2 New Social Features That Could Change The Way You Post
One of the things about social networks is that they keep on evolving, learning from mistakes and user feedback. In that spirit, there are a couple of new social features, one from Twitter and one from Instagram, that could make a difference in what and how you post in the future.
Twitter Undo
The first comes from Twitter. Users have been asking for an edit feature almost since the beginning to be able to fix those annoying spelling and grammar errors. Then there’s the dreaded post that causes a stir that no one ever anticipated.
The platform is now testing an “undo” function that would cancel the send of a tweet. The trick here is that you only have a 5 second window, so if you don’t catch the problem until later, you’re still out of luck. That said, this is still not the final version of the feature, so that time window might change by the time it’s rolled out to everyone.
Instagram Like Hide
Instagram is also researching a new function that will enable users to hide the Like numbers on their feed posts. So why would you want to hide your Like count? No one has a problem with a large Like count since it signals social authority, especially for that particular post. If you have a post with a far lower Like count than anticipated, that might be better to hide the number until it reaches something that you feel more comfortable with.
On the other hand, there’s some research that suggests that it’s beneficial to some users to not know what their Like count is, especially if a low count leads to lower self-esteem. Regardless of the reason, there’s been no decision on whether this feature will be rolled out to everyone, and whether this will apply to post creation or retrospective editing to a post.
These 2 social features might be important to some users down the road or not make a dent in how you do things on those platforms at all. The thing to remember is that social media services change more often than you think and it’s important to keep up in order to take full advantage of them.
