In Social Media Updates Today…
You can finally make calls! All you have to do is update your Whatsapp app and get someone who has the call feature to call you using Whatsapp. The call you receive acts as an invite for your Whatsapp app to automatically get the call feature. Immediately after, your Whatsapp app will look something like this:
Your call log will be under the ‘Calls’ button and shows details like the call time and how long ago you placed it . Your ‘Chats’ will show all your Whatsapp messages, and your ‘Contacts’ are all the numbers in your phone book who have the Whatsapp app.
Now here’s our concern, Whatsapp has not officially announced the feature as available for everyone and that has us feeling a little uncomfortable, but the call feature seems to be working just fine, from calls I made to a few friends. Previously the calls you could make after choosing the ‘call’ option in Whatsapp were made as regular call, using your airtime credit, but now they have switched to in-app calls using your internet data bundle or Wi-Fi.
VoIP usage in Zambia is rather limited if one is using an internet bundle on their phone due to the high depletion rates. People would much rather text on a less data-consuming app like Whatsapp than make that Skype call. We can assume this from the minimal use of voice calls with social media messenger apps like Viber or Skype when one isn’t connected to a Wi-Fi network.
The invitation window keeps opening and closing so if you want the feature, update your Whatsapp ASAP.
Twitter is the master of changes lately and this time its videos they’re intent on making great. They are testing out a new feature that lets videos autoplay as you scroll down your timeline. Now where have we seen this? *taps fingers* That’s right, Instagram.
With Instagram the videos uploaded by users automatically play as you scroll through the app, and loop themselves so they play over and over again.
With Twitter, it’s the same thing. The videos loop for about 6 – 15 seconds but only for some iPhone and ipad users in the United States of America. The videos, like Instagram have no sound until you tap on/open them.
Monetizing campaign? We think so, as many companies would rather pay for visual posts to advertise their products/services. We’ll see how this turns out when the official roll-out is done.
Facebook has introduced an ‘On This Day‘ feature, that allows a user to go back to a post in time on their Facebook timeline, whether shared by the user him/herself or tagged in by other users. Only the user of that particular account can see the post they view using ‘On This Day’ unless they decide to share it with their Facebook friends. This was announced in its blog.
If you decide to view your old posts using ‘On This Day’, you can choose what kind of posts you want to see, and even edit or delete them. See your ‘On This Day’ options here.
That’s all the changes you can expect in your social media apps this time around, but knowing these, something is bound to change very soon. We’ll be right here to let you know what.
