Google Maps update, Instagram weather, HONY video series, Burger King campaign - Weekly Social Media News - 10 Yetis Insight

We hope you've had a lovely week! Welcome to your weekly update of all things Social Media and just generally internet-y. Have a good weekend!

Google maps adds a parking feature

Google maps knows everything and anything when it comes to the roads, buildings and places around us. And now its drawing its attention to parking as well. A potential incredible time-saver, live parking information will be provided for twenty-five cities outside of the US.

Anyone who’s been driving for more than five minutes knows the struggles that this new update will save us from. No more arguing over where to park, spending thirty odd minutes trying to find a space or risking a ticket. Google now offers the ‘Parking Difficulty’ feature to more users, it shares information on parking availability and ease of parking, this helps users know when it’s probably best to just get the bus. The feature runs with the help of location data, which means you’re going to have to allow Google access to your location at all times. The feature will also use machine learning as a key way to improve the reliability of the data being shared.

Along with this, users will be able to use the ‘Find parking’ option that allows them to find parking garages near their intended destination. Selecting a location will automatically include it in their journey itinerary. As well as this, users will be provided walking directions from their parking space to their destination too!

The cities with this futuristic tech are: Alicante, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Cologne, Darmstadt, Dusseldorf, London, Madrid, Malaga, Manchester, Milan, Montreal, Moscow, Munich, Paris, Prague, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Sao Paulo, Stockholm, Stuttgart, Toronto, Valencia and Vancouver.

Share how you feel about the weather with Instagram’s new filter

Instagram has rolled out another filter to compete with Snapchat, after already rolling out its community-inspired face filter, Instagram has created weather inspired filters.

How does the weather make you feel? Happy? Sad? Angry? Well now you can share how you feel with all your Instagram followers with these new face filters.

Instagram is still attempting to push its popularity even further ahead of its competition by expanding its collection of face filters.

Depending on the weather users can “Watch the mood change. Share your emotions through a happy sun, a sad raincloud, an angry thunderstorm or a laid-back sun.”

The new filters can be combined with the other filters already available, allowing a lot of us Brits to complain about the weather in the most creative ways possible. And obviously your final creations can be sent to friends directly or added to your story.

Humans of New York takes the jump to video

If you haven’t heard of it, then where the hell have you been for the past few years?! And if you have, you know that ‘Humans of New York’ is a successful page on Facebook that provokes thoughts about our own lives, and now it’s becoming a video series on Facebook’s new platform, Watch. The series has debuted already and you can see them here: https://www.facebook.com/honytheseries/

Instagram is taking stories to our desktops

Instagram’s stories have already surpassed their rival’s stories performance on Snapchat. Now it plans to pull even further ahead of the market, by taking their stories somewhere Snapchat can’t, our desktops.

At first, desktop and mobile web users of the site will be able to view stories posted by those they follow. But in the coming months, Instagram will also allow users to post stories directly from the web.

Instagram stories have grown from being an obvious copy of Snapchat to a more successful version of it. Becoming available on desktop can only be a positive when it comes to growth in the use of Instagram Stories.

Get this, 80% of Instagram’s users are from outside the U.S., and because of this the company believes that a web version of the feature could push user levels even further, allowing a serious gain in usage from businesses.

Instagram claimed, businesses that share Stories on its platform are more likely to generate online conversions: 1 in 5 Instagram Stories posted by a business receive a Direct Message reply. What more can businesses ask for? A free way to boost popularity, viewers and visibility online while also engaging with an audience from the office.

What’s in the box?!

Burger king has taken a different route to the usual. In an age where everyone knows everything about anything, especially when it comes to what they eat, the company has decided that the world, or more specifically its customers in France need a bit more mystery in their lives.

Burger King France has started to offer a mystery box from now until the 25^th of September. For only 2 euros, customers can buy one of their 10 signature sandwiches, chosen at random, and served in an unbranded white box.

We can only assume this marketing idea came from the surge in popularity of things such as monthly subscription boxes, where customers order a box based on their interests (e.g. beer) and receive a monthly package with surprise goodies around their certain theme.

Now that’s good, but the campaign gets even better! The Paris-based advertising agency Buzman who created the campaign took it a step further. An advert was released with the campaign with a young couple sat in a doctor’s office ready to find out what burger was in their box, in the same way a young couple would be sat in a doctor’s office waiting to find out the sex of their child. Genius!