Snapchat Create A Virtual Art Gallery and Facebook Saves The Day For Admins

Snapchat Launches a Virtual Art Gallery

To celebrate Black History Month Snapchat has created a Lens that allows users to visit its AR art gallery that showcases pieces created by black artists.

AR is becoming a new space for art and social platforms are taking it and running with it. Now this may be disappointing to the art historians reading this, but social media platforms are looking to redefine how the younger generations are viewing, making and creating relationships with art. The Lens that was launched last week lets users walk through a virtual art gallery called “for us, by us: art through the eyes of black millennials”.

The gallery can be accessed by clicking on the new rainbow Lens in Snapchat’s Lens carousel. When the Lens first opens users will see a selfie frame with the Black History Month banner. Users will then have to switch the camera to see the art gallery and then they can explore. Now, this isn’t the first time Snapchat has done this, interestingly they led the charge for change by launching a similar campaign two years ago. This was where users were able to view various famous art pieces in public spaces.

Instagram offers DMs on the web

Instagram might be ending its mobile only approach by bringing DMs to its web pages. If you’re a fan of laptops over phones then this is the perfect news for you.

Internal messaging is the top driver of engagements on social media apps, and Facebook and Instagram know this to be true. With Facebook being one of the first online platforms to introduce messaging they know their thing when it comes to making conversations as easy as possible on their platforms.

It’s impossible to argue that growth won’t come from this new feature, expanding Instagram onto desktops. However, Instagram still have a long way to go to really bring in a new audience through their website. The platform still lacks the ability to post images or videos unless you’re a tech wiz. But, how much of this is going to go forward with Facebook looking to create a universal messaging folder anyway?

Facebook is creating a universal page inbox?!

Facebook is about to make the page admins very very happy! Facebook is rolling out a page inbox that will include messages from Instagram DMs as well.

Rumours around Facebook working on this new feature surfaced in November last year, and the wait is over. The social platform announced that it will be bringing Facebook messages and Instagram DMs to the same inbox. The feature was released as a way for Facebook to improve the communities’ features of the two platforms.

Before today, page admins had the task of jumping back and forth between the platforms to respond to direct messages, but now it will all be accessible in one place. According to some reports, Facebook is bringing the feature to users in the United States and Brazil first, but this isn’t clear since Facebook did not specify anything further in its release last week.

New Emoji’s incoming!

The Emoji game is getting a huge upgrade! There are 230 new additions that are coming this year and the best part, they’re more inclusive!

Each year, the Unicode Consortium approves and releases a new set of Emojis, and this year they are releasing an incredible number of new ones. These include: disabled people, people holding hands, new skin tones and even a period emoji. Emojis have become the best way to express yourself in 2019 and in a world that is becoming more and more diverse they are only going to become more useful.

But there has been some disappointment as of late due to the lack of representation that many users face, but this problem is no more. The new 2019 roll out will include wheelchairs, canes, hearing aids, and prosthetic limbs. This is something that Apple have been working on to improve their ability to represent the wider community, saying that “one in seven people around the world has some form of disability (…) adding emoji emblematic to users’ life experiences helps foster a diverse culture that is inclusive of disability.” As well as the increased inclusion, Apple have worked to benefit all the foodies out there. The 2019 roll out will has a lot of new food Emojis, these include: garlic, a waffle, an onion, butter, and a juice box, but it doesn’t stop there! New Emoji’s also include: swim suits, a sari, ballet shoes, a safety vest, animals – including a sloth, otter, flamingo, skunk, and orangutan, and a bunch of random Emojis: a ringed planet and a yo-yo. And we won’t get started on the new pinch Emoji that has taken the world by storm, and if you haven’t been living under a rock, you’ll know why.