Five things worth sharing from the last week or so, brought to you by a different member of the Browser Media team every Friday.
This week’s My Five is by Ashleigh.
1.Instagram to become bigger than Twitter for news
The 2020 Reuters Institute Digital News report found that the number of people going to Instagram to read news stories has doubled since 2018. Nearly a quarter of 18-24 year olds are now using the platform as their chosen source of news about coronavirus.
Only 26% of people said they trusted social media when it came to news about the virus, whereas 59% trusted National governments and news organisations:
The authors of the report predict that by next year there will be more people going to Instagram for their daily news than those using Twitter, which may mean that journalists will have to take note and change which platform they use most.
2. New WhatsApp digital payment service launches
Facebook has launched its first digital payment service, starting in Brazil, with plans to eventually expand it around the world.
The feature allows users to send and receive payments, and make purchases, without having to pay a fee for doing so, via WhatsApp. However, as stated on the WhatsApp blog, small businesses will have to pay a “processing fee to receive customer payments”.
Also in the blog post it said, “because payments on WhatsApp are enabled by Facebook Pay, in the future we want to make it possible for people and businesses to use the same card information across Facebook’s family of apps.”
So just watch this space.
3. Yet more talk about the guidelines when writing guest blog posts
John Mueller from Google has been talking about guest blogging again this week and in particular links from guest blog posts. This isn’t because anything has changed, as this isn’t new information, but just because the question arose.
John’s tweets said:
https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1271697162762686464
https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1272147154287702018
https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1272147530143408129
4. Monopoly in photo form
This week a man named Dan Barker had some time to kill in London so actually visited every place on the Monopoly board and took photos of what he found.
He started at what he chose as ‘Go’, Lambeth North Tube Station, and made his way round to all the destinations in the well loved board game. These places included railway stations, jails, and an electric company (or what was, once upon a time).
In Jail / Just Visiting. pic.twitter.com/2p3ot6XswE
— dan barker (@danbarker) June 15, 2020
You can see all his snaps here: https://twitter.com/danbarker/status/1272634582941171713
It’s incredible what you can get done in a day if you put your mind to it!
5. A bunny with no ears?
A bunny has been born, but there is a twist – she has no ears!
Little Leo was born as one of a litter of eight, but was the only one out of her brothers and sisters to not have the infamous, floppy bunny ears.
She’s still very cute though!
