The news is bananas scary right now, so you may have missed a few recently announced app updates.
Scan the blurbs below to see if any apps you’re using to promote or sell your content have changed or gotten an upgrade.
Find More Fans on Snapchat
If you’re using Snapchat to reach potential fans, you now will have a broader base to reach.
Engadget recently reported that Snapchat gained 11 million users during the first quarter of the year. Why? The surge is partly because of recent stay-at-home orders due to the Coronavirus, as well as other factors.
“While we observed higher engagement in the final weeks of the quarter, as many in our community sought to stay connected and entertained from home, this had little impact on our Q1 result,” Snap CFO Derek Andersen said to Engadget. “As a result, we were already on pace to accelerate year-over-year growth in daily active users absent this impact.”
Nice!
Twitter Updates
Stream the Latest Tweets with Twitter for Mac
The days of continually hitting refresh while using Twitter on a Mac device are over.
According to Engadget, Twitter has “updated its official Mac application with the ability to show the latest tweets as they get published.” Engadget reported that to access the update, your Mac will need to be running macOS Catalina.
The update features a “button that says ‘Pin to top’ in your timeline settings,” Engadget added. “When you toggle it on, Twitter will be able to immediately load new tweets as they’re shared at the top of your timeline.”
Twitter for SMS is Practically Gone
The Verge recently reported that Twitter has mostly turned off “the ability to receive SMS messages containing the text of new tweets.” The feature will now only be available in “a few countries that rely on the feature.”
Although most Twitter users don’t use the app for this service, The Verge explained that this is essentially an “end of an era” for Twitter:
“ …when the service launched, it was built around SMS. Its original 140-character limit was tailored to text message sizes, and you were meant to send and receive new tweets entirely over SMS. That hasn’t been the primary way to use Twitter for a long time, though, as more people bought smartphones and could use the mobile app.”
WhatsApp Helps Stop the Spread of Misinformation
WhatsApp, a Facebook-owned service, is working to slow the spread of misinformation while maintaining its goal to be a place for “personal conversation.”
According to Engadget, WhatsApp recently created more rigid messaging forwarding limits.
“We recently introduced a limit to sharing ‘highly forwarded messages’ to just one chat,” a WhatsApp spokesperson told TechCrunch in a statement. “Since putting into place this new limit, globally there has been a 70% reduction in the number of highly forwarded messages sent on WhatsApp.”
TikTok Helps Charities Raise Money
TikTok is helping fans and creators donate to charities during the pandemic.
According to TechCrunch, TikTok recently announced:
“ …the launch of a new, interactive feature, Donation Stickers, that creators can use on their videos and live streams in order to raise funds for favorite charities directly in the TikTok app.”
Stickers included at the launch were: the CDC Foundation, James Beard Foundation, Meals on Wheels, MusiCares, National PTA, National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation, No Kid Hungry and The Actors Fund.
TechCrunch added that the stickers are the same as other stickers that users can add to a video or “TikTok LIVE stream.” But when an app user “taps” the “charity” sticker, “they’ll be guided to a pop-up window where they can make a donation to the charity the creator is fundraising for — without ever having to leave the TikTok app.”
Apps — we need them, and it’s good to see that they’ve been marching forward all this while.
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Abbie Stutzer is a queer, non-binary writer living in Kansas City, MO. You can find them doing witchy stuff at home with their numerous pets or at the local animal shelter saving lives. Contact Stutzer via abbie@ynotcam.com.
Background header image by Rob Hampson via Unsplash.
