Twitter just got even more savage, Google Pay adds to its roster, YouTube extends the longest five seconds of our lives! And Facebook takes further measures on sharing schemes

Twitter just got even more savage

Twitter has started to suggest accounts that users should unfollow, their reasoning for this being that, “you don’t need to follow everyone to know what’s happening”

It’s pretty simple, the more people you follow, the more cluttered your timeline becomes making the best tweets harder to find amongst the blabbering of the masses. Thus, Twitter has begun to ask some users whether they would like to unfollow certain accounts.

So far, it is pretty unclear how Twitter selects the people that it suggests users should unfollow. The most likely reason that it would suggest for users to unfollow accounts will be based on whether or not they engage regularly with these accounts.

Twitter announced the new feature saying: “We know that people want a relevant Twitter timeline. One way to do this is by unfollowing people they don’t engage with regularly. We ran an incredibly limited test to surface accounts that people were not engaging with to check if they’d like to unfollow them.”

Google Pay adds to its roster

In January, Google announced that it was initiating a massive overhaul where its overlapping wallet services would be amalgamated under one single product umbrella, Google Pay. And, now Tez is joining that list.

Originally, Google had left its Tez product out of its merger, and with good reason. Tez operated in India, and this would make Google the first major tech company to offer banking and wallet services there.

Being the first company to offer digital payments would mean that Google would be at the top of the list for many of the residents of India. This will shake off the competition from Facebook and other tech companies offering these services. According to Google, since the launch of Tez, over 22 million people and businesses have used it to make over 750 million transactions that are worth over $30 billion annually.

From now on, Tez will merge under the Google Pay Umbrella. The users in India will continue to enjoy the special features that Tez offered, such as sending gifts or paying a merchant directly from their bank account with no fees.

YouTube extends the longest five seconds of our lives!

YouTube is rolling out new, non-skippable ads for many of its creators, so say goodbye to the five second skips!

After the introduction of the limited non-skippable ads to select creators, YouTube has announced that the ads are going to spread to more creators. The company announced on its Official Creator Insider channel that those YouTube creators that are part of the Partner Program will be getting access to the non-skippable ads, giving them the opportunity to earn more money from the ads.

Starting this week, all channels that are able to monetise their videos will be getting the ability to run the new non-skippable ads. Even though these ads are extremely unpopular with users, brands are willing to spend more money on them.

However, all hope is not lost just yet! Brands will not be able to run two minute long ads or long form videos; the maximum length time for the non-skippable ads is only 15 to 20 seconds but this is still going to feel like a lifetime compared to the five second ads of the past! And for this reason, creators who have not yet created loyal fan bases should be careful when implementing them.

The new feature will be activated automatically, with new and old posts, but users will be able to deactivate if it starts to negatively affect their page.

Facebook takes further measures on sharing schemes

If you have ever run a successful Facebook Page then you will most likely have been contacted by a content mill asking you to publish content for them. Well, if you didn’t know already, it’s a scam and it’s becoming more and more of a problem lately. As part of Facebook’s efforts to reduce click baiting and fake news, it’s taking actions to remove these schemes.

Facebook has announced a drive to help its users understand these schemes and learn how to avoid them and their consequences. The content mills present themselves as high quality digital publishers and approach Pages with high follower numbers. They work by using these high number follower pages and accounts to push out and distribute large quantities of articles and videos.

If your page is found to be involved in a scheme like this, and the behaviour continues, Facebook will start to reduce the reach of your page considerably. Along with this reduction of reach it is likely that Facebook will stop the pages access to its monetisation features.