10Yetis - Weekly Dose of Social - Peeple, Facebook down and updates

So this week we’ve got new controversial social networks, lots of Facebook updates as well as Facebook going down. TWICE.

Peeple, is a new app created by two women in California, and it has been described as Yelp for people. You need a Facebook account and to be over 21 to access the app and well, then you can go ahead and rate people. You can rate people based on personal, professional or romantic interactions. A pretty horrendous idea for an app, especially when cyberbulling and trolling is already rife on the internet. Luckily the majority of the population seems to think this too. Twitter and the media have gone mad on it, calling it grotesque and dangerous. One of the most disturbing facts is that someone else can add you to the app and rate you, and then, you will be notified, but you can’t even delete your profile.

Since the big uproar about the app the founder shave posted up some changes they are thinking about on their Facebook page. The last point specifically. I think it’s safe to say that the whole idea of rating people on an app is not a good idea, no matter what changes happen to it.

Facebook went down two times over a week. Ridiculous. On Monday there was a 40 minute outage which followed an outage on the previous Thursday. Obviously brands took this a s a great chance to benefit from the trending hashtag. There were some great examples of piggybacking which I’ll add below. Facebook announced that the outages were due to some engineers doing some tinkering on the site. The site being down meant that other sites and apps that use Facebook data also lost some functionality. This was sites such as Tinder which pulls information through a Facebook login.

Still waiting... #facebookdown pic.twitter.com/6j6jhhhQsN
— krispykreme (@krispykreme) September 28, 2015

.@facebook we heard you need a pick-me-up! #FacebookDown pic.twitter.com/Mts1DGDLAz
— Red Bull (@redbull) September 28, 2015

So following the outages, Facebook release a bunch of updates the most notable of which was the new feature of being able to a profile video. (Possible reason for the outages?) The profile video is described as such by Facebook:

“Today we’re starting to test the next step in an obvious evolution of profiles: profile videos. Soon, you’ll be able to film a short, looping video clip that will play for anyone who visits your profile. Profile videos will let show a part of yourself you couldn’t before, and add a new dimension to your profile.”

On top of this development you can also set a timer on your profile pictures. This allows you to put a temporary picture up to celebrate or show something specific at a certain time. So it could be a birthday photograph or something for #TBT. When the timer runs out it will revert to your previous profile picture.

There are some more improved profile controls too. It’s now easier to see what exactly you are sharing on your ‘bio’ part of your profile. So you can hide the line about your work, your birthday or featured photographs.

So that’s it for this week! Have a great weekend!