Social Media Changes: Twitter Adds Noise, Vine Adds Editing, SlideShare Adds Video
Some services improve as others degrade. Twitter is now officially sometimes adding tweets to your feed from people/brands you don't follow. This can include retweets of tweets that were favorited but not retweeted. Vine, which popularized the video equivalent of a tweet, is getting more complex in a good way with uploads from one's camera roll and editing. SlideShare, not usually discussed on Hypebot, may be a bit more relevant because they've gone free and added video. But all three fail in corporate communication.
Twitter Tries To Quietly Add Noise
This news might not affect those of you following so many people that you have to make lists to actually read what some of those people tweeted. Honestly, the "flood the stream, follow everybody, treat a no-follow as a diss" culture that marketers have created on Twitter killed the general stream for me.
But some people still want to see tweets from people and brands they follow and not tweets from people and brands they don't. Twitter has been experimenting with adding tweets to people's streams from others they don't follow that were favorited but not retweeted by those they do.
They began retweeting favorited tweets that weren't retweeted as one of their many experiments.
Now they've made it official, sort of, by updating "What's a Twitter timeline?"
Were they hoping to bury this?
For me it means no more favoriting unless I'm retweeting which takes away a friendly element of the service. And Twitter's the only social network I'm actually using for anything other than broadcast at this point.
Forcing retweets that people consciously chose not to retweet is a very bad sign regarding their long-term intentions.
Vine: "Unlocks A New Camera"
Using a confusing metaphor, Vine adds video uploads from your camera roll thus creating a "new" Vine camera.
So you can now upload videos to Vine. And you can edit them.
SlideShare Goes Free, Adds Video
While many musicians may not be familiar with SlideShare, business people certainly will as it's one of the leading web presentation options for business information.
But since they just can't bring themselves to say free in their announcement, I had to turn to tech blogs for pricing clarification which is absurd. SlideShare does say:
"Now, all users will have access to our most popular premium features that include detailed analytics, profile customization and additional upload options, like video and private uploads."
Sign up here to be notified when features like analytics, profile customization, private uploads and video posting are available free to all, at no cost, without charge. You can also find out more details and see a rare use of the word "free" in the process.
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch) recently launched DanceLand. Send news about music tech startups and services, DIY music biz and music marketing to: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
