Umpf / Blog / Friday Social: Home Alone’s Return, New Instagram Features, and Top Tweets

Friday Social: Home Alone’s Return, New Instagram Features, and Top Tweets

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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

New Features for Instagram

This week some new features are being rolled out for Instagram users, including a ‘questions’ sticker for music recommendations in Stories and Live, plus a countdown sticker in Stories.

The countdown sticker is ideal if you’re counting down the hours to Christmas, jetting off on holiday or waiting for your birthday. To add it to your story, select it from the sticker tray after taking a photo or video. Users can add a name to their countdown, as well as an end date or time, and the colours can be customised.

Once you’ve created a countdown, it will be available in the sticker tray to reuse in any new stories you do, until the countdown ends. Your friends can also follow or share your countdown to their own Stories, and anyone who follows or shares your countdown will get a notification when it ends.

Twitter Introduces ‘Sparkle’ Button

After complaints from users, Twitter announced this week it is introducing an easy way to switch between chronological and algorithmically determined timelines in its app.

A new icon- represented by the sparkle emoji – can now be found in the top-right corner of the app, giving users the chance to see the most recent tweets in their timeline. Previously you had to go into your settings to change this feature.

Burger King Wins ‘Most Liked’ Tweet by a Brand

Kanye West has been in the news a lot recently, from his Twitter rants to his political leanings, but this week it’s his taste in fast food that’s getting people talking.

The rapper tweeted last month that his ‘favourite restaurant is McDonald’s’ – leading to a cheeky reply from rivals Burger King:

Now, the tweet has been named the ‘most liked’ tweet EVER by a brand…

Well played, Burger King. Well played.

Calls for Facebook Boycott

In the wake of several data breaches and privacy issues, Facebook is back in the headlines once more.

This week news broke that the Russian government specifically targeted African-American communities on Facebook and Instagram to try and interfere in the US election.

As a result of the findings, the NAACP called for a protest called #LogOutFacebook, urging consumers to log out of their Facebook and Instagram accounts for the day.

It’s the latest in a string of negative stories for Facebook, which also made the news recently for allegedly giving Netflix access to users’ Facebook messages.

Mark Zuckerberg will probably be glad to see the back of 2018…

Kevin McAllister is all Grown Up with Google

Christmas wouldn’t be the same without making time to snuggle up on the sofa and watch Home Alone (or Home Alone 2 – our personal fave).

Now all grown up, Macaulay Culkin has teamed up with Google to revisit the character of Kevin McAllister, plugging several Google products in the process, obviously.

It’s been a big hit on social media, gaining over 5m views in just a couple of days.

Here it is again in case you missed it:

That’s it for 2018 – we hope you all have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!

 

Team Umpf x