Hello everyone! I hope you all had a fantastic week so far. I am back again with the weekly tech news round up. There have been lots of updates in search industry throughout the week. Google has announced their future projects in Google I/O 2015 ATAP sessions and SMX Advance. Pinterest and Instagram added buy now buttons to the platform and Facebook is now supporting GIF format. New things get invented and old technologies get updated everyday in the tech industry. Following are the important tech updates happened during 30th May 2015 to 05th June 2015.
This year Google I/O was not just about Mobile and Android. They have shared their future projects and plans with the community in their ATAP sessions. ATAP sessions were among the most exiting sessions of the event. Google engineers have explained and demonstrated their future projects like Project Jacquard, Project Ara, Project Soli, Project Abacus. Project Jacquard will bring the smart cloths to the community. Project Ara will be all about providing hardware customization ability to users. Project Soli is focused to change the way people interact with their smart gadgets. And Project Abacus will provide the better security based on the user behavior on smart phones.
Gary Illyes from Google has said in SMX Advance that webmasters can expect Google panda update in near future. It’s been over 8 months since last panda update. Gary said to community, it is about to release. You can expect it to be rolled out in next two, three or four weeks. It is not going to be the algorithm update in which Google changes all the measurement parameters. But it could be the usual data refresh. Websites that are penalized by previous updates has the best chance to recover this time. You can also expect some new sites getting penalized. We will be able to find the exact effect of the update once it will be completely rolled out.
Gary Illyes also shared some interested news about Google Penguin Algorithm update. He admitted that Penguin algorithm is working slowly at present. But they are working on Penguin update to run continuously. If it happens, Algorithm will get data refreshed all the time and won’t be require manual push for the update. It requires lots of rework in the current algorithm, so it is bit difficult for Google to do it now. But user can expect it in next several months. It will make penguin recovery very easy for the webmasters.
Finally, Facebook is supporting animated GIF in news feed now. Facebook has refused to add GIFs in feed thinking that it will make news feed cluttered with lots of low quality memes. They have given priority to the video auto-play at that time. But now Facebook has decided to support GIFs as well. Facebook has announced this update on last Friday. It was not available for all users immediately, but all the users will get this access gradually.
Bing Ads team has announced automated rules for scheduling management tasks. This has been one of the top requested features by the Bing community. Users will be able to select the any level of the account and can assign a rule to that specific level only. Bing has provided 13 different rules in their first release. Once you select the rule you can apply it to all enabled entities or can choose specific entities to apply that rule. The best thing is, Bing also provide the preview of the result before you save the rule. Bing has also shown some examples of how you can set up rules in their announcement.
Instagram has become one of the strongest mobile platforms for the advertisers. They are bringing some more powerful tools for the advertisers. These new tools are “Shop Now”, “Install Now” and “Sign Up” buttons along with Interest and demographic targeting and an API to efficiently manage huge campaigns. Instagram’s new “action-oriented” format displaying buttons below the image is going to be all new experience for users. Many big brands are using Instagram to attract mobile users. It will be interesting to see how these features make them change their marketing strategy.
Pinterest has announced their new buyable pins features in an in-house event in San Francisco. Users will be able to buy things directly from Pinterest without leaving the website/ Application after this update. Users can filter the products by price when they search for specific product. They can also select the desired size and color of product from the pin. Pinterest has developed a secure and mobile optimized check out process. That enables payments through Apple Pay or Credit Card. iPhone and iPad users in the USA will get “Buy It” button in next few weeks. All the android and desktop users have to wait for the next update to get pin it button on their device.
After rolling out in few handful countries, Facebook has finally launched “Facebook Lite” app in Asia on Tuesday. This lighter version of the app will be available in Europe, Latin America and Africa in coming weeks. The main purpose of Facebook Lite is to provide reliable Facebook experience to the users in slow or unreliable network connection areas. This app requires less than 1 MB of space and doesn’t even need sophisticated device or high-speed connection. While more than a billion people use different mobile devices to access Facebook, introducing this app will defiantly raise the number of mobile Facebook users.
Sometime Google chrome consumes the highest battery from your laptop because of the extensions and background apps. Google has announced that the future version of the Chrome browser will be optimized to improve the battery life of the laptop. That version of chrome will automatically pause the “unimportant” flash elements on the webpage. Tommy Li (Software engineer at Google) has told that chrome will intelligently pause the irrelevant flash content and keep the main content enabled. This update will definitely improve the battery life and performance of laptops.
While all the major social media platforms supports GIFs now, Tumblr has made it even easier to find and include GIFs in post. Starting from today, you can search the suitable GIFs while creating new post. Click on the “+” button and it will show you the option to search the GIFs along with the other buttons. You will be able to insert the GIF in your post and it will also notify original poster of GIF. Tumblr is one of the most used sources to find GIFs. Allowing users to find the GIFs is going to be crucial from the platform’s perspective.
So, this is what has happened in the industry during last few days. It has been pretty exiting week when we learn lots of new stuff about Google and Bing. All the major social media platforms have also taken significant steps for the betterment of the platforms. If you have you any other interesting story to add in the blog, share that in the discussion box below. I will catch you again next Friday with more technical news and updates. Till than happy surfing and have a wonderful weekend.
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