The Top 5 Social Media News Of This Week

Instagram has been at the heart of most conversations on social media this week. The “upcoming” timeline change has generated a lot of debate, and a lot of silly reactions too. The “Turn on Notifications” freak show played by many brands last Monday was a sad sight. Not only there was no immediate change coming to Instagram, it also showed how much brands (and sometimes people too) still care so much about getting likes versus sharing high quality content. In 2015, 10 years after the “birth” of social media, that was a sad sight indeed.

Brands still care so much about getting likes versus sharing high quality content.

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Thankfully, Instagram was also on the news for some cool updates that came through last week. Instagram for the web got a new Discover button, and videos can now not only be up to 60 seconds (previously only 15 seconds), they can also now be made out of several clips from your camera roll. And for that, I thank you Instagram.

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Finally, the week was also marked by the first official usage of the Facebook Messenger plugin. KLM is now offering a full customer experience on the platform, from boarding passes to check-in and full customer service.

So are you ready for this week’s Top 5 trending news on We are Social Media?

	Instagram.com Is Almost A Real Social Platform Now – Instagram started as a mobile only platform, and it was a good thing. For some reasons, however, the platform seems to want to establish itself on the Web too. First it was profiles, then a proper feed and recently a notification centre. And now, Instagram has also added the Discover tab. Which leads to the following question: when will we (finally) be able to upload images from the Web?
	Facebook Will Soon Allow Custom Profile Picture Overlays – Following the news that there is a central place for users to go and find their own temporary profile image frame, Facebook has suggested that it is building a platform to allow pages to create their own temporary frames to show their support with their own causes.
	Why Did Snapchat Invest $100 Million To Buy Bitstrips? – Snapchat is growing so big that it has started acquiring more and more companies. Bitstrips, the personalised avatar/comic strip company is the latest one to come under the umbrella of Snapchat and it reportedly cost around 100 million.
	Instagram Videos Can Now Be Up To 60 Seconds Long – It seems like the news never stops coming from Menlo park these days. While everyone is getting restless about Instagram killing its chronological feed, the platform is starting to test a new video format that allows users to share longer videos, of up to 60 seconds. And that’s great news!
	Facebook Messenger Now Lets You Check-in To KLM Flights – Ever since Facebook Messenger became its own platform, we’ve been expecting new and exciting uses for it. And today, Messenger is quite a bit more than chat app. A few months ago, Facebook announced that users can now hail an Uber through the platform… Now, KLM offers a range of different services for its passengers from within Messenger.