New features on Facebook’s Live
Facebook has unveiled a new update for its live streaming service, which will become a real interface to make the platform bigger and better in terms of user experience. In the coming weeks, users will be able to easily tune in to others’ lives, to live stream videos in group pages as well as in events, to react with Facebook Reactions emojis, to add filters, to have a look at broadcasts around the world with a live map and more.
With these upgrades, Facebook is definitely aiming to transform Live into a key part of its development. Can Twitter’s Periscope survive?
Facebook uses AI to write photo captions
Facebook is now using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to automatically write captions for photos of people who can’t see them. The social giant counts around 285 million blind or visually handicapped people amongst its users and wants to provide them with an equal experience, helping them to share photos like any other users.
In this way, Facebook will automatically add captions to photos shared by users, using the tool Automatic Alternative Text, which can identify particular objects in a photo as well as a person’s identity.
Twitter adds DM button
In order to make sharing tweets privately easier, Twitter has launched a Direct Message (DM) button alongside the retweet, like, replay and share buttons, to allow users to send a tweet via DM.
Via its blog, the social platform said that the number of messages sent grow over 60% in 2015, and the number of tweets shared privately has grown faster, at 200% in the second half of last year. With this new feature, it will be now easier for users to share a tweet using DM.
The new Message button makes it even easier to send Tweets privately to friends: https://t.co/S3LMsTqW9l pic.twitter.com/HEdCxSn9RA
— Twitter (@twitter) April 5, 2016
Snapchat extends its character limit
After launching a chat 2.0 last week, Snapchat has unveiled a new upgrade with the extension of its character limit to 80 – that represents more than double the previous limit. This new feature will allow users to say more about their posts, an important change for their experience with the platform.
This is not a #AprilFools joke, ???? think we are kidding – captions on Snapchat are now longer! pic.twitter.com/4gsswhgJQS
— Snapchat Support (@snapchatsupport) April 1, 2016
