements when it comes to influencing consumer behavior.

According to Meta, there is a slight difference between the position of video and TV, the video contains the largest percentage of interaction among all the content categories. Even if television is regarded to be the most impactful video point of interaction, Facebook seemed to be the most effective video platform because of its faster digitalization and rising mobile video usage. Whilst TV continues to serve as the most effective advertising medium in several regions nowadays, video continues to be the main factor of involvement and connection.

Meta highlights that television highly influences people but digital platforms such as Facebook and Instagram charge 2X higher than marketers. In simple words, I believe that digital platforms are highly effective for marketers to invest in rather than television. Furthermore, online video ads are more relative to the audience.

In this digitalized world, it is believed that we need a highly engaging video clip to inspire someone about something. A few years ago, Television was the trend for advertising products but nowadays many people do not use television on a daily basis. It is just because of mobile phones. For example, if a family has four members so there are four cell phones in this home for everyone whether it is the father or toddler.

Moreover, everyone has their own choices to see whenever and whatever they want on smartphones. Similarly, in this situation, if a person sees an ad for their favorite thing on social media which is recommended by his or her favorite blogger or creator, so he or she will definitely be attracted to buy because now he is motivated and emotionally attached to it.

The report's second most significant component is social commerce, which allows advertisers to accelerate low-funnel goals by using online markets. There are several reasons why advertisers should pay attention to boost the performance of their business; first, social media have many platforms through which customers get attracted to purchases by other people. Secondly, online purchases are common nowadays which provide a frictionless shopping experience.

You can buy your favorite item with one click just by sitting on your comfortable couch. Last but not the reason is that people are bound to be dependent on e-commerce services that offer an opportunity for marketers to explore the commerce space.

Lastly, Meta emphasizes recommendations as a crucial driven source for influencing customer buying intentions, with online influencers increasingly involved. According to Nielsen, 74% of customers’ purchase choices are influenced by word-of-mouth, and about 92% of them say they trust suggestions from their friend circles, family, and acquaintances more than advertisements.

Additionally, almost every individual follows their favorite content creator on social media platforms. To reach out to these people, many marketers approach the content creator and pay a handsome amount to showcase their products which brings traffic to the marketers.

These above-mentioned factors seem to likely help marketers increase their marketing efforts in moving ahead.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Developers Are Getting More Diverse Pricing Options on the Apple App Store

When the App Store was first launched back in 2008, it created a whole new economy that app developers could work in and earn revenue from. One of the restrictions placed on apps that wanted to be available on the store was that they could only select one out of 90 price points to sell their digital products at. Many developers rankled at this because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up limiting their options.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Apple has made an enormous change to its App Store pricing policies that might give developers far more options than might have been the case otherwise. Apple is now giving developers the ability to set up to 900 different prices that range from 10 cents all the way to $10,000, and that can give developers a lot of flexibility with respect to the consumers they can target.

Another big change is that Apple is taking currencies other than the US dollar more seriously. Globalizing one’s business is becoming increasingly important these days, but unstable exchange rates can make it difficult to keep revenues consistent. Consumers might cancel subscriptions if they suddenly start costing more due to a higher exchange rate of their local currency with the dollar, but that might no longer be the case with all things having been considered and taken into account.

Developers would now get the chance to fix their prices in up to 45 currencies. The prices will also change automatically based on exchange rates if that option is selected. Apple is clearly trying to create more opportunities both for app makers as well as their users, and it will be interesting to see if any apps reach the higher price points. This can open the door for luxury and premium apps that are catering to an exclusive audience, and it can also give consumers more budget friendly apps that cost next to nothing but can still add up to a lot of revenue for developers.

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

Researchers Exploring the Reasons for "Sadfishing" Over Social Media

Sad-fishing, identified by the researchers as “a trend for people on social media to post hyped emotive reactions to elicit sympathies,” is an online activity that has legitimate uses: highlighting the inner workings of someone else's mind which can be a powerful tool when communicating with others. In this case, however, sad-fishing can become a negative form of online expression — often expressed in a way that is seen as cringe-worthy (a word almost synonymous with internet cliche).

Sad-fishing, or hoping to receive sympathy on social media by complaining about problems or misfortunes that are not true, may lead people to feel isolated and alone. This can be especially true when individuals see the same sentiments expressed by people in their real life, which has led psychologists to investigate how this behavior is impacting those who contend with it.

Researcher conducted a study to explore the factors in psychology that encourage unhappiness. According to their theory, unhappy persons own an apprehensive attachment bond and receive less support from others in person or digitally.

This study's volunteers were gathered via ads on different social networks. Three thousand forty-seven individuals signed up for this drive. These people responded to a survey detailing their sad-fishing activities over the previous year. They were questioned about whether they sensed pressure to embellish a private or physical condition digitally. These remarks divided respondents into "unhappy" and "happy" groupings.

This study aimed to examine the reasons behind people engaging in sad-fishing on the internet and how this may be an indication of a lower level of the adult bond. Participants were found to be very similar in both areas, indicating that over-liking a post or creating a false account is not indicative of low levels of adult bond support.

The study examined whether sad-fishers were more feasible to be lonely, using a self-report measure of sociable help. Results indicate that sadfishers are comparable to non-sadfishers in their sociable backing and interactional relation development, but sadfisher players have greater levels of an apprehensive bond.

The experimenters believe that while a more significant inclination to influence others may not be directly related to uneasy bond, it likely plays a role. The study found that social anxiety negatively correlated with anxious attachment and “sad-fishermen” were more likely to use more manipulative tactics than those who described themselves as less anxious.

The facts only showed a "sensation" as a significant connection between despair and apprehensive affection; there was no substantial analytical connection between the two, according to the researchers, who also noted several other shortcomings. Additionally, they suggest that a statistical test be designed to effectively recognize unhappiness.

To improve therapeutic techniques, Lead researcher Cara Petrofes and her team finish by urging deeper research into the causes of being unhappy.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

The World’s Biggest Social Media and Messaging Apps Visualized

Social media used to seem like an unstoppable force that would inevitably manage to rule the whole world, but in spite of the fact that this is the case recent years have shown that this industry is not immune to controversy and the financial fallout that can occur in its wake. 2016’s fiery election that saw the divisive Donald Trump rise to the US presidency, followed by the Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica Scandal, proved to be the first of many cracks to come.

One thing that has become apparent in 2022 is that the landscape of social media has become a lot more diverse. New players like TikTok have now entered the fray, and they are upsetting the delicate balance that so many social media platforms had relied on in the past. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Meta’s social media platforms still reign supreme thanks to their enormous user base that is on a global scale.

However, smaller platforms have also been making an entry with all things having been considered and taken into account. Facebook is at the top of the list in terms of monthly active users with 2.9 billion, followed by YouTube which has about 2.3 billion. Coming in third is another Meta property, WhatsApp, which has approximately 2 billion active users per month.

Messenger and Instagram round off the top five list with 1.3 billion and 1.2 billion MAUs apiece. This means that the top five is dominated by Meta, with only YouTube managing to crack the top five and give the social media juggernaut some competition.

Once we exit the top five list, the list starts to become much more diversified than might have been the case otherwise. Tencent’s messaging app WeChat has 1.2 billion users. It is benefited by being the only accessible messaging platform in China because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up giving it unlimited exposure to the massive population in that country, but it has managed to crack the market in ways that other platforms failed to.

TikTok comes in at number 7 with 732 million MAUs, and the rapid growth of this platform might help it crack into the top five list in the near future. It will also be helped along by the ensuing decline of Meta, although it is facing stiffer competition from YouTube and only time will tell whether or not it will come out on top.

TikTok is then followed by Telegram with 700 million monthly active users. The top ten list is then rounded off by two more Chinese apps, namely Douyin which is the Chinese version of TikTok with 600 million users per month and QQ which is also owned by Tencent which has about 595 million MAUs.

The US and China are both producing social media and messaging apps that are able to crack the top 20. The only app that was created outside of these countries is Telegram, which indicates that China and the US will continue to dominate the social media landscape for many years to come unless the paradigm changes considerably.

H/T: VC
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Musk Blasts Twitter’s Team For Being Too Intense When Suspending Fake Accounts On The App

Elon Musk is blasting out the teams responsible for suspending fake accounts on the Twitter platform, calling them out as being too intense in their behavior.

The billionaire spoke out on the matter during the later hours of Sunday night where he says the team that was responsible for getting rid of spam and even bot accounts was just too harsh in their ruling.

He even highlighted how such suspensions were not required but now, he hopes to move forward with a more chill or laid-back attitude.

The news came after one Twitter user sent out complaints about the platform suspending several genuine accounts that were seen putting out messages of positivity as well as fun memes for better engagement.

But by suspending such accounts, Musk knows that it would drastically affect users who work so hard to build up their followers and accounts. Hence, such behavior causes the number of followers to drop overnight.

Elon Musk’s major issue has really opened up a new debate because we’ve seen the billionaire outline on numerous occasions that he wouldn’t be able to acquire Twitter because the number of fake accounts was just too many.

Now, he’s taking a completely different approach by putting a loose grip on keeping such accounts at bay. What happened to Musk trying to authentically the real users on the app as humans, was just one of the many comments that people were curious about, related to this topic.

In a recently published interview with leading media outlet Reuters, Elon Musk was mentioned to be a leader whose top priority was nothing but platform safety. And for that reason, he was not going to make the app rely more on the likes of AI technology to spot and address various types of harmful content online.

Let’s not forget how in the past few weeks, we’ve seen several users of the app that were left-wing activists having accounts suspended in an unfair manner. And that was related to the fact that the company’s team that handled trust and safety was decimated.

Then last week, we saw a new report in the name of Twitter Files get published which outlined how Twitter prevented content related to Hunter Biden’s laptop from getting published, right before the commencement of the US Elections that were held in 2020.

Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World