As it continues to ramp up its profile as a media company and aims to better compete with popular social platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram, Twitter has been testing a visual sharing tool described in its code as the “News Camera.” While Twitter users can already share images and video, this enhanced camera tool would encourage them to do so more frequently. The feature is accessible via a swipe on the home screen and offers users the ability to add captions to photos, video and live broadcasts before such content goes to the timeline. Continue reading Twitter Is Working on Snapchat-Like ‘News Camera’ Feature

Get ready for more ads to appear on Twitter. The social platform is introducing sponsored Moments, which will bring brand sponsorship to its Moments publisher feature. Sponsored Moments are collections of tweets that are purposely packaged around an event or theme, such as an awards show or sports championship. Brands can run promoted tweets inside the collection and add branding to the cover image. For example, Bank of America recently sponsored a collection of tweets from Bloomberg about the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Continue reading Twitter Pursues Advertising Revenue With Sponsored Moments

Facebook has made several efforts over the years to encourage China to lift the 2009 block against its social platform and many of its apps. In May, the company approved a photo-sharing app called Colorful Balloons that doesn’t have the Facebook name attached but is similar in look, function and feel to Facebook’s Moments app. According to an unnamed source, a local Chinese company debuted the app without any hint of a Facebook affiliation. China imposes strict censorship on the Internet, including on news websites and apps. Continue reading Facebook Takes New Tack by Approving Social App in China

Twitter is collaborating with the Hollywood Foreign Press to live-stream the Golden Globes’ red carpet pre-show event and source questions from fans’ tweets. “The HFPA Presents: Globes Red Carpet Live” will be live-streamed on Jan. 8 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm ET, and will include exclusive interviews with celebrities and other “celebrity content” from Twitter in addition to the live video feed. The interview hosts, who have not yet been determined, will ask celebrities some questions chosen from among those posted by Twitter users. Continue reading Twitter Scores Another Live Event: Golden Globes Red Carpet

Since Jack Dorsey returned last year as chief executive of Twitter, he has done everything he could think of to improve the company’s fortunes, including lay-offs, new executives and a board shake-up. Recent numbers, however, have shown that not much has changed — its monthly 320 million visitors in Q4 2015 are the same as the previous quarter. The pressure is on to find a formula that works, and Dorsey is betting that tweaking existing features and adding an algorithmic timeline might help sustain and build the user base. Continue reading Twitter Hopes to Attract Users with Improved Timeline Feature

Facebook and Yahoo just made strategic deals with regard to search. Facebook, which unsuccessfully attempted search with its Graph Search feature in 2013, states it has now indexed more than two trillion posts, promoting it as a way to follow news discussions in real time. Yahoo just inked a non-exclusive deal with Google to provide search results and ads; antitrust regulators struck down a similar deal in 2008. Yahoo renegotiated an exclusive deal with Microsoft’s Bing to make this latest deal. Continue reading Facebook and Yahoo Attempt to Expand Search Capabilities

With Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey now in the chief executive seat, the company is ready to unveil a new feature aimed at people who find Twitter too confusing to use. Moments imposes order out of the currently chaotic timeline, by creating narratives based on big events being discussed on Twitter. The Moments section, found next to the standard timeline, will list news events being discussed; with a click on any headline, the “moment” will open up to a full-screen selection of tweets arranged by Twitter editors. Continue reading Twitter to Unveil Moments, Curated News for a Wider Audience

Facebook has added video to its newly released photo-sharing app Moments, enabling users to automatically create, customize and then share a music video created from mobile photos. This is the first update the app received since its June debut. With over 4 billion daily video views, video is becoming an important and fast-growing category on Facebook. By adding video to Moments, the social network competes with services like Flipagram, or Google Photos’ automatically created animations. Continue reading Facebook Updates its Moments Photo-Sharing App with Video

Micro-sharing just got easier for Facebook users. Instead of using complicated privacy controls, Facebook is working on an app codenamed “Moments” that will let Facebook users choose which sets of friends can see their content. The app focuses on audience rather than content, so each group of “co-workers,” “family,” and “high school pals” will have their own tile in the grid design. Facebook may auto populate the groups in the new app based on users’ Facebook activity. Continue reading Facebook Builds App for Private Sharing with Close Friends