Photo credit: LinkedIn
I’ve scanned the latest news and updates in the social media world and here are the most important changes I’ve come across this week:
Social media and Olympic sisterhood
- The Rio Olympics is hosting more than 10,000 athletes, 45% of whom are women (the highest percentage in the history of the games).
- Social media is proving to be a huge supportive aspect of the games this year, with the female athletes forming a sisterly bond across all channels rather than a competitive one.
- Interaction on social media from the female athletes reveal developing friendships and gentle encouragement, for example the Estonian marathon runners have introduced a special hashtag #TrioToRio to support each other.
Facebook counteracts ad-blockers
- Bad news for anybody who goes to great lengths to avoid adverts on Facebook… the platform is introducing new technology to make it harder for users to avoid adverts.
- Users will still be able to customise the type of promotions they see but those using ad-blocking software will not be able to use this, as Facebook believes it poses a threat to online businesses.
Is Twitter shutting down in 2017?
- Despite all the rumours and trending on Twitter this week, Twitter will not be shutting down next year.#
- Quite ironic really that a silly rumour about Twitter not being popular anymore went viral thanks to its own platform!
LinkedIn and personal data
- Data thieves used a ‘botnet’ to steal LinkedIn members’ personal information, a new US lawsuit has revealed.
- This happened during periods of time during December 2015 and to this day, unknown entities are employing automated software programs (“bots”) to extract and copy data from LinkedIn pages.
- It remains unclear to what extent LinkedIn has been able to prevent further attack. A statement from the platform’s legal team suggests one avenue has been closed.