To say that a week is an eternity in social and digital is redundant at this point. We’re all aware of how quickly things move, but it seems like there may have been some extra pent-up changes from the holiday season that were released to us this past week.

Oh, and the big one hasn’t even dropped yet.

1. Peach

Peach AppFirst off, just when we were starting to settle into our mix of Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and the new guy, Snapchat, a strange face came poking around and kicking up dust. Peach, started by the same guy who built Vine, is a new social network that combines a lot of the features that make Slack so successful, with rich media sharing like Gifs, drawings, and good old status updates. The hook is a feature called magic words, that bring everything together – but I wouldn’t know yet, since I’m running an Android.

This is the plight of the Android user – we get all of the best features and tools first (NFC, mobile payments, burst photos), and make up the majority of users, and have an easier platform to build on without Big Brother Apple dictating which apps can and can’t make it into the marketplace, and yet we find ourselves on the outside looking in when some of these social apps catch fire early on… but I’m not bitter.

We (Android users) were forced to sit on the sideline for half of a year while the rest of you tried out all of the first borders and filters on Instagram. Come to think of it, we didn’t miss much.

Bieber Instagram Filter

But, I digress. Peach’s early success is showing us that there may be space for additional networks. Social media is becoming more about an evolving system of apps and networks that we use. Can’t keep track? You don’t need to. Just use the one(s) that give you what you want, because it’s nearly impossible to keep up with every shiny new thing that comes along (trust me).

2. Periscope on Twitter

One of our bold predictions for 2016 was that we’re going to see a lot more live video, and that already seems to be starting. Periscope and Twitter just announced that, rather than clicking out to Periscope’s live streams, we’ll be able to play them right in out Twitter streams. That’s a huge deal, because users hate to click out of Twitter. Through ad and content testing, we’ve found that Twitter is one of the easiest places to get users to interact with great content, but convincing them to leave the app through a link is extremely tough, and expensive. Don’t be surprised to see some of your favourite brands and influencers start to show up live in your stream. Ellen, iJustine, Jamie Foxx and Vancouver’s own Bachelorette, Kaitlyn Bristowe, have already made the jump.

Periscope Twitter
Image Source: Tech News World

3. 10k Characters on Twitter

The great 140 character debate seems to be finally coming to a head. When Twitter started, the founders chose the 140 character limit so that users could fit full tweets within the SMS limits of the time. Since then, people have argued that the brevity is what has made the magic for Twitter, while others have suggested that it’s an outdated crutch. If you believe the internet (and who doesn’t, right?), then Twitter is set to test out a 10,000 character limit, where full thoughts could be written out, and only the first 140 characters will be displayed in your followers’ timelines. For reference, this post is about to hit 4,000 characters, so this wouldn’t even be half of a full tweet yet.

Of course, as with any change to a popular social network’s mechanics, the opinions are fiery in every direction. My thoughts? Great move by Twitter. Facebook is doing everything that it can to keep people within its environment and, as I mentioned above, people hate clicking out of Twitter, so why not let them get all of their news-y and rant-y goodness right there in the app?

That’s it for this week. See something that I missed? Did I get something wrong? Call me out on Twitter where everyone can see it, but only for a few seconds: @JunctionYVR

See you all next week.

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