H ouseparty, SnapMaps and Hooked By Likes
Here’s the news we’re talking about around the Zbra Studios water cooler. We’ve provided key bullet points from each article for the speed readers out there. For those looking to dig in, click on the links for the full story.
Facebook is building a Houseparty clone for live group video chat
By Casey Newton From The Verge
- “Facebook is building a standalone app that incorporates ideas from Houseparty, the group video chat app that rose from the ashes of Meerkat,“
- “…Houseparty’s core function — bringing close groups of friends together — encroaches on Facebook’s newly restated mission statement, which focuses on building tight-knit communities. That Houseparty employs video, the current obsession of the tech-media industrial complex, only gives Facebook more reason to study it.”
How to use — and how to keep yourself hidden from — Snapchat’s new Maps feature
By KURT WAGNER From Recode
- “The point of the map: Find your friends and see what they’re up to, or browse posts from strangers who are sharing publicly from around the globe.”
- “Snapchat has argued that its user growth, which appears to have slowed over the past year, is tethered to the company’s product improvements. That means that launching creative and innovative products, like Snap Map, should spur growth…”
- “It’s less about helping you get from point A to point B and more about helping users see what other stuff is going on around them and adding context around what their friends are doing.”
How Instagram Learns From Your Likes To Keep You Hooked
By JOHN PAUL TITLOW from Fast Company
- “Instagram’s algorithms are indeed keeping an eye on me, busily drawing a complex map of my likes, follows, and other in-app behavior, and that of the people I follow as well. As the app learns, its Explore tab gets better at recommending photos and videos to me.”
- “ Instagram says that despite the image recognition capabilities of parent company Facebook, there’s no machine vision involved.”
- “The Explore tab has come a long way since Instagram first launched in 2010. Originally called Popular, this part of the app began as a showcase of the network’s most popular images at any given time. Not surprisingly, the experience got boring pretty fast. So the company started to try to personalize it in 2014, two years after Facebook purchased it.”
Nick Cotton is a project manager based out of Los Angeles, California. He’s got a background in the entertainment industry, and uses his talent at online messaging to extol the virtues of content marketing, interactive fiction and sentences measuring 280 characters or less.
FOLLOW