Welcome to this week’s edition of the Dreamers Digital Digest our weekly roundup of all the latest digital news to have hit our screens over the past week. Making an appearance this week is Facebook Messenger, milestones for Snapchat, a new Google testing tool and video carousel ads on Instagram.
More diversity for Facebook Messenger emojis
Facebook announced this week that it would be releasing a (link: https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/facebook-to-convert-five-male-emoji-into-female-characters?utm_term=.drVn4wOQ9#.riaW5NLX6 text: new set of emojis) for its Messenger app, designed to show more diversity. It will be changing five of it’s emojis, which have previously been shown as men, to women. This includes the pedestrian, police officer, jogger, swimmer and surfer. Although they will still appear as men on users’ keyboards, when sent in a message they will be shown as women. The company has said “*We’re diversifying the genders to create a more balanced mix that’s more representative of our world*”.
(image: https://www.superdream.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/girl-power.png alt: girl power)
As well as this the company is now allowing users to select different skin tones, in the same way as users can when using emojis in text messages/WhatsApps.
(image: https://www.superdream.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/fb-messenger.png alt: fb messenger)
Snapchat milestone
It’s been a momentous week for photo sharing app Snapchat which has reached a huge milestone. It was reported earlier this week that Snapchat has surpassed Twitter in the amount of daily users it has. Reportedly (link: http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/2/11839394/snapchat-passes-twitter-in-daily-active-users text: 150 million people) are using Snapchat daily, compared to Twitters 140 million. This is a huge deal for the fairly new app as it is only five years old compared to the 10 years Twitter has clocked up. Although Twitter is a hugely influential platform it has struggled with growth in recent years, whereas we have seen Snapchat continue to grow and grow on a daily basis.
Video carousels for Instagram
After testing them out last month Instagram has now officially added a (link: http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/instagram-video-carousel-ads-now-available-to-all-advertisers/639845 text: video option to their carousel ads), available to all advertisers. Currently the five-part carousel style ads have been limited to photo’s only, but now advertisers will be able to add videos each capped at 60 seconds. This brings a whole new life to the adverts we are seeing on this platform, and is in keeping with audiences’ habits as time spent watching videos on Instagram increasing by 40% in the last 6 months. But with lots of people already automatically scrolling past ads, let alone swiping through them, will people really take the time to watch what could potentially be a five minute long advert?
Testing, testing 123
Google has released a brand (link: http://www.kingpin-seo.com/webmaster-magazine/google-launches-test-site-website-testing-tool-easier-simpler-experience-small-businesses/012702 text: new testing tool) this week called “(link: https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/ text: Think with Google)”. This is a much more user friendly site that lets users easily test how mobile-friendly their site is, as well testing the site speed.
(image: https://www.superdream.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/google-testing-1024×694.png alt: google testing)
Predominantly aimed at small businesses the site features a user-friendly interface that is easy to use for both avid techies and people not so familiar with the platform. It gives you a score out of 100 for mobile friendliness, mobile speed and desktop speed.
However, ironically, it seems the team at Google failed to test their own site before launch, the testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com website actually (link: http://thenextweb.com/google/2016/06/02/awkward-moment-googles-new-website-testing-tool-ranks-google-poorly/ text: failed the friendliness test), revealing that the site could do with some optimisation scoring low in site speed.
(image: https://www.superdream.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/google-test-fail.png alt: google test fail)