As a Social Media marketer, it’s important to keep up with the latest social media trends. Knowing the trends will help you create engaging content that your target audience will enjoy. In the same week, Twitter and Snapchat announced two very unique updates. In fact, they’re so unique that they’re changing up the way we use these channels entirely! Twitter is testing 280 characters, and Snapchat wants you to animate your stories with a 3-D bitmoji. Let’s dive right in.

Twitter characters

Admit it – when Twitter first came out, you were concerned about how you were going to express everything you had to say in 140 characters. At one point, adding a photo to your tweet would take up a precious number of characters! Whew, thankfully your content can be a full 140-character tweet PLUS a photo. But Twitter is taking things to a whole other level now – double the characters!

Don’t start feverishly typing away just yet; Twitter is actively testing the new Twitter update. In fact, only a handful of accounts have been selected to test the new limit. A very savvy Twitter user figured out how to get access to 280-character tweeting, but it didn’t last very long.

Twitter may consider inviting more accounts to the test, which means you could be next in line.

If you had an extra 140 characters to tweet, what would you write?

Snapchat and Bitmojis

It hasn’t been long since Snapchat introduced Bitmojis into its app. The Bitmojis are a great way for marketers to show off their hilarious expressions for product sales, new shipments, and so much more. Now, Snapchat is taking them to a whole new level: animated Bitmoji avatars. By simply tapping your phone’s screen, you can add a 3D image of yourself to your real-time photos and videos. Snap yourself drinking a coffee, and add an animated you to go with it.

To see your Bitmoji in 3D, tap the rear-facing camera and bring up the lenses menu. You’ll instantly see your animated self next to world lenses. Move your Bitmoji up and adjust it; you can even apply action to it! Animations will be limited to roughly 10 seconds, but you can record your snaps over and over again to test out new moves.

This new move illustrates Snapchat’s investment in Bitmojis (Snapchat actually bought Bitmoji last year). Bitmojis were founded by Bitstrips who wanted to let users create avatars and send them via text. Where will they pop up next?

What do you think of the latest social media trends? Are you happy about 280-character tweets and animated snaps?

In other news…

Social channels are always getting updated, but these updates should also be included in our roundup. If you didn’t hear about them, it’s probably because the other updates mentioned above took up too much of the news!

• Instagram live filters are getting better and better. Going live soon? Apply a filter to yourself during a broadcast. Not all of the filters will be around forever, but it’ll be fun to test anyway.
• Facebook & Whatsapp are in cahoots. Facebook and Whatsapp are testing integrations. You know how you can get to Instagram via the Facebook app? Not far into the future, we might be able to open Whatsapp from Facebook. This has not been confirmed; it’s merely a rumour.

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