Digital Week in Review: Major Updates in Social Media

Will animated GIFS be coming to Facebook soon? Will Facebook be able to recognize who you are and automatically tag you in a picture? Will Foursquare begin sending you recommendations through push notifications? Find out in this week’s Digital Week in Review.

Animated GIFs for Facebook

Giphy, the animated search engine, has found a way to “embed” animated GIFs using supported Facebook API. Giphy built and launched this on its own using these public APIs. Although this is not a native GIF format support, it’s the first time someone has been able to play a GIF on Facebook. Facebook stated they have no future plans to support GIF files. However, if they do allow it in the future what will this mean for Facebook marketers? Perhaps greater engagement and CTR on their organic posts. As for now, we should be thankful for that much less animated GIFs of Miley Cyrus at the VMAs.

Facebook’s Facial Recognition Technology

Facebook just revealed that it may begin rolling out a new feature that will automatically tag you in a picture through facial recognition technology. How will Facebook go about doing this? Stated in its new data use policy, it may begin collecting users’ profile picture for a database aimed at improving the feature. Users will have the option to opt out of the tag suggest feature. Although this feature may seem like a great idea to some, Facebook’s future plans are already facing controversy in Europe.

Foursquare Now

Foursquare has just announced on their blog that they are going to begin rolling out a new feature that will send push notifications to your phone based on your location, suggesting for instance a specific dish at the restaurant you just sat down to eat at, or a restaurant that you must try because your friends also went their and loved it. The push notification are powered by the billions of check-ins on Foursquare. Android users will begin to see this new update first.

Stay tuned for next week’s Digital Week in Review.