Social Media

YouTube Reduces Streaming Quality to Reduce Network Load, Adds New COVID-19 Info Panel

This comes as little surprise, given that WhatsApp is developing the same thing, but this week, Instagram has confirmed that it’s also working on a new disappearing messages option within its Direct tools. Spotted by reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong, the new option, at least at this stage, would see all of your messages disappear from the chat window after you’d read them and navigated to another section of the app. In this iteration, there doesn’t appear to be any time limit controls within Insta’s auto-delete settings, but that’s probably the next stage, because as noted, Facebook-owned WhatsApp is also looking to add the same functionality, though with added control elements for your disappearing communications. In response, the European Union this week called on both Netflix and YouTube to reduce their system demands on European web networks by limiting the capacity for users to stream in HD, which both companies will comply with from this week.

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Facebook Makes Desktop Refresh Available to All Users

This is only for the desktop version – Facebook still doesn’t have a ‘dark mode’ option in the mobile app, though that option is getting closer to launch. If you’re keen to get a taste of what it will eventually look like, the desktop version will have to suffice, at least for the time being.  As noted, the new desktop layout should be available to everyone shortly, though Facebook did note in a statement to TechCrunch that: “Starting today, the majority of people on Facebook will have access to the new desktop design” So maybe not everyone just yet. If you’re not seeing the option in your settings menu, hold tight, it’ll be available to you shortly.

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Marketing

Google’s Right-Sidebar Featured Snippets are No More 

For those who used to own right-sidebar featured snippets, your URL now only appears once on the first results page instead of twice. Now that the feature is part of the main results column, other organic listings appear further down on the page. Whether you own the featured snippet or another result on a page that has a deduplicated featured snippet, you should monitor your Google Search Console and Analytics reports to see how much of an impact this has on your traffic and click-through rates.

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Yelp Launches Efforts to Help Local Businesses Impacted by COVID-19

Yelp launched a number of efforts aimed at helping local businesses that have been affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. According to Yelp’s data, US consumer interest for restaurants has dropped by 54% over the past week. Nightlife businesses have been hit even harder with drop in consumer interest of 69%. This is, of course, a result of the forced closure of non-essential businesses and the social distancing measures encouraged by the World Health Organization. In an announcement, Yelp says it’s committed to helping businesses during these uncertain times.

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