Time to get your geek on.

Reach Your People

LinkedIn means business. The networking service is officially rolling out Matched Audiences, a feature that helps all LinkedIn advertisers target their ads based on people’s web browsing activity, email addresses and employers. It’s in-depth market research at its finest.

LinkedIn’s targeted ads will appear where people are looking to do strictly business, and since LinkedIn will consider both primary and secondary email addresses (you know what they say – never mix work with pleasure….) attached to people’s profiles, business-to-business marketers will have a higher chance of hitting their target audience.

On top of that, advertisers have the chance to get super-specific with their targeting, connecting them to the right audiences through gender, age, location, job title and even seniority level. “Most marketers would agree that customer targeting and remarketing is a game of ‘Data Science’. Not Big Data, but Real-Big-Accurate Data will solve the problem for marketers in targeting the right audiences who are interested in taking the journey forward”, LinkedIn said in a statement.

An exciting audience targeting tool for marketers, we can only expect LinkedIn to drop more features in the near future.

Express Yourself

If we could react to Facebook’s newest update, it would be this:

For Facebook users can now react to COMMENTS with emoji. The newest feature lets people respond to discussions under posts and status updates with a ‘Love’, ‘Haha’, ‘Wow’, ‘Sad’ and ‘Angry’. Online communication has just got so much better.

Handy for relaying the right message with only a tap of a button, Facebook have stated “we’ve heard from people that they’d like more ways to show their reaction in conversations on Facebook, so we’re rolling out the ability to react to comments”. Ask, and you shall receive!

Snapchat is at Your Service 

Small, medium, large – brands of ALL sizes can rejoice, as Snapchat is set to launch a self-service advertising platform inclusive for everyone.

Available in the UK and other European markets from June, the tool is is available at absolutely NO cost and marketers can buy, manage, optimise and view data across all their campaigns. Not only that, but the Ad Manager works together with the Snapchat Mobile Dashboard, letting advertisers view their ‘Snap Ads’ through the eyes of the user they’re targeting. It’s (techy) magic.

So, how does one review the campaign metrics? Don’t fret. Brands will be able to track all the stats live and receive key campaign notifications straight to their mobiles.

As seen above, the tool is accessible right from the Snapchat app, no frills or fuss! Big brands, it’s time to move over.

The post LinkedIn Means Business first appeared on 24 fingers.

The post LinkedIn Means Business appeared first on 24 fingers.

The general concept of shadow banning is this: everything you do and see within Instagram looks COMPLETELY normal and functioning. You go to upload that Instagram photo of the caramelised banana #frenchtoast you ate at a pop-up brunch place in #Shoreditch that you spent 90 minutes queuing in the cold for. It uploads fine – bring on everyone’s food envy. You click on the hashtag(s) that you used in your post to check out who else has been taking photos of their #frenchtoast, and you can clearly see your image as you would expect, in all its caramelised glory. Here’s when things get shady….

If you are, in the best sense of the word, shadow banned, an Instagram user who decides to scroll through the same hashtag feed, and who does not already follow you, WON’T see your image at all. It’s not there. It doesn’t exist. Your activity is hidden from view, without warning, without cause.

So what does this mean? Simply, users won’t be able to discover your incredible content through hashtags. With a handful of people claiming to have been personally affected by this bizarre phenomenon, perhaps the most bizarre thing about it is that no one can explain why it’s happening…. not even the software engineers at Instagram.

Some people are adamant it’s not a real thing, whilst others believe it’s an error with hashtags and algorithm changes. Either way, all this fearmongering has already sparked a blaze of shadow ban identifier apps – log on and you can see if any of your images on Instagram have been blocked.

Instagram, in the meantime, have released a very lengthy, very vague statement:

Whilst there isn’t a way to resolve the problem (just yet), one thing to take away from this is: good content is key.

Yes, there’s no telling hashtags can get your posts in front of new, larger and more engaged audiences, but it all boils down to basics. How does your content look at a glance? Is your personality or brand ethos shining through? Do your photos tell a story?

Curating a follow-worthy Instagram is no easy feat, but anyone can do it. And, if you’re wondering just how exactly to step up your Instagram game, take better photos and curate an enviable feed, our Seven Habits of Highly Effective Instagrammers is just the thing to read. Promise.

Shadow banning, you’re going down….

The post Have You Been Shadow Banned on Instagram? first appeared on 24 fingers.

The post Have You Been Shadow Banned on Instagram? appeared first on 24 fingers.

With the mobile photo-sharing service enjoying the sweet taste of success, it seems to be celebrating by rolling out spanking new features left, right and centre. All this and more in this week’s edition of Social Snippets….

The Private Collection

No, not the new exhibition at the Tate, but Instagram’s latest, greatest feature.

So, what is it exactly? Well, users can now save their posted photos and videos in a swanky private collection, giving people a way to bookmark items they want to remember for the future, such as drool-worthy destinations to travel or fancy-pants cake decorating ideas for your next party.

(Or, you know, cute dogs – ain’t no harm in 100+ photos of Corgi puppies).

This change to Instagram is an addition to a feature introduced last December, that allows users to save posts from the people they follow. According to statistics, 46% of people have saved at least one post since the feature’s inception; and, now, with the ability to create multiple collections of saved Instagram posts, the compartmentalisation is limitless.

Though collections remain private for now, that’s not to say your perfectly curated boards couldn’t be ogled by the public in the near future…

Move Aside, Geotags

We weren’t joking when we said Instagram was rolling out tools left, right and centre.

As well as Collections, the app giant made some very aesthetic changes to its Stories feature. Among the updates are custom ‘geostickers’ in four more cities – London, Tokyo, Madrid and Chicago, AND a hands-free timer.

What makes these geostickers so special? All of them have been designed by local community members, meaning not only are they seriously cute but they help to promote each city’s local arts scene. It’s a win-win!

Facebook with a Twist

What’s the future of socialising, according to Facebook? Two words: virtual reality.

At its F8 Developer Conference in San Jose this week, the social network service announced several new products, all with a driving focus on virtual and augmented reality.

Facebook Spaces, its new VR app, lets users chat with friends in a 3D virtual environment, offering the first real glimpse of how Facebook plans to make virtual reality a HUGE social tool.

You get your own cartoon avatar to represent you in the virtual world, the ability to talk to multiple people in a virtual space at the same time, and, best of all, you can overlay 360° images or videos from your feed onto the virtual space, plunging you and your avatar friends into a personalised environment.

Like this tropical paradise:

If this is the future of social media, then bring it on!

The post The new social media feature you NEED to know about first appeared on 24 fingers.

The post The new social media feature you NEED to know about appeared first on 24 fingers.

From the photo-sharing site’s nifty in-app button to Facebook Messenger’s makeover, read on for the crème de la crème of updates from the tech world.

Table for Two

Our instant gratification culture often makes it tough to resist temptation. Like this juicy burger:

Or this work-of-art mani:

You want it, and you want it now.

Well, with Instagram’s new update, you just might get it. The social media giant will soon be rolling out a feature where you can book a restaurant reservation, a hair/nail appointment and much, much more via a company’s Instagram profile. While many websites cater for online booking, this in-app button is an ingenious idea for busy folk who don’t want to open up multiple browsers – because let’s face it….

Business wise, the upcoming feature has unquestionable benefits. Expected to launch in the next few months, companies will soon be able to track tangible conversion rates and measure the success of their online promotion in a more profitable way. “When someone books an appointment, that’s not a ‘like’ or a ‘follow,’ that’s actual action”, says Instagram’s head of business, James Quarles.

Let the booking commence!

Members Only

Many have heard through the grapevine that Twitter is considering launching a paid, premium service. Sound appealing?

After suffering a setback in the form of stagnated user numbers, it’s heads down for Twitter as they begin exploring new avenues to boost revenue. The idea for their paid service would be modelled on an enhanced version of Tweetdeck, their social media dashboard application that manages multiple accounts and timelines.

The exclusive service would offer “valuable viewing, posting, and signalling tools like alerts, trends and activity analysis, advanced analytics, and composing and posting tools all in one customisable dashboard”. Fancy with a Capital F.

Aimed at businesses and power users, the dashboard would make it ten times easier to grow an audience and keep up with content in real-time. You’ll never have to suffer from FOMO again!

ALL The Feels

Like a photo a friend sent via Facebook Messenger? Well now you can L-O-V-E it.

The social networking service has announced a pair of new features for its Messenger app – ‘Reactions’ and ‘Mentions’. With Reactions, users can respond to content on individual and group chats just like this:

Cute, huh? Mentions, on the other hand, is designed primarily for group conversations, and allows users to directly notify friends using the @ tag, as seen on the right:

In a bid to make in-app conversations “better than ever”, Facebook’s dynamic duo will be available globally in the next couple of days.

The post Instagram Debuts New Booking Feature first appeared on 24 fingers.

The post Instagram Debuts New Booking Feature appeared first on 24 fingers.

This week we divulge WhatsApp’s neat new feature, Instagram’s immersive ads and Facebook’s secret (shhh!) news feed. Sit back, relax and have a little read….

Size Matters

We spoke just last week of WhatsApp’s snazzy new status feature, but the messaging service isn’t stopping in its quest for app domination.

Recently introducing a brand new feature, ‘Size’ tab is able to tell users which chat is eating up the most kilobytes of space, and, alternatively, which chat is taking up the least amount. For tech junkies, this clever update can make it ten times easier to manage your phone’s storage. That’s some sweet victory.

With a tab showing the size of each chat in detail, users can delete the chats consuming the most storage space i.e. that one friend who sends you up to eight photos a day of their Turkish Angora cat….

Whilst only available to a selection of lucky beta testers, the feature is set to become public in the near future.

Full phone storage, you’re going down.

Fullscreen

Businesses, rejoice! Beloved photo-sharing app Instagram has announced plans to incorporate immersive, full-screen ads in its “Stories” feature, targeted specifically towards businesses worldwide.

Start-ups to corporates can now start running ads in Stories through the Marketing API, helping to reach a target audience through highly engaging content. In a statement released by the company, Instagram emphasised that businesses of every size “can show ads to the maximum number of people in

The post Facebook’s Facelift first appeared on 24 fingers.

The post Facebook’s Facelift appeared first on 24 fingers.

This Wednesday, in a session led by chief executive of AI firm BenevolentAI, Jerome Pesenti, and computer scientist Dame Wendy Hall,) saw the government reveal their plans to prioritise artificial intelligence and skills in their initiative to promote Britain as a world-leading digital economy.  The excitement was palpable:

https://twitter.com/Barclays_pa/status/836940918213263364

With a proposal to offer over millions of individuals and businesses free digital skills training opportunities, and the likes of corporate giants Google, Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group backing the campaign, the investment into a powerful digital workforce and future technologies is definitely promising. Whether or not this bold vision is transformed into a reality?

As for the government’s £20m venture into artificial intelligence research, robots, driverless cars and supercomputers that can spot tumours more accurately than qualified doctors could soon become normality. Experts believe “£654 billion can be added to the British economy by 2035 if the growth potential in AI is achieved”.

In the wake of Britain’s lengthy and as-yet ambiguous exit from the EU, the government’s vow to spearhead the digital revolution are assertive. Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Karen Bradley assured that this digital strategy “sets a path to make Britain the best place to start and grow a digital business, trial a new technology, or undertake advanced research as part of the government’s plan to build a modern, dynamic and global trading nation”.

Our thoughts? Viva la (digital) revolución!

The post Make Britain Digital Again first appeared on 24 fingers.

The post Make Britain Digital Again appeared first on 24 fingers.

Read on to discover the tech world’s juiciest developments….

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

First Instagram, then Facebook. And now WhatsApp.

It seems that everyone wants a piece of the Snapchat pie — in its latest update, WhatsApp’s Status feature has been modified to create messages using photos, videos and GIF images, bearing a striking resemblance to Snapchat’s Stories feature.

The post The Snapchat Effect first appeared on 24 fingers.

The post The Snapchat Effect appeared first on 24 fingers.

Ta-ta, Trolls!

Beware of the internet trolls: they’re everywhere. With a lot of spare time on their hands, they manage to lurk around all forms of social networking websites like slimy parasites, ready to post inflammatory remarks at the click of a button. In fact ‘trolling’  has become such a modern phenomenon, it even has it’s own Wiki page…

But, in an attempt to battle this online harassment, Twitter is delivering not one, but three new anti-troll tools. In a recently published blog, the site announced that its new features will be rolling out in the near future, the most practical one being a filter that hides “abusive or low-quality” tweets by default. See you never, trolls!

And that’s not it – Twitter is also hunkering down on its hoard of online bullies by limiting new account creation. Its algorithms will be able to identity people who have been permanently banned from the site, and will ban them from creating new accounts.

Twitter should have probably thought about implementing these changes a long, long time ago…but better late than never, right?

All *Hail* Facebook

Continuing on its thundering path to world domination, Facebook has introduced yet another new feature. The social media service is giving all users the ability to check their local weather forecast anytime, anywhere. But wait, aren’t there phone apps that already do that?

Not the first time Facebook has stolen ideas and sold it as its own, the newest feature began rolling out on Wednesday, on both desktop and mobile.

The weather feature will default to a users current location, but simply tap the ‘Settings’ button at the top of the page to add a new location (i.e. that tropical getaway you booked to get over the January Blues).

Pinterest Lens

If a picture is worth a thousand words, Pinterest is a gold mine.

Hot on the heels of its last update, the photo sharing website has plans to launch yet another spanking new feature – this time, a ‘Visual Discovery’ tool. Using artificial intelligence, Pinterest Lens allows its community to “use the camera in the app to discover ideas inspired by objects you see out in the real world”.

How it works? Users can open the Lens function, snap a picture of whatever catches their eye – like a pair of shoes that you need in your life, or maybe a swanky chair that would look really good in that home office of yours – and immediately see a plethora of related images before them.

The post Facebook Forecast first appeared on 24 fingers.

The post Facebook Forecast appeared first on 24 fingers.

The Book of Love

Just when you thought you had enough dating apps… welcome to Facebook’s ‘Discover People’.

The social networking service is rolling out a brand new feature to its mobile app, which encourages users to find friends, business connections and, yes, you guessed it, romantic partners by connecting with people through the site.

Like infamous online dating app Tinder, Facebookers can create an ‘About’ section with a bio and featured photos – essentially a Facebook profile within a Facebook profile. Underneath this section will be a list of events that the user has shown an interest in or is attending; If you’re feeling intrigued, you can swipe through other attendees’ profiles and break the ice with a message.

Additionally, the feature lets users scroll through past events to find people they met but didn’t connect with on the app and even browse through profiles of users who live nearby.
A spokesperson has said the new feature ‘can help you discover more about people you have things in common with by browsing through profile cards of people in your community.’

Cute or creepy? We’ll let you decide.

Photos Galore

The all-too-familiar dilemma of choosing a photo to upload on Instagram from last night’s party, with a whopping 174 to pick from. We’ve all been there.

But things might be looking up for us trigger-happy photographers, as Instagram has plans to update its platform with the inclusion of a new feature – a multiple…image…reel:

The game-changing feature works by allowing users to select up to ten images, then upload them as a carousel-style album for other users to click through — the perfect solution for sharing more than one image from an event (or bottomless brunch) without ‘spamming the ‘gram’.

Our reaction?

Now You See it, Now You Don’t 

Stop what you’re doing – Whatsapp is getting a makeover, and it’s already the best thing of 2017.

The instant messaging app is incorporating a slew of new features, allowing users to EDIT and ERASE sent text messages. Too good to be true? Leaked photos of the beta update are already making its way around the Internet:

With an ‘Edit’ button that will allow for users to change the content of the message, and a ‘Revoke’ button that can make a text vanish into thin air, this feature is definitely a godsend in a world of drunk texts and sober regrets.

Just make sure you do it before the other person sees….

The post Textual Healing first appeared on 24 fingers.

The post Textual Healing appeared first on 24 fingers.