10 Yetis - Weekly Dose of Social - Twitter updates and Stolen the app

Hey all, it’s time for this week’s dose of social media news. This week there have been a bunch of Twitter updates and a look at the app that was over before it began. Stolen.

So first up is the news that you will now be able to view Periscope lives streams from in your Twitter feed. This is currently only available on the Twitter app on iOS devices, but the company has announced that this will soon be available for desktop and other mobile operating systems. Previously a broadcast shared on to twitter would give a link, which would then take you through to the app to watch the stream. Now the video will autoplay in the feed and when clicked will take you to a fullscreen version, meaning you no longer need a periscope account to view the streams.

This is not the only Twitter centric news this week. They have also announced a new product for their advertisers, which will use Tweeter’s content. It allows brands to collate tweets from users and have them display as part of an advertisement. The format will likely be the promoted tweet followed by a carousel of user posts. Twitter have said that they will be contacting the author of the tweet to get their permission before the tweet is used. Though there is no information so far on how long the authorisation will take.

Brands have obviously used influencers before this, to help them promote their product on Twitter, but this has all previously been very hush hush and in the hidden world of DMs. The idea for Twitter adding this to their promotional offerings, is presumably to add to their pockets. Making themselves a middle man, so they can also profit.

A new app was making a buzz on social media this week, unfortunately it’s over before it even begun. The app, Stolen, was a game where users could ‘own’ other user’s Twitter profiles. The app connected Twitter profiles to the game and used a virtual currency which allowed users to purchase profiles. To accumulate money in the app, users could purchase using real money or could play further on the app to build up their virtual funds. Each person was designated a value based on how in demand their profile was. For some reason this took of quickly on Twitter and people were quickly trying to steal other’s profiles, where they could then assign them a nickname and trade for other profiles.

You can probably see why this instantly became controversial. It was a perfect platform for cyberbulling to take place, as well as many people becoming uneasy about the idea that their profiles were being shopped around on the app, even if they hadn’t signed up to it. So as the controversy got more heated, the app creators were forced to do something about it, and finally they decided it would be best that they removed the app from the app store. They have said that those who want money back from the app will have to contact iTunes for a refund.

And that’s all folks. Join us next week for another edition.