Facebook Hits Two Billion User Milestone: What’s Hot in Social Media?
June 30, 2017
This week, Facebook reaches a major milestone, both for the network itself and the industry as a whole. Meanwhile, Instagram makes plans to stop harassment and abuse on the platform by releasing an artificial intelligence system to hide user comments.
More details on why this matters, and what else is happening in social media below.
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Facebook Reaches Two Billion User Milestone
Thirteen years after its launch, Facebook hit two billion users. It took roughly eight years for it to reach the one-billion mark, but less than five years to add another one billion. The increase in new users has largely been due to expanding into developing countries.
Why does this matter?
Facebook is now the largest social app in terms of logged-in users. It beats out YouTube at 1.5 billion users, WeChat at 889 million and Twitter at 328 million. Beyond YouTube, only Facebook’s own apps, WhatsApp and Messenger, have over one billion users.
Instagram Releases Measures To Combat Harassment and Abuse
Instagram is creating a new artificially intelligent system to combat and remove abusive comments. This means you never even have to see them. The new system is based on a similarly done AI that both Facebook and Instagram have previously done to fight spam.
Why does this matter?
When a user leaves hostile comments on a post, the comment will be visible only to the commenter. This is very similar to what page admins can do with Facebook Pages currently. The system is now live for all Instagram pages.
Facebook Testing a New Option to Add Text on Cover Photos
Facebook is testing a new feature that would add the option for pages to place text overlay on cover photos. The test has been in circulation with select pages for several weeks, but Facebook has ramped up testing in the last week.
Why does this matter?
The new feature could act as a search engine optimization (SEO) factor by connecting relevance of a page to what the user is seeking. However, it is unclear if it would add any technical or practical purpose at all.