Umpf / Blog / Friday Social: Yorkshire Day, Snapchat Voice Commands & Social Media Time Trackers

Friday Social: Yorkshire Day, Snapchat Voice Commands & Social Media Time Trackers

  • 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

Ee by gum – it’s our Yorkshire Day highlights!

August 1st saw the return of our beloved Yorkshire Day, with events and celebrations being held across ‘God’s Own County’.

In case you missed it this year (where were you?!) we’ve rounded up some of our favourite campaigns and events:

The White Rose Centre also had a Yorkshire pudding flinging competition!

Plus a T-Rex in a flat cap at Trinity Leeds – because, why not?

 

 

One creative Leeds company also came up with an interactive audio quiz where you have to identify a specific Yorkshire town based on a sentence read in the dialect from that area.

Employer brand agency Chatter came up with the concept, and with five different Yorkshire dialects, it’s not easy! See if you can crack it.

Oh, and if you have a smart speaker, simply say the command “Alexa, Play Yorkshire Quiz” and the multiple choice quiz will get under way!

To find out more, click here.

New tools to keep tabs on your social media use

A new study released this week found we check our smartphones once every 12 minutes.

The data from Ofcom also revealed that two in five adults look at their phone within five minutes of waking up, and a third check their phones just before falling asleep.

Interestingly, it also showed the number of phone calls made on mobile phones in the UK fell for the first time ever in 2017.

Now Instagram and Facebook are launching a new tool that allows you to see how much time you’re spending on each platform.

An activity dashboard, daily reminder of usage and notification-limiting tools have been developed with help from leading mental health experts and organisations and academics.

The daily reminder allows you to set up an alert when you’ve reached the amount of time you want to spend on that app for that day, and you can change or cancel this at any time.

Once it’s been rolled out, just go to the settings page on either app to access the tools. On Instagram, tap ‘Your Activity,’ and on Facebook, tap ‘Your Time on Facebook’.

For more details, click here.

Snapchat’s new voice commands

This week Snapchat launched new lenses that can respond to voice commands. The lenses will animate when users speak say things like, ‘hi,’ ‘love,’ ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ and ‘wow’.

For example, saying ‘hi’ will trigger an animation that surrounds you with a flock of chatty birds, and ‘love’ will play cheesy jazz music.

It due to roll out soon, so keep an eye out for it!

WhatsApp finds a way to monetise

WhatsApp is launching its first revenue-generating enterprise product – the WhatsApp Business API.

The new function will let businesses respond to messages from users for free for up to 24 hours, but will charge them a fixed rate per message sent after that – encouraging businesses to respond to customer queries faster.

According to TechCrunch, the API will help them send shipping confirmations, appointment reminders or event tickets.

It seems WhatsApp owners Facebook may be hoping the new feature is a cheaper alternative to customer service call centres. Time will tell!

And finally…

This has been making us chuckle in the Umpf office this week.

Accidental advertising slogan or a quirky concept? You decide…