social media - page 2

Instagram makes ‘likes’ disappear in even more countries

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heart shapes
Your fans will know you are liked. They just won't know how much.
Photo: Iouri Goussey/Wikimedia CC

Instagram’s hidden “likes” experiment is expanding to six other countries as the photo-sharing app continues to change features to make social media a more positive experience.

Instagram made the announcement Wednesday on its Twitter feed, though it has yet to disclose findings from a trial of select users in Canada. It will now hide “likes” tallies on select posts in Australia, Brazil, Ireland, Italy, Japan and New Zealand.

Instagram will hold an intervention with your bully

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a same of how Instagram's Restrict tool will work
Instagram adds more tough tools to fight bullying.
Photo: Instagram

Instagram is adding more muscle to fight bullying, including one tool that appeals to a harasser’s conscious.

Instagram has been addressing online harassment over the last couple of years with options to block followers and report offensive items. But for the first time, artificial intelligence will hold an intervention with a would-be bully.

How to get your Stories to show up on Instagram’s Explore tab

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Instagram lawsuit
Instagram is putting a bigger focus on Stories.
Photo: Pixabay

Instagram revealed today that it is making changes to its Explore tab to start promoting Stories from people you don’t follow.

The Explore tab is also getting redesigned with a new navigation bar that has shortcuts for Shopping and IGTV to go with channel topics that Instagram’s algorithms think you’ll be interested in. Adding Stories to the Explore tab gives users a new way to discover great content you don’t follow as well as giving your content another avenue towards peoples eyeballs. But actually getting your Stories onto the Explore tab isn’t all that simple.

New Instagram will take worry out of being liked

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Instagram fact checking
Instagram will use fact-checking teams to identify false information.
Photo: Instagram

Facebook is retooling Instagram to take some social pressure out of social media.

The photo-sharing app, which along with the iPhone sparked a revolution in instant photography, will reduce the pressure by making “likes” private so followers engage the content, not how popular it is. Instagram is also playing with ways to reduce the prominence of follower counts.

Instagram taps seller of fake likes with multi-million dollar lawsuit

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Instagram lawsuit
A Chrome extension can bring your hidden "Likes" out in the open.
Photo: Pixabay

Facebook is suing a New Zealand-based company for selling fake likes and follows to users of its photo-sharing app, Instagram.

The lawsuit, filed today in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, accuses the defendants of using different companies and websites to peddle bot-generated likes, views, and new followers, which violates Instagram’s terms of use along with U.S. computer fraud laws.

Score a second phone number, sweatproof earbuds and more [Deals]

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Check out the 4 best deals in the Cult of Mac Store this week.
Check out the 4 best deals in the Cult of Mac Store this week.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

As spring approaches, we’re stocking up on discounted gear, gadgets and more. This week, we’ve got deals on a burner phone number, lessons in social media marketing, a music subscription that fosters focus, and a set of workout-ready earbuds.

Most of these hot deals are discounted by 70 percent or more!

Boost your Instagram marketing game with automation [Deals]

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Take control of your Instagram marketing with this powerful automated tool.
Take control of your Instagram marketing with this powerful automated tool.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

Instagram is one of the most powerful platforms for promoting a product, service, or brand. By sharing images that relate to waht you do or sell, you can form powerful connections and make a strong impression. But unless you hire a full-time social media manager, staying on top of it can get overwhelming fast.

Instagram continues to boom. Make money at it with this master class [Deals]

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Instagram marketing course
Learn to grow your follower count on Instagram with this crash course.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

Sure, it’s nice to have a gaggle of Instagram followers to like your pics. But building an audience on the world’s fastest-growing social media platform is more than just a vanity project. When Kylie Jenner turns her 121 million followers on to a product, she makes a cool $1 million per post.

4 ways to boost your tech skills for less than $25 [Deals]

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We've rounded up 4 ways to boost your personal or professional skills, from social media marketing to graphic design and way beyond, each for under 20 bucks.
We've rounded up 4 ways to boost your personal or professional skills, from social media marketing to graphic design and way beyond, each for under 20 bucks.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

It’s never a bad idea to make yourself more appealing to potential employers. But there are so many skills to learn, from coding, to graphic design, to Excel, and on and on, it can be hard to know where to start, and education is often expensive. So we’ve rounded up courses that cover all of the above and more, all for less than 20 bucks. Take a look, and pick the ways you want to boost your resume.

Score a social media marketing certification for under 20 bucks [Deals]

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Take a deep dive into social media marketing, earning certification that'll boost your resume and marketability.
Take a deep dive into social media marketing, earning certification that'll boost your resume and marketability.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

Making money online means knowing how to leverage social media. Whether you’re trying to get an idea out, elevate a brand, or sell a product, social media marketing is essential. So this massively discounted social media certification course is a must-see.

Grow and optimize your Instagram account with this assistant [Deals]

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Appz Instagram Assistant
Growing an Instagram presence doesn't have to be difficult with Appz Instagram Assistant.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

Whether you are aspiring to become an influencer or starting an online brand, building a presence on Instagram is full of challenges. The name of the game when it comes to Instagram growth is work smarter not harder.

Appz is an easy-to-use software solution that will automate tasks to generate more engagement for your personal or brand Instagram account.

Huawei tweets knock new iPhones for ‘staying the same’

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Huawei tweets
What could Huawei be talking about?
Screenshot: Huawei/Twitter

Huawei, one of Apple’s biggest competitors in smartphone sales, fired off a series of tweets that mocked the iPhone maker immediately following Wednesday’s unveiling of new products.

Most of the tweets originating from Huawei’s mobile division were a kind of sarcastic appreciation, including one that said, “Thank you for keeping things the same.”

Alex Jones ‘patriots’ rush to App Store to download Infowars app

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Infowars app
Alex Jones' media empire is falling, but his followers can still get their fix from iOS and Android apps.
Photo: Infowars

Fans of Infowars radio host Alex Jones have flocked to the Apple App Store to grab what’s left of his voice on social media.

The iOS app Infowars Official was ranked the fourth most popular news app earlier today, less than 48 hours after Apple and other tech companies booted Jones off its social media platforms.

Instagram gets more conversational with Question Stickers

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Instagram lawsuit
Instagram is beefing up Stories with loads of new features.
Photo: Pixabay

Striking up a conversation on Instagram just became as easy as slapping a sticker on your Story.

Instagram revealed today that it has added a new feature called Question Stickers that gives users a new way to ask and receive questions from followers so you can get more acquainted with each other.

The most popular filter on Instagram may surprise you

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Instagram filters
X-Pro II is widely used for the drama it brings to a photo. But the most popular "filter" adds no drama at all.
Photo: Iconosquare

Normal is the single-most used filter on Instagram, which means exactly what you think: Normal is not really a filter.

Still, because it lines up alongside Instagram’s 40 native filters, it came out on top, according to a database of 790,000 Instagram users. This is still considered a small sample for a user base that just surpassed 1 billion active users.

YouTube influencers carefully watching IGTV

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IGTV YouTube
Pia Muehlenbeck used her YouTube Channel to promote her first IGTV post.
Photo: Kane and Pia/YouTube

Fashion influencer Pia Muehlenbeck wore a red dress chosen by her social media fans for a sunny day in Santa Monica to make her first video for the new IGTV.

Once shooting finished, she posted it on YouTube.

YouTube has seen competitors come and go and none have been able to threaten its standing as the dominant video platform. But it has not faced a media company with the might to seriously cut into its ad revenues or lure away some of its most prominent talent like Instagram.

Instagram Stories turns pretty pictures into buying opportunities

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InstagramCloseiPhone
Instagram is starting to feel like a giant advertisement.
Photo: Stephen Smith/Cult of Mac

Your favorite Instagram Story feeds are about to get invaded by more advertisements.

The photo-sharing social network revealed today that it is expanding its shopping features beyond the regular feed and will start letting users share shopping advertisements in their Stories.

How to download all your old Instagram photos and videos

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Instagram
Instagram has a new tool for downloading old photos.
Photo: Instagram

Pulling your photos off of Instagram just got a lot easier.

Instagram revealed today that it is finally starting to roll out a new tool that lets any Instagram user retrieve all of the photos, videos, comments, likes and other data stored on Instagram’s servers.

Get your data by following these steps:

Twitter begins long-awaited crackdown on bots

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Twitter
Will Facebook and Instagram follow suit?
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Twitter has finally begun its long-awaited crackdown on bots.

The company has made changes to its API that make it significantly harder for services to batch tweet to multiple accounts, retweet, follow users, and more. This puts a stop to the software that powers Twitter bots.

How to see Cult of Mac stories at the top of your Facebook feed

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See posts from cult of Mac first
Click "See First" to never miss out on our updates!
Photo: Cult of Mac

Significant changes to Facebook’s News Feed algorithm mean you might not be seeing as much news as usual. Facebook started prioritizing posts from friends over posts from pages and publications.

While this might be a welcome move for everyone who uses Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, not everyone uses the social network with the same goal in mind. I’m sure a certain number of people still prefer using Facebook simply to keep in the news loop or interact with communities/brands who are not “friends.”

Would you rather use Facebook to keep yourself updated on all things, say,  Apple? If yes, here’s how you can make sure to see stories from Cult of Mac at the top of your Facebook News Feed.

Name your price for a social marketing master class [Deals]

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Learn the fundamentals of social media marketing, for whatever you want to pay.
Learn the fundamentals of social media marketing, for whatever you want to pay.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

Today, digital marketing is one of the largest and most lucrative industries. In 2018, platforms like Google and Facebook have become fundamental to marketing. So if you’re going to be successful at marketing, you’ve got to understand how to master social media.