social media round up

Social Media Round Up – Live Video Captioning And A Trump Twitter Bot

THE TELEGRAPH TAKES ON SNAPCHAT_

The Telegraph joined Snapchat this week and will be publishing a daily edition on the app at 5pm everyday featuring news, politics and opinion. Its profile on the original disappearing content app will ensure users have the most up-to-date information at their fingertips. The decision to join Snapchat’s Discover section is the latest move as part of the Telegraph’s digital initiatives since it relaunched it’s mobile and tablet apps. It’s great to see traditional media taking on the social media sphere – will other traditional publications follow suit? Watch this space…

 

LIVE VIDEO CAPTIONING_

This week Facebook revealed that it will be adding subtitling to its Live video streaming function. Whilst subtitles have been available on its regular videos and ads for a couple of years, this is the first time they will be included on live video streams. The aim is to make Facebook Live much more accessible to its deaf users, but also makes it possible for all users to watch live videos on mute for those awkward train journeys when you’ve left your headphones at home. YouTube has included automatically generated closed captioning on videos for a while, which as well-meaning as it is, has not always been a success, spawning the #NoMoreCraptions movement. As anyone who has watched subtitles on live TV will know, automatic subtitling doesn’t always go to plan, as the Page 888 blog has great fun pointing out.

 

#THINGSTHATLEAVEBRITAINREELING_

This weekend, British spirit helped us overcome the tragic and recent terror attacks in both London and Manchester. When the New York Times printed the headline “The London attacks hit a nation still reeling from the shock of bombing in Manchester almost 2 weeks ago”, Twitter users all over the country mocked the newspapers choice of words. The hashtag #ThingsThatLeaveBritianReeling has been trending on Twitter this week along with humorous examples of what really leaves Brits’ reeling.

Once user tweeted “People that don’t put toilet roll the right way”, with another saying “Toasters that aren’t big enough to fit in the whole slice of toast. What’s the point”. Our favourite (and arguably the most typically British of them all) was “When you see someone making a cup of tea and they put milk in first”. The New York Times has since changed its headline to ‘Another Terrorist Attack Strikes the Heart of London’.

 

TRUMP TWITTER BOT_

A new Twitter account related to Donald Trump hit the internet this week to the amusement of many users. Created by a coder, the @RealPressSecBot account transforms tweets from Trump into formal presidential statements. The Twitter bot checks for new tweets from the president every five minutes and mocks them up into the official statement format, even including the ‘for immediate release’ line in the top left corner. The account has nearly 100k followers already and has been praised by some Twitter users as a great alternative to Trump’s official press secretary, Sean Spicer.