FridaySocial: Be My Eyes, #RestartAHeart & Instagram Support

Our Friday Social 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.

Lend Your Eyes To The Blind

Created by visually impaired Danish entrepreneur, Hans Jørgen Wiberg, Be My Eyes is a revolutionary app designed to help blind and visually impaired people complete everyday tasks using the wonder of technology and sighted volunteers.

A blind person can request assistance for anything from knowing the expiry date on their milk or finding a particular ingredient in the cupboard, to navigating unfamiliar surroundings. After the request is sent a sighted volunteer receives a notification for help and a live video connection is established. Be My Eyes is the first app to allow people with a visual impairment to get in contact with sighted helpers via a direct video call. The system is built as a shuffle-call that forwards the call until answered, establishing a connection to the first available helper.

Want to get involved? Anybody with an iOS device can be a sighted volunteer.

British Heart Foundation

The British Heart Foundation caused a splash on Twitter this week with its #RestartAHeart campaign. In a bid to raise awareness about the importance of CPR, @TheBHF created a story for Twitter users whereby their heart stops, they go into cardiac arrest, and they must ‘like’ the tweet to see what happens next.

9 in 10 people receive a tweet in response telling them that they’re “unlucky” and would not have received the treatment required to survive an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. A lucky 10% receive a different response to say they were spotted by a nearby dog walker who administered CPR and saved their life.

A very clever use of Twitter indeed.

Instagram’s New Support Feature

Social media, and Instagram in particular, is used to document the best parts of our day-to-day lives; the achievements, the new relationships and friendships, graduations, births, marriages and, of course, amazing meals we’re about to eat. With good times come bad times and often Instagram is also a place where we go to share if we’re feeling particularly sad, down, or even just to seek some moral support.

Instagram’s new feature means that if a friend posts something concerning self-harm, you can anonymously report it. The app offers suggestions including talking to a friend, contacting a helpline, or receiving advice and support on mental health. The page is also launched if somebody searches for a hashtag relating to self-harm. Instagram has collaborated with the National Eating Disorders Association and the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline to ensure that the wording in the new feature is appropriate.

The Success Of BuzzFeed’s Tasty Channel

If you have never seen a Tasty video on Facebook, then we would love to know where you have been hiding. The team’s food and recipe content is almost inescapable, with their tidily-produced videos gathering millions of views and tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of engagements, without fail.

BuzzFeed’s Ze Frank spoke to Recode about how they found this winning formula, revealing that 40-second videos are the key. This was discovered to be so vital in creating shareable content, BuzzFeed created a special team called FB40 to delve deeper into specifically what style of video content encourages engagement.

Donald Trump Mocked On Snapchat

Environmentalist group Sierra Club planted a Snapchat geofilter at the location of the presidential debate last night to ridicule Donald Trump for his position on climate change. Donald Trump denies climate change and believes manmade pollutants are driving changes in the global climate. With much of the news surrounding Clinton’s emails and past dealings, and Trump’s tax returns and alleged misdemeanours, environmental issues have seen little debate during the campaign.