THE GENERAL TECH BLOG

Facebook's Testing a New 'Favorites' Friend Listing for Facebook Stories Facebook is reportedly  testing out a new option  which would enable users to share their Facebook and Messenger Stories with smaller, selected groups of friends, as opposed to all of their connections. As you can see in this example, shared by reverse engineering expert  Jane Manchun Wong , the option would provide a new 'Favorites' list option for you to share your Stories to. Tap on the Favorites listing and you would be able to select users to include on the list. As Wong notes in her  tweet , the option is similar to Instagram's 'Close Friends' sharing option, which it launched in  December last year . That seems to align more with the broader usage of Stories as a more private option - the format originated from Snapchat, where communication with your closest connections is the focus.  From a brand perspective, the option could also provide a way to sha

Facebook Has Launched Another Teen Focused App, This Time to Make Memes For pretty much its entire history, Facebook has been afraid of losing touch with the kids. Well, maybe not since its inception, as it came to prominence by superseding  former youth champ MySpace . But likely because of how it overtook MySpace as the cool place to be, Facebook knows that it too can be trumped by the next big app, if such an option manages to gain significant traction among younger users. And that's a fate that Facebook is desperate to avoid. Enter Facebook's latest attempt to stay cool with younger folk: These screenshots are from a new app called  Whale , which is now available to Canadian users via a company called NPE Team LLC. NPE - which stands for ' New Product Experimentation ' - is actually part of Facebook's experimental app division, which is headed by former Vine GM  Jason Toff . Whale is the latest app from NPE, following on from music app  AUX  a

Twitter's Testing Tweet Scheduling Built Into the Tweet Composer Hey, are you sick of scheduling your tweets through third-party management tools, and/or via  TweetDeck ? Well, you're in luck - this week, Twitter has officially confirmed that it's testing a new option to schedule tweets within the tweet composer window in-app. TweetDeck ✔ @TweetDeck Tweet scheduling on https:// twitter.com   ? Yes please! Starting today, we’re experimenting with bringing one of @ TweetDeck ’s handiest time-saving features into Twitter. Tell us what you think if you’re part of the experiment. 1,000 7:05 PM - Nov 20, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy 605 people are talking about this As you can see here, the new option - which will be made available to some users - would enable you to compose, then schedule your tweets to post at a chosen time, without ever leaving the composer window. Here's a loo

30+ SEO Stats from 2019 to Guide Your Strategy in 2020 and Beyond [Infographic] Are you trying to decide your SEO budget for the year ahead? Want to know the most effective SEO tactics used by others? The team from  Zazzle Media  conducted a survey recently covering all this and more, and they’ve collated the results in this infographic. They break things down as follows: SEO Budget Importance and effectiveness of SEO Most and least effective SEO tactics Most important KPIs Check out the  infographic  for more detail.

TikTok Reaches 1.5 Billion Downloads, Seeks to Distance Itself from Chinese Government Links TikTok is either the next big thing in digital marketing, or simply the latest fad that will eventually peter out. Where you stand on this will come down to your individual perspective. On one hand, TikTok's popularity doesn't appear to be slowing. According to the latest data from Sensor Tower, the short video app has now exceeded  1.5 billion downloads  worldwide, making it the third most downloaded, non-gaming app of the year (after WhatsApp and Messenger). The app has proven particularly popular in India, as explained by  Sensor Tower : RETAIL DIVE The Latest Holiday Retail News in Your Inbox Every Week The Retail Dive: Holiday Edition will keep you up to speed with the latest news and trends in our free, weekly newsletter. Subscribe Today " India has been the main driver of TikTok downloads across the App Store and Google Play, with 466.8 mill

How Mobile Ads Are Powering a Social Commerce Surge This Holiday Season   Credit:  Mikhail Vasilyev on Unsplash AUTHOR Robert Williams PUBLISHED Nov. 27, 2019 SHARE IT   POST   SHARE   TWEET First published on Shopping on social media is set to surge this holiday season as consumers are given additional ways to buy things on their smartphones, experts say. Meanwhile, newer technologies that integrate phones with TV shopping will be less prevalent, but still show promise for cross-channel commerce platforms as video and interactive media converge for more seamless browsing and buying experiences for TV viewers. Mobile platforms are the biggest driver of social commerce, with the percentage of people saying they've used a smartphone or tablet to buy a product through social media rising to 57% in Q3 from 53% two years earlier,  according to GlobalWebIndex . Mobile's growth has contrasted with the decline in social shopping on desktop co