Instagram Launches Chronological Timeline [Content Made Simple]
Issue #262:
This weekly Content Made Simple email has now existed for just over FIVE YEARS! (In a couple of different forms.) Wow! Crazy. Thanks for being here. Glad to share these links with you each week.
TOP OF THE WEEK:
Instagram (Finally) Re-Launches a Chronological Timeline
Quote:
Instagram today is making a chronological feed available to all users, as earlier promised, alongside another new feed-filtering option that will allow you to scroll through posts from your favorite accounts. The features had been launched into limited testing starting in January but will now reach Instagram’s global user base by the end of the day on Wednesday, March 23 — a faster rollout than usual.
The feed options will be available to global users across iOS and Android, but won’t be available on the web version of Instagram.
Users will be alerted to the new options, Following and Favorites, from a pop-up at the top-left of the app, under the word “Instagram.” From there, you can tap on which feed you want to view.
Commentary:
The chronological timeline is to Instagram what the edit button is to Twitter. By that I mean that it is the feature users have been clamoring for for years. The chronological timeline used to exist on Instagram (back in 2016) but it was replaced with an algorithm in order to sell more ads and make more money for Facebook. This is a welcome change for many, even if it requires users to jump through a couple of hoops.
HITTING THE LINKS
Link #1: The Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto
Super helpful, cool interactive piece of journalism from Kevin Roose. If you have never looked into cryptocurrency, etc., this is a great first peek.
Crypto! For years, it seemed like the kind of fleeting tech trend most people could safely ignore, like hoverboards or Google Glass. But its power, both economic and cultural, has become too big to overlook. Twenty percent of American adults, and 36 percent of millennials, own cryptocurrency, according to a recent Morning Consult survey. Coinbase, the crypto trading app, has landed on top of the App Store’s top charts at least twice in the past year. Today, the crypto market is valued at around $1.75 trillion — roughly the size of Google. And in Silicon Valley, engineers and executives are bolting from cushy jobs in droves to join the crypto gold rush.
Link #2: Doomscrolling got you down? Take a break at a digital rest stop.
Such an interesting phenomenon.
All over social media, videos are inviting us to take a break. Watch this waterfall. Look up at the sky. Gaze at a steaming cup of tea sitting quietly on a counter. If you’ve encountered one of these, you’ve likely arrived at a digital resting point.
Digital resting points are videos intentionally created to give people a break from social media. They all follow a similar format: a soothing scene on screen, almost no people, a still camera, soft music or natural sounds. Then, voice-over or text appears: “Congratulations! You’ve reached a digital resting point. Stay as long as you like.”
Link #3: Facebook acquires neural interface startup CTRL-Labs for its mind-reading wristband
uh….cool….
Facebook today announced that it will acquire neural interface startup CTRL-Labs, a company that makes a wristband capable of transmitting electrical signals from the brain into computer input.
The deal, which Bloomberg reports is worth somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion, is the most substantial acquisition Facebook has made in the last half decade, since it paid $2 billion to acquire virtual reality company Oculus VR in 2014. It also marks a substantial increase in investment in Facebook’s growing hardware ambitions, as the CTRL-Labs tech will be put to use in future augmented and virtual reality projects at the social network.
THE FUNNY PART
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