Friday Social: Facebook Currency, TikTok Phone, and Twitter Streaming Parties
- Social Media
Our #FridaySocial is a weekly round-up of the key social media news stories from the previous seven days. Let us know your thoughts in the comments or via Twitter – @Umpf
Facebook to Launch Cryptocurrency
According to the BBC, Facebook is getting ready to launch its own cryptocurrency as soon as 2020.
Reports suggest that Facebook will be setting up a digital payment system across 12 countries in the first three months of 2020, and that founder Mark Zuckerberg has discussed the plan with the Bank of England.
The US Senate banking committee has this month written to Zuckerberg to clarify concerns over the cryptocurrency project.
Mark Zuckerberg thinks it “should be as easy to send money to someone as it is to send a photo” https://t.co/Aq0nwao2dJ
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) May 30, 2019
TikTok Phone on the Horizon?
Last week we told you that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, reportedly wants to launch its own music streaming service. News just in is that it won’t be stopping there – ByteDance is apparently working on its own phone pre-loaded with its apps.
According to the Financial Times, an anonymous source said that founder Zhang Yiming ‘has long dreamt of a phone with ByteDance apps pre-installed’.
There’s no launch date leaks yet, but stay tuned – given the growth of TikTok, we expect there’s a lot more to come from ByteDance.
Facebook Culls 3 Billion
Facebook has revealed that it has removed more than 3 billion fake accounts since September 2018 – with 2.19 billion removed during the first four months of 2019.
Facebook’s VP of Integrity, Guy Rosen, said: “For fake accounts, we estimated that 5 per cent of monthly active accounts are fake. We’ll continue to find more ways to counter attempts to violate our policies”.
Twitter Live Video Crowds
Twitter is reportedly tweaking its live-streaming feature to allow four users to broadcast via the same feed.
Up to three additional users will be able to join a video stream initiated by the first – however the guests will only be able to take part via audio only. According to Search Engine Journal, Twitter is working on ways for guests to join by video too.
Facebook Use Drops
A new report has revealed that the average amount of time that adults in the US spend on Facebook has dropped by three minutes per day.
A spokesperson from eMarketer said: “Facebook’s continued loss of younger adult users, along with its focus on down-ranking clickbait posts and videos in favor of those that create ‘time well spent,’ resulted in less daily time spent on the platform in 2018 than we had previously expected.”
The report also noted that Americans were spending less time on social media in general, at just more than an hour of engagement per day.