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Friday Social: #Hashtag10, Social Eclipse Madness, and Facebook Failing?

  • 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

Solar Eclipse Madness

On 21 August, the first total solar eclipse in 99 years took place in the USA. As you’d expect, Twitter was abuzz during the event… with many tweeters focusing on President Trump’s choice to ignore warnings regarding safety glasses:

Of course, American brands were also quick to jump on the solar bandwagon:

Happy Birthday, Hashtag

The Twitter hashtag is celebrating its tenth birthday this week! First used by Chris Messina – a former Google and Uber engineer – as a way of grouping conversations on the then-young social media site…

…the humble hashtag has since entered our everyday lexicon. In a Twitter blog post, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone detailed the evolution of the hashtag: “Since it first appeared on Twitter, the hashtag has dramatically evolved — from grouping Tweets, to adding quirky commentary, to sparking social movements and global conversations. Using hashtags on Twitter, people worldwide have made this platform their microphone, shaped culture, and changed the world.”

Happy birthday, hashtag.

Facebook losing teenage users

A new study by eMarketer has found that teens are leaving Facebook, with its user base from the ages of 12-17 shrinking ‘faster than expected’.

However, it’s not all bad news for Facebook: it seems that teens are instead heading to the likes of Instagram, which it also owns. Snapchat has also played a role in the departure of Facebook’s teen audience.

According to monthly figures, eMarketer predicts that monthly usage figures for 12-17-year-olds will fall by quiet a staggering 2.8 per cent in the UK, and 18-24-year-olds will fall by 3.1 percent.

Twitter taking too long to remove abuse and harmful content to women

Leading women’s rights charity The Fawcett Society has this week warned that Twitter is taking too long to remove abusive and upsetting content directed towards women.

Yvetter Cooper MP, founder of Reclaim the Internet – which has joint published a report with The Fawcett Society, said: “Twitter claims to stop hate speech but they just don’t do it in practice. Vile racist, misogynist and threatening abuse gets reported to them, but they are too slow to act so they just keep giving a platform to hatred and extremism. It’s disgraceful and irresponsible.”The groups have identified multiple cases of threats against women, including a slur against late MP Jo Cox, who was murdered in 2016.

In a response given to HuffPost, Twitter said: “Abuse and harassment have no place on Twitter. We’ve introduced a range of new tools and features to improve our platform for everyone, and we’re now taking action on 10 times the number of abusive accounts every day then the same time in 2016.”

Watch this space.

And Finally…

Days after Taylor Swift mysteriously deleted her social media presence across all platforms – with some suggesting she could be victim of hacking group OurMine – the singer returned this week with a series of cryptic posts:

Taylor’s fans – Swifties – immediately took to the internet speculating about the eagerly-anticipated album number six…

https://twitter.com/TaylorSwiftMore/status/898864013462966272

…before an announcement was finally made:

With speculation rife that the album’s title and the snake posts are a reference to Swift’s public falling-out with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, the internet will no doubt be waiting for the first track to be released on Friday…