beautiful bytes: all about photos
Bored of Twitter’s updates yet? I’m getting there…
This week’s beautiful bytes is photo themed: Twitter gives everyone new photo headers but is reportedly looking to take away your Twitpic while Facebook pulls facial recognition. But first – a little Tumblr and Pinterest.
Tumblr and Pinterest – neck and neck
It was revealed this week that Tumblr’s unique visitor count increased by 100% in the last year to an average of over 26.9 million per month, which places it firmly in Pinterest’s ballpark of 23 million visitors.
I’m a huge fan of Tumblr – you can find a blog on any meme that ever was on that platform, as well as getting a lesson in re-purposing content. The majority of content shared on Tumblr is either image or video based, and is probably responsible for bringing back the animated gif. In the channel mix, Tumblr sits in that space between Twitter and more traditional blogging platforms.
However, because of its growing popularity coupled with the changes that Twitter will reportedly make to disallow third party photo services, I think we’re going to start to see more people posting content from Tumblr to Twitter; this has the added advantage of being able to categorise and search your Tumblr presence.
Go tag yourselves
You know when you go to upload an album of photos and then Facebook magics its facial recognition software to suggest friends that you can tag? Well, from now on, you’re going to have to tell your friends to tag themselves, or tag them manually, as Facebook has pulled the plug on its facial recognition software following demands from EU privacy regulators (non-EU users: as you were).
I have to say that I’ve never been too bothered by this feature; as a page admin, I’ve found it really useful when you upload photos from events – especially if you can’t remember people’s names (ahem), so the removal of this feature may just create an opportunity to engage everyone after the event to go tag themselves.
Twitter goes all Facebook
Have you always wanted a header image on your Twitter profile, just like you have on your Facebook or Google+? Well, now you can, courtesy of the latest round of Twitter updates.
This feature has also made it into the latest Twitter app update for iPad, with photo stream updates also made to their iPhone and Android apps.
Another one bites the dust
IFTTT became the latest victim of Twitter’s recent changes to their API. If you’re unfamiliar with IFTTT, it stands for ‘if this then that’ and allows you set up rules that move your data around a plethora of services, from social media platforms to email to RSS to Dropbox e.g. ‘If I upload a photo to Flickr, then share it to Google+’ or ‘If someone mentions me on Twitter then email my colleague’. These rules are called recipes, and these new changes mean that we’re going to have to mix them up a different way.
We will no longer be allowed to use Twitter as the ‘trigger’ – the ‘if’ part – but we can still use Twitter as the output – the ‘then that’ part. It’s a small but significant change.
If you don’t use IFTTT, I highly recommend checking it out, especially if you manage your organisation’s social media.
It’s depressing that I sit here every week watching out for the latest service to fall foul of Twitter’s new updates. Make it stop.
Until next week
Rochelle
