R.I.P Twitter Dashboard, Instagram starts advertising in Stories, Vine Lives on and Facebook to Invest $3bn in VR - Social Media News 20th January

Hi Everyone, Rhodri here bringing you some of the most recent and interesting updates across a handful of social media platforms!

Twitter has decided to shut down its Dashboard app

The official date for shut down is February 3^rd. This has come as a surprise to many users as Twitter only released the Dashboard app back in June 2016. It was created to help businesses monitor their online performance on the platform by allowing them to develop and schedule tweets, track their performance via analytics and also track key terms. This also meant people did not have to use third party apps not created by Twitter.

Although many agree the app is actually quite useful, Twitter decided it did not receive enough attention to be continued. Instead, Dashboard has said that it will bring many of its features “to the broader Twitter community”, meaning the tools will not disappear and most likely be incorporated into other areas of the platform or appear on Twitter’s Tweetdeck tool which already possesses some of the same features and has also received a number of updates recently.

Targeted ads on Facebook are becoming even more personal

Most Facebook users will be familiar with the ‘Dynamic ads’ they host. This is when an ad will appear on a user’s feed based on what they have been viewing previously on other websites. Some people find this super useful, others find it annoying and intrusive so you’ll either love or hate this news. Facebook is going to expand the tool so that users can be targeted more effectively. Previously, advertisers could only target users who specifically looked at their products on their websites. Now it is much more sophisticated, for example, someone who has been looking at a few black leather jackets online via multiple retailers and also likes pages and Facebook posts about Black leather jackets can automatically be reached by a seller.

The seller will supply a catalogue of what they want to sell and who they want to target, e.g. men in the U.K age 30-40. Facebook can then target these people using their algorithms and deliver an ad directly to them without them having necessarily visited the site previously. This is big news for advertisers and removes a large element of trial and error.

Instagram is introducing ads to Stories

This is not really a surprise as it was only going to be a matter of time before Instagram decided to monetise its stories feature. It was the obvious move as stories has become hugely popular in just 5 months, and also beginning to threaten Snapchats very existence.

The ads will appear in-between stories, but Instagram is adamant that they will not disrupt the user experience and they will only be including a selection of big name brands to begin with. As Instagram is owned by Facebook, it will also offer similar analytics to brands so they will be able to see their post reach, number of impressions and replies etc. making it easy to see how they are performing.

Facebook Live introduces a bundle of new features

Facebook is doing everything in their power to get people on board with and using Facebook Live. They’ve now introduced a number of new features and tools to make it even more appealing:

You can now go live from your computer via a web version of the platform – This was actually rolled out a while ago but was not available to all users and aimed more towards those with high quality broadcast equipment. You can now go Live using your computer webcam.

Multiple users can go live from a page – Previously only page admins had the ability to do this but users can now give access to designated page ‘contributors’ that can go live as they please. This will prove very useful for influencers who wish to collaborate with brands and broadcast from multiple areas.

Video insights have become more advanced – More data will be recorded and the levels of engagement and analytics will be shown over a 60 day period for users, however this will only be available for those with 5,000 or more followers.

You can pin comments to a live post – The most relevant comments on a post can be pinned to the bottom of the stream by the host to help encourage and steer conversations.

Vine video clips live on

The Vine application will be rebranding itself as the Vine Camera app, where users will be able to record 6 second clips that they can then post via Twitter or keep saved on their phones. On the 16^th January, Vine gave its users the ability to download and save all of the videos previously posted on the platform. Users must download and save their videos before the app transformation if they wish to keep them. Vine also plan to try and create an easy way for their users to guide their following to their Twitter accounts so they can follow them there instead.

Facebook planning $3billion+ investment into VR over the next decade

At the moment, virtual reality headsets seem to be popping up here and there but they are far from widespread yet. Mark Zuckerberg feels VR will be an integral part of future computing and has said he will be investing over $3billion into its development over the next decade. Zuckerberg believes it will probably take about another 5-10 years for the technology to take off properly, but is excited at the fact that Facebook will be delivering it to the masses.

Facebook started working on VR when they acquired Oculus (the current goggles you may recognise). However there has been a recent dispute from ZeniMax, claiming that they were not compensated for VR information obtained from them and used in the development of creating the technology. This may be a small hiccup for Zuckerberg but he is still firmly focused on furthering the technology as you can see by his level of investments.