Facebook, Google, and Apple Celebrate The World Emoji Day With New Emojis

Yesterday was the world’s emoji day, a day social media users and addicts need to celebrate because these little cartoonish icons have changed the way we communicate with each other forever. Emojis have made conversations much more fun and easier to understand. Using Emojis, we can express how we feel and what we mean in a more convenient way.

Created by Emojipedia founder Jeremy Burge in 2014, World Emoji Day has been historically used to reveal upcoming emojis, and this year is no different. That’s why tech giants such as Facebook, Apple, and Google are celebrating World Emoji Day today by announcing new emojis, as always.

Apple’s new Emojis

Yesterday Emojipedia shared some of the new emojis which are going to be available to apple users later this year, and these new emojis are real fun, and some of them were wanted by users for a long time. These emojis would soon be available for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch users.

The list includes a dodo, tamale, set of pinched fingers, boomerang, ninja, coin, piñata, beaver, bubble tea, nesting dolls, and an all-gender sign. These emojis will be available in a free software update this fall.

Another surprise Apple has announced for the world’s emoji day is that it will introduce new ways to create Memojis with the iOS 14. It will allow users to create their own look with more customization options.

Facebook’s new Emojis

Facebook has upgraded its default emoji pack in Messenger with new animations.

As Facebook messenger officially announced in a tweet, their default sticker pack, “Moodies” got an upgrade with some new animations.

Facebook has experimented with various animations for its Reactions and other emoji sets, and that seems like the next level.

Google’s new Emojis

According to 9To5Google, the 65 new characters are a part of a concerted effort for more compassionate depictions in the cartoon figures category. The Android 11 additions also include an anatomic lung and heart, but goes further with realistic and “authentic” animals, including a beaver and bison, as well as a turtle that might look familiar to users, as it was the original turtle emoji used in Android 7.1.

Google explained the new update for emojis in more details:

“Hit that piñata or bang on the long drum to celebrate. Send an anatomical heart when the love is so real, so raw. Or perhaps you’ll identify with one of the new animals, like a super cute bison, an eager beaver, or a polar bear that just needs a little love. There are also new food emoji, like a tamale (nom nom), a boba tea sure to make you thirsty (“black milk tea, boba, 30 percent sugar please”) and even a teapot for those who felt the “hot beverage” emoji (☕) was simply not “tea time“ enough.”

World’s largest tech giants have tried to make this emoji day as special as the previous ones with rolling out new and cool emojis for their users. You can now celebrate this day knowing that new sets of emojis would soon be available for you.

All about the massive Twitter hack(List of all the hacked accounts)

On 15^th July 2020, Twitter has experienced its most horrible security issue and hack of all time; the hacking incident is the most widespread and confounding hacks the platform has ever seen. It could be even named as the most shameful hack in the world of all social media networks EVER since it has had lots of financial damage for both Twitter users and Twitter company.

This massive hack’s goal was primary in service of promoting a bitcoin scam that appears to be earning its creators quite a bit of money.

How did the hack happen?

The hack was started by several high-profile accounts tweeted about the same Bitcoin wallet, urging followers to send cryptocurrency with the promise of returning double the amount. According to the Associated Press and multiple outlets. Tweets sent from these accounts offered to pay $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to a bitcoin address.

Twitter started investigating the issue right after they noticed the attack, and it was assumed to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of Twitter’s employees with access to internal systems and tools.

It is not yet clear what other malicious activity the hacker might have done besides using that access to tweet about the Bitcoin scam from many major Twitter accounts.

Which verified twitter accounts were hacked?

The hackers targeted various range of accounts, including politicians, Hollywood celebrities, Musicians, Tech billionaires, and huge corporations such as Apple. According to Republic World, below is the complete list of all the accounts which were hacked on 15^th July:

1. Barack Obama, former United States President

2. Elon Musk, Entrepreneur, CEO of Tesla Motors, SpaceX, The Boring Company

3. Bill Gates, Entrepreneur, and Founder of Microsoft

4. Joe Biden, Democratic Nominee for President of the United States

5. Warren Buffett, Investor, and Tycoon

6. Jeff Bezos, Entrepreneur and Founder of Amazon

7. Mike Bloomberg, Entrepreneur and Former Mayor of New York City

8. Kanye West, Musician, and Entrepreneur

9. Wiz Khalifa, Musician

10. Floyd Mayweather, Boxer

11. Apple, Software and Hardware Giant

12. Uber, Cab Aggregator Service

13. Binance, Cryptocurrency Exchange Company

14. Cash App, Mobile Payment Service in the US

15. Tron Foundation, block-chain based operating system company

16. Kucoin, Cryptocurrency Exchange Company

What did Twitter do about the hack?

As the first step in avoiding further activities by the hackers, and to start fixing the issue, Twitter banned the affected accounts from tweeting, removed the tweets posted by the attackers, and announced that everything is under control.

Since the hacked accounts were verified accounts of very well-known people, besides the affected accounts, Twitter also restricted many other high-profile accounts on Wednesday evening, which meant that many, if not all, verified users were unable to tweet for a period of time. However, by now, the activities of accounts are restored.

The Twitter CEO and staff have expressed the disappointment they are feeling after this incident. For example, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey wrote:

“Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened. We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened.”

Product chief Kayvon Beykpour also wrote on his personal account that:

“Our investigation into the security incident is still ongoing, but we’ll be posting updates from @TwitterSupport with more detail soon. In the meantime, I just wanted to say that I’m really sorry for the disruption and frustration this incident has caused our customers.”

Twitter is now said to be returning the money users lost to this malicious activity soon.

After this awful security incident, Twitter shares are decreased by more than 4%, and people are starting to have trust issues with Twitter. We hope that twitter comes out of this mess successfully and gains its users’ trust again.

Reddit will now enable users to add multiple images to their posts

Reddit has added a very useful and awesome option to its platform, surprising its users with change. Reddit today rolled out a post option which is called “image Galleries” that allows users to attach up to 20 images or GIFs to their posts.

Image galleries will be available on iOS from today, with Android to follow shortly.

This feature is similar to Instagram’s albums, which allows users to add multiple photos and videos but up to 10. Reddit overtook Instagram’s feature and allowed users to attach double as much media as they can add to Instagram.

The post format has a counter on the top right of the main visual for multi-image updates, and users can easily side-scroll too see all the other images in the post.

Reddit has explained the feature in more details:

“Image Galleries has been a popular feature request from Style, DIY, and Food communities on Reddit. For example, style communities want a better way to show off multiple fits for clothing, ideas for interior design, and different make-up techniques in a single post with captions and links to the products. DIY and food communities desire step-by-step instructions in a single post with multiple pictures, clarifying captions, and links to recipes and tutorials.”

This new feature has a very good advantage for marketers and people who are trying to promote URLs on the platform. With the “Image Post” option, you’ll be able to include URLs and captions for each image/GIF within the post, and this could lead to more traffic from Reddit.

How to use the “Image galleries” feature?

The first thing to mention is that this option is not available for everyone, and the only way users of a subreddit can use the image galleries is that the option has to be turned on by the moderators of each subreddit.

To post an “Image Gallery,” users within subreddits where the option is available will be able to select the ‘Image Post’ option within the composer.

Reddit is trying to be a more functional and useful social media platform, and this huge update is one of its basic steps in this way.

Byte, the video-sharing app, is Seeing a huge increase in Downloads Amid TikTok’s controversies

Byte, the Second Coming of Vine, is Seeing a Surge in Downloads Amid Debate About TikTok’s Future. After India banned TikTok and 59 other chines apps and also after Trump Claims He Could Ban TikTok after the politics surrounding TikTok heat up.

These movements are the reasons why Byte has seen a huge increase in downloads this week in the US.

Scott Nover from Adweek has given an exact number of the growth in Byte’s downloads.

“Update: Yesterday, Byte had 622,000 global downloads in a single day—five times more than Wednesday’s 126,000. Per”

Many TikTokers from all over the world, especially India and the United States, are looking for TIkTok alternatives with Byte being a key beneficiary of the speculation around the app.

These factors lead us to Byte, which is a video app that allows users to share 6-second videos and was released not recently but in January. Byte had a good entrance and reached 1.3 million downloads in its first week after full launch, but it did not continue to stay popular until now and these TikTok controversies.

Byte has been trying its best to overcome TikTok’s popularity for months. It even increased its video lengths from 6 to 8, and it also added new music tools to further align with the TikTok use case.

As Byte announced in its official Twitter account on the 9^th of July, they have also added some new options which were demanded by their users.

I recommend you all to try Byte and create an account on it for those days, which it’ll become the next video-sharing app giant.

Snapchat Tests TikTok-Like UX with Vertical Scrolling in Discover

Snapchat is trying to copy a popular feature from TikTok and make it easier for its users to browse their Snapchat feeds. Snapchat confirmed it’s testing a new experience that allows users to move through Snapchat’s public content with a vertical swiping motion — a gesture that’s been popularized by TikTok where it allows users to advance between videos.

A screenshot of the new feature was first noticed by Twitter user @artb2668, which obviously showed that Snapchat is experimenting with a new, vertical swipe UX for Discover content, similar to TikTok’s swipe-up functionality.

As TechCrunch has explained the Vertical Scrolling update in more detail, The test is focused on content that’s published publicly to Snapchat Discover, not your friends’ private Stories. But because Stories can have multiple parts, users will still tap to advance through the Story, as before. But in the new experiment, a horizontal swiping motion — either to the left or right — will exit the experience, instead of moving you between Stories, as before.

Since it is a new feature on Snapchat, the platform even included a guide on the screen of the users who encountered the feature for the first time.

Snapchat will soon have the vertical scrolling for the discover feed, which makes users see as many snaps as they want one after another. As Snapchat has announced, the test will only be available to a limited number of users, and the selection is random. After the test is successful, Snapchat will decide to roll out the update to all its users.

As soon as India banned TikTok, and some other countries have started to think about banning it, other similar apps have tried to fill in the gap. For example, Facebook quickly rolled out Instagram’s ‘Reels’ functionality, and now Snapchat is trying its best to play the role of a quality competitor to TikTok.

UK Labour Joins Facebook Ad Boycott

Another company added to the long list of advertisers’ boycotting Facebook. Britain’s main opposition Labour party announced that it has also joined the Facebook advertising boycott.

UK labour said Facebook’s failure over sufficiently curbing hateful content is the reason for this boycott. Shadow minister Rachel said that they wanted to express our concern about the failure of Facebook to take down some hateful material, and that’s the main reason for the decision they have made about Facebook ads.

The Facebook advertising boycott was started by the “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody in the US city of Minneapolis. And now, lots of big brands and companies have joined this movement and have stopped working with Facebook ad campaigns.

Regarding what BBC news have included, The organizers, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, accused Facebook of allowing “racist, violent and verifiably false content to run rampant on its platform.”

Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr, Ms. Reeves said: “All MPs in the Labour Party use Facebook to get across our message, but what we’re not doing at the moment is advertising on Facebook.”

“And that is in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter campaign but also in line with what many businesses are doing this month, which is to express our concerns about the failure of Facebook to take down some hateful material from their platform and take more responsibility for the lies and propaganda that are sometimes put out there on Facebook.

“Facebook needs to do more to take responsibility, and this is just one way that businesses and the Labour Party and others can put pressure on Facebook to do the right things and take tougher action on hate crime and hate speech.”

This movement of boycotting Facebook ad campaign has so far had terrible impacts on Facebook, which you can read more about on our article for what the boycotts have done to Facebook, and its reputation and the list of names who are joining the boycott t is getting longer and longer day by day, and this is when Mark Zuckerburg has to do something serious about this matter.

Google’s ‘Swirl’ 3D Ad Option is now globally Available for Display and Video 360 Campaigns

One of the most wanted features of the last year, which Google has been working on is now globally rolled out. Google has announced that its 3D ad format Swirl is now available to all Display & Video 360 customers globally following a beta program involving brands such as Adidas, Belvedere Vodka, and Nissan.

This feature was being tested for the last year for a very long time and is now accessible to all advertisers and brands.

How does the new “Swirl” format work?

The new Swirl format allows advertisers and brand owners to offer a 3D form of their promotions, which is also interactive.

The digital information world explains the cool new feature in more detail by clarifying that the Swirl 3D ad format involves banner ads that enable marketers to use interactive 3D product models in their promotions. Google wrote in a blog post that Swirl 3D ad format allows consumers to engage with a specific product like the product is right in front of them.

Consumers can rotate, zoom, and even expand the product in the ad. With Swirl ads, marketers can illustrate changes in behavior, unique product features, new technology performance, and many more. The company described various campaigns that have already been created using the Swirl 3D ad format. Nissan Spain used the Swirl 3D ad format to show off new features of Qashqai SUV. Adidas Latin America also used the format to advertise the Adidas Ultra Boost 2019 shoe.

Note that as interesting and useful the Swirl feature is; it also has some difficulties to start using it. For example, it needs technical and professional skills to be created. Developing complex 3D presentations can be challenging and sometimes really hard, but from my point of view, it is worth the effort since Swirl ads can be a great option for advertisers to boost engagement, and brands can maximize brand messaging using this format. As more platforms are moving towards AR

(augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) presentation formats, Swirl ad format will provide Google another way to improve its ad offerings.

How to use the “Swirl” 3d ad option?

Previously the swirl feature was only available to limited brands such as Adidas, Nissan, and Belvedere Vodka. But from today on, the new update is available to everybody and all brands and businesses workwise.

If you want to create a Swirl campaign, you can upload 3D assets to Google Web Designer. Advertisers can also edit campaign models using Poly. These ads run across Google Ad Manager Inventory, which means that your campaign will get large-scale reach.

Instagram Provides New Options to Manage How IGTV Previews Appear in the Main Feed and Discover

Instagram is becoming more and more considerate daily, and this time it has published a new feature which lets IGTV creators to better manage the way they create and share their IGTV videos.

Instagram has added some new tools which help IGTV creators to manage how they want their IGTV to show up in both Instagram’s feed and the discover tab. Now creators can customize their IGTV previews.

It was April 2020, which Instagram added a set of updates for IGTV, which creators found to be very useful. Updates such as when Instagram allowed creators to share the first 15 seconds of their IGTV video in Stories (with the rest available via ‘swipe-up’ link), while also improving the display options within the Discover tab.

This time Instagram has tried something different, and it now enables creators to edit the preview image and thumbnail displayed for their IGTV clips.

Source: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/instagram-provides-new-options-to-manage-how-igtv-previews-appear-in-the-ma/581355/

In Matt Navarra’s latest tweet, which was originally posted by Sumeet Rajpal, it is shown that Instagram now has more options to control how your IGTV video previews are displayed, with ‘profile cover’ relating to the thumbnail shown in Discover feeds.

To many ordinary users and people who are not creators on Instagram, this update might seem useless, and it does not excite them, but the change can actually be a very useful one for creators and helps that to maximize their content engagement, and build their presence within the app.

As you can also see in the above screenshot, Instagram now also enables IGTV creators to cross-post to Facebook Watch, boosting potential exposure for their uploads.

TikTok Opens its Self-Serve Ad Platform to All Businesses Worldwide

It has been a few months since TikTok has been working on this new feature, and now after months, TikTok has officially opened up a “self-serve” ad platform that lets companies buy and manage ad campaigns directly, a move to lure the ad dollars of small and medium-sized businesses.

This Self-Serve Ad Platform is a part of TikTok’s recently launched TikTok for business, which is a new platform dedicated to marketers and advertising.

As explained by TikTok:

“The global availability of TikTok’s self-serve advertising solutions gives marketers the tools to tap into the creativity of the TikTok community, reach new audiences, and optimize their marketing campaigns with an easy-to-use platform.”

TikTok said these companies have access to creative tools to make ads, flexible budgets allowing for spending adjustments and performance targeting. TikTok said advertisers and ads have to undergo a review and approval process.

The self-serve platform’s placement tool lets businesses choose between allowing TikTok to place ads for them in any location, or specifically selecting where they want their ads to run.

How does TikTok’s Self-Serve Ad platform work?

If you are one of those social media addicts or professional marketers who have previously used other platform’s ad campaign, the TikTok Self-Serve Ad platform would be very easy to work with for you.

The platform is nothing complicated, and like all other social media ad platforms, when you open the page, you’ll see the usual ad set-up options, including campaign and ad groups, targeting options, budget, and scheduling, etc. The platform also includes options like video templates and auto-editing tools.

The platform also has very creative and automated tools that allow you to add a combination of still and video content for your campaigns.

For sure, targeting and scheduling tools are two other important tools included in the platform to make it easy for advertisers to create TikTok ads.

Source: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/tiktok-opens-its-self-serve-ad-platform-to-all-businesses/581260/

Good news for small businesses from the TikTok’s ad platform:

After the launch of Self-Serve Ad Sales, it Pledges $100 million in ad credits for small businesses affected by the pandemic. TikTok has officially announced this in the launch of its Back-to-Business Program, through which it will give out $100 million in ad credits to small businesses around the world that have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Twitter is building a ‘subscription platform,’ and soon, we might have to pay to access some tweets

Twitter seems to be working on a new subscription-based offering for limited users after the company shared a new job listing, which is for a mysterious new Twitter subscription team, codenamed ‘Gryphon.’

As you can see in the above description and pictured shared by Social Media Today, the Gryphon team will reportedly work with Twitter’s payments group on a subscription process – “a first for Twitter.” What form, exactly, a subscription-based Twitter offering would take is unclear, but the speculation alone saw Twitter shares jump 12%, with investors keen to understand more about a potential new revenue stream for the platform.

The job posting announcement did not clarify anything more or explained any details to Twitter’s eventual plans, but it is obvious that the team behind the subscription platform will work closely with the internal Payment team. That does suggest some possible directions Twitter might head.

As some professionals suggest, it seems like twitter may also be considering Twitter may also be considering a Twitch- or Patreon-style type of subscription, where you could subscribe to individual accounts in some way. We’ve reached out to Twitter to comment on its subscription plans, and we’ll update you accordingly.

Twitter has now made a little change to the job listing announcement and has removed the mention of a potential subscription feature in development or the Gryphon team working on it. The job listing is now simply in search of an android engineer for work on a bevy of backend engineering teams to build components that allow for experimentation to deliver the best experience possible to all of our users.”

Such a thing can have a huge impact on the future of Twitter. Take the example of a new Twitter in which you have to pay to access their tweets or news outlets that can share breaking stories or in-depth reporting with their subscribers before their non-paying Twitter followers.