All the Social Media news that made headlines this week!

It is never a quiet week in the realm of social media platforms as the tectonic plates keep shifting with new features, products, tests, and other news coming in every day. Here is our weekly roundup of social media news and activity from the industry.

Social Samosa is your gateway to keeping up with the hottest social media news and updates, proceedings and trends from digital marketing industry, brand campaigns and more.

This week, Facebook made the headlines with a series of newly announced updates and their expression of future plans with their family of apps and venturing further into AR and AI, at their annual F8 Conference. Facebook's Messenger platform is about to undergo a major redesign through a de-cluttering drive, Instagram will receive a new filter to prevent bullying, and third-party sharing to Instagram Stories will now be possible.

It was a rather quiet week for other social media platforms such as Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube and others as Facebook has clearly dominated the social media news with numerous developments not only on their core platform, but also on their family of apps.

Instagram to filter bullying comments intended to harass or upset

Co-Founder and CEO, Kevin Systrom of Instagram, addressing the Instagram Bullying concern, announced today that the platform is trying to prohibit bullying within the Instagram Community and in their efforts to do so, Instagram will filter bullying comments that might disturb the community. Read more about it here.

Facebook Messenger announces new tools like AR and Translations

At F8 2018, Facebook Messenger announced new tools like AR Camera Effects and M Translations that are intended to deepen the connections between Businesses and People. Read more about it here.

Sharing on Instagram Stories allowed from third-party apps!

In a recent update, sharing on Instagram Stories will be allowed from third-party apps. Rather than screenshotting or uploading pictures, users can directly upload them to the Stories. Hit the upload button and seamlessly share the picture or the video of the favorite song or movie on the Spotify or SoundCloud. Read more about it here.

Instagram Explore gets revamped with interest based organisation

At Facebook’s F8 Conference, the company announced that they are revamping the Instagram Explore section on the feed for more interest based browsing experience. With this update, the explore section will remain personalized but the content will be now organized into topic channels to let users browse according to their interest and go deep in their search. Read more about it here.

Facebook launches Dating Feature to connect with non-friends

Facebook is all set to invade the online dating space as the company recently announced that the new feature will be soon rolled out and the user can create a separate dating profile on the platform that will only be visible to non-friends and potential matches will be recommended based on dating preferences, things in common, and mutual friends. Read more about it here.

Facebook Messenger redesign: Making the chat app great again?

Better late than never. Facebook has finally come to the realization that they had indeed cramped up the Messenger platform and are working on a major Messenger redesign and overhaul. Making things simpler is the key motivation for the Messenger redesign, which entails separating any, and many unnecessarily complicated features crammed inside the chat window such as Games, Bots, and more. Read more about it here.

Facebook introduces Crisis Response tools update; new Groups tab

Facebook is doubling down on their efforts to put Facebook Groups on the centre-stage, and are also working towards a Crisis Response tools update including the Safety Check feature, aimed at making it much more than ‘marking oneself safe’. Read more about it here.

Training the Facebook AI took 22 days, scanning 3.5Billion photos!

Facebook spent a significant amount of time to train their AI in order to accurately recognize and categorize photos on their platforms. 22 days and 3.5Billion Instagram photos later, the Facebook AI is now ready. So how ready is the Facebook AI? Well, it can now tell the difference between various types of dosas, different weather conditions, bird species and many more types of images from fruits to specific landscapes. Read more about it here.

Highlights of Facebook’s F8 Conference Day 2

The F8 second day focused on the long-term technology investments Facebook is making in three areas: connectivity, AI, and AR/VR. Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer kicked off the keynote, followed by Engineering Director Srinivas Narayanan, Research Scientist Isabel Kloumann, and Head of Core Tech Product Management Maria Fernandez Guajardo. Read more about it here.

Here is why you should change your Twitter Password right now!

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