social media round up
Social Media Round Up – Hello Sarahah And Happy Birthday Hashtags
Claim it! Relaunched this week – an app designed to give away free stuff (we like it already)! The app functions like a social media platform but unlike Twitter or Facebook, does not feature adverts. Instead, brands and individuals can upload freebies to the app. You can choose to make your giveaway nationwide or focussed on a local area; the posts are then geo-targeted or can be searched by postcode. The concept is that brands or people can promote what they love. It’s not just for big brands either; people can post on there too, as long as what they are posting is free. At the moment this app is just available in the US, but watch this space for when Claim It! reaches UK soil. Ever had the nail biting urge to tell someone what you really think of them, but hold back to avoid hurting their feelings? Well it seems app developers at Sarahah are making constructive feedback of the anonymous kind a reality. “Sarahah” is Arabic for ‘honest’ or ‘candour’; the creators of the app had pure intentions to make a simple tool for the workplace to allow colleagues to anonymously share honest and open feedback with one another in a professional environment. There’s no reply option to messages and no sign of where the message has come from. The creators may not have envisaged what was to come… The app has topped Apple’s app store in 30 countries; teens have clocked onto Sarahah’s anonymous functionality and have run with it, sending incognito ‘feedback’ to friends and frenemies alike. The anonymity features have led many to feel the platform is nothing more than a foundation for cyber bullying. Users do have the option to block senders and mark messages as offensive – this too is done anonymously without the sender knowing. We at Siren are still comfortable with a good old fashioned chinwag for the time being For the last few years August 24th has taken on a whole new meaning for Londoners; it has become National Burger Day. In the run up this celebration, salads are eaten the evening before and breakfasts are skipped as Londoners get ready to indulge in the city’s many burger discounts. Lunch plans are made in advance to ensure a seat at the table at the best burger joints in town as Deliveroo and Uber Eats prepare for an influx in delivery requests. As August 24th rolled round, #NationalBurgerDay took over social media as the general public, celebrities and even food connoisseurs expressed their appreciation for the hallowed meat sandwich. A decade ago, if we’d mentioned a hashtag you may well have assumed we were off to have minor surgery to have an unwanted appendage removed under local anaesthetic. That all changed on 23 August 2007 when Chris Messina suggested using the erstwhile useless cross-hatch symbol (officially called an Octothorp #FunFact) to classify messages on the fledgling Twittersphere. how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]? The hashtag quickly gained traction as a means of joining larger conversations with the rest of the online world, linking users sharing their opinions and observations of the same experiences, events or trends. They’ve also become a means of adding a cutting witticism into a character-limited tweet. Hashtags have become instantaneous records of the zeitgeist, however fleeting it may be. #highbrow The feature eventually got picked up by Facebook and, of course, Instagram, but not before becoming a feature of real-life conversation. #DontSayHashtag BBC Newsbeat put together a list of their top hashtags, including impactful campaigns like #BlackLivesMatter to the more frivolous #EdBallsDay. But let us never forget, perhaps the funniest #fail of all time: #susanalbumparty #EnoughAlreadyNO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH… OR IS THERE?_
INTRODUCING SARAHAH_
LONDON LOVES… NATIONAL BURGER DAY_
#HAPPYBIRTHDAY_
