A Facebook Halloween and Twitter’s Q3
A very Facebook Halloween
Facebook is getting spooky for Halloween – but Snapchat may be the only one who should be scared. Facebook is allowing users to use animated masks – similar to Snapchat’s animated filters – in Facebook Live. The company says a number of Halloween-themed animated masks are planned for the next few days. However – you can expect to see the animated filters becoming a permanent fixture on Facebook Live videos. The new addition is clear shot at Snapchat, which is famous for animated filters users can play with. Facebook-owned Instagram also recently added its own version of Snapchat Stories.
In addition to the Facebook Halloween masks, the company will also launch Halloween reactions. Look for pumpkins, ghosts, witches and candy corn where your usual buttons normally are and have some spooky fun.
A mixed Q3 for Twitter
Twitter is taking the good with the bad moving into Q4. The company posted some modest gains to its monthly and daily active users last quarter as well as better than expected revenue. Twitter increased it’s monthly active users by 3% last quarter to 317 million and its daily active users by 7%. The company surprised analysts with $616 million earned (an 8% gain). That’s above the $605 predicted – but still less than the 20% gain it saw in Q2.
Twitter attributes the increase in users to some of the recent changes its made to the platform and an increase in machine learning to improve experiences on the platform. Twitter’s CFO also predicted a profitable 2017 despite still being heavily in the red last quarter.
Despite the good news Twitter announced a round of job cuts to allow for restructuring. On top of the job cuts, Twitter is killing off Vine, the short form video app Twitter purchased in 2012. Don’t worry too much though; there are no plans right now to remove existing Vines from the website. There’s no word right now on the exact reason for Vine’s deactivation.