Social Messaging: What's New

This photo really doesn't have to do with this post, but I just threw a birthday party for my dog, and look how cute she is!

Social messaging: it's how you send your friend a cute picture of a dog drinking coffee on Instagram or a new job opening on LinkedIn or even a Tasty video on Facebook that, quite literally, makes your mouth water. It's a way for you to share information with a specific person(s) without leaving the site.

Instagram

Last Thursday (July 19) Instagram announced that they would show you when your friends are available to chat. That's right, just like Facebook. The synergy between the two entities is getting more and more real every day. Similar the the green dot used in Facebook, Instagram will now put a green dot next to your friend's usernames in various parts of the app so you can see when they're online.

So if you see a neat post, and you click on the "share" button, the list of your friend's names will either have a green dot or not to indicate whether they're online. You can still send them the message/post, and they'll see it when they go online, but it's simply a new way to stay even more connected. Instagram's goal in doing this was to promote real-time conversations.

BUT if you would rather your friends not see when you're online, you can easily go into "settings," then click "activity status" and turn it off there.

Last week, Facebook also announced a new messaging feature. To go hand-in-hand with Instagram's advances, you can now download all your Instagram contacts into Facebook Messenger.

LinkedIn

Instagram and Facebook weren't the only ones that implemented new messaging updates on Thursday, LinkedIn joined them. You can now change the size of your "compose" box when drafting a message in the mobile app (although it will be available on desktop soon). In addition, you can also now send file attachments from your mobile device, including PDF, DOC, XLS and PPT.

The desktop version just received an emoji picker, so you can select an emoji by scrolling through, searching a keyword or choosing a category for options.

They will also suggest group message participants when you click the + icon while creating a new message. They'll use a number of things to consider who to recommend like your current company, school and recent conversations. In addition, you can remove people from LinkedIn group chats (just click on the three dots in the corner). You are also able to use the @ sign to mention specific people within a group chat.

Finally, you can now easily copy and paste images (screenshot and web) into LinkedIn messages!

Interested in social media updates? Let me know! I love hearing what you think and have to say.