social media round up
Social Media Round Up – World Emoji Day And Reactions To The New Doctor
You probably don’t pay much attention to it, but the little calendar emoji on your phone is always dated 17 July. Naturally, Monday (17 July) marked World Emoji Day when icon lovers came together to share their favourite symbol. Facebook released some great facts including that over 60 million emoji are shared on Facebook and a massive five million shared through Facebook Messenger every day. The most popular emoji in the world is the ‘kissing face’ and the smiling face with heart sharped eyes. Big news this week was the leak that Amazon is planning a new messaging service to rival the likes of Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. The new app, Amazon Anytime, looks to be The big question is, can Amazon Anytime rival Facebook for the social media crown? We will have to wait and see, we know it won’t be coming out for a while; we are still waiting for Amazon to confirm if the rumours are true. On Sunday afternoon, the BBC revealed that Jodie Whittaker will play the thirteenth incarnation of the Doctor. Twitter exploded with the news with a mixed result of positive and negative tweets. Star Wars actor, John Boyega, summed up our thoughts perfectly, “so proud of Jodie Whittaker. She’s going to be awesome!!!” Of course, being the Twittersphere, some of the tweeters took a more negative point of view, struggling to accept that the Doctor could regenerate into a woman. We would just like to point out to all of the “fans” that Michelle Gomez has been playing Missy for years, a female incarnation of the previously male Master – so it’s canon, deal with it! The fact is that we are going to have a great actress playing one of the most iconic roles on TV, coupled with Chris Chibnall, the writer of Broadchurch, running the show. We’re certain that she’ll be able to exterminate the critics, and it’s about time (lord) this happened. “Fake news” is the throw-away line favoured by politicians and political supporters of all bents at the moment; a quick missive to undermine any ounce of criticism no matter how factually based, in the hope that it desensitises us enough to actual fake news making the two indistinguishable. Social media has been a breeding ground for misleading stories and downright lies and there is a tooth and nail fight to stop it becoming mainstream. Rather worryingly this week, researchers at the University of Washington unveiled a new video editing tool that allows them to superimpose audio over a video and automatically calibrate the movements of the speakers lips to fit the words. The scientists used the example of Barack Obama, creating a video where they could make him say anything (or in one case have an impressionist make him say anything). It is entirely possible with the technology to cut together fragments of speech to create untrue statements, filter them through the programmes artificial intelligence and produce a perfectly convincing film. It’s all little bit terrifying. A special thank you to Freddie who joined us in the Siren office on Wednesday whilst on work experience at MBNA Thames Clippers and contributed to this week’s round-up.SHARE THE EMOJI LOVE_
AMAZON ANYTIME_
jumping of the bandwagon of copying taking inspiration from Snapchat’s filters as well as embracing Twitter and Instagram’s use of mentions and the ability to “@” people and may also encrypt messages like WhatsApp.THE DOCTOR WILL SEE YOU NOW_
LIP SYNC CHALLENGE_