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Friday Social: Instagram brand pages, Vine for desktop and #Shakespeare400

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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 / @EllieHallsworth

1. Instagram tests new brand pages

The eagerly-awaited new brand page format for Instagram is now being tested amongst a small number of users. New features include a prominent ‘Contact’ button, which displays an email address and a category listing under the brand title.

The ‘Contact’ button also gives Instagram users the ability to grab directions to a local office. The ‘Location’ tag features a map to find the whereabouts of any Instagram user with a business account.

This is good news for brands using the platform, as they won’t have to waste any bio space on putting their email address into their description (in a non-clickable format).

2. Twitter & #Shakespeare400

Twitter is putting a modern day twist on Shakespeare for the 400th anniversary – by using its ‘Word by Word’ typewriter to source Tweets in real time in order to replicate the works of Shakespeare.

Working in partnership with the Globe Theatre, the machine is stationed in the foyer of the world-famous Elizabethan playhouse.

Over a period of months, live tweets will be sourced until all Shakespeare’s 37 plays and 154 sonnets have been revealed. The typewrite will stop when it cannot find the next word – at which point, the public will be asked to help out by tweeting it themselves, using the hashtag #TheCompleteTweets.

3. Vine for desktop

Vine has just released its first ever desktop app for Windows 10; the first time Vine has officially been available for desktop computers at all. Now you can create and share vines from any video saved on your PC or tablet. The app will also show native notifications and updates on Vine’s start menu, Live Tile.

Vine

Desktop compatibility for Vine will likely mean creators can have easier access to professional video equipment and software for editing their Vine videos.

4. Periscope forever

Periscope is beta testing a feature that will let you save streams forever. Up until now, Periscope only allowed its users to save their broadcasts for up to 24 hours and those who wanted to keep the streams had to either save them to their smartphone or upload them to third-party video hosting sites such as YouTube.

To start using the feature right away, all you have to do is add a #save hashtag to the title of your stream. Periscope said “We are actively building support for how your broadcasts stay on Periscope, and that includes keeping those broadcasts forever. That also includes capability for some people who want their broadcasts deleted more quickly.”

https://twitter.com/periscopetv/status/728031744847433729

5. CIA’s live-tweet

As Sunday marked the 5th anniversary of the covert operations which saw the death of Bin Laden at the hands of U.S. Navy SEALs, the CIA replayed the events by live-tweeting the operation as if it happened in real time using #UBLRaid.

The tweets closely matched the timeline updates from the CIA’s official article on its website.