Tech This Week: Social Media Apps Celebrate International Women’s Day With New Features

Since the beginning of March, all social media apps are ramping up their preparations and campaigns to provide tools for users to participate in the day that is solely dedicated to celebrating and acknowledging the achievements of women in our lives. 

This year, IWD 2021 campaign theme is #ChooseToChallenge, so some apps chose to highlight challenges facing females, whether they arise from traditional societal structures or financial and educational ones. On the other hand, some apps decided to focus the spotlight on what some successful females accomplished so far and promoting their work.

Also this week, Facebook unveiled a TikTok-like experimental app ? and Twitter walks the talk and dives into paid subscriptions ?. Show of hands if you don't like the idea ?.

Facebook’s Instagram announced its plans to double up live rooms for up to three people. With this much-requested feature, Instagram hopes to create more opportunities for activities as ‘talk show, host a jam session or co-create with other artists, host more engaging Q&As or tutorials with followers, or just hang out with more friends’. 

Aside from that, both Facebook’s Instagram and Messenger are adding new custom sticker sets 'to celebrate the women in your life and encourage conversation around those who’ve paved the way in their communities'. Also, Facebook will feature stats about women initiatives launched during the pandemic.​ 

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Also, Facebook revealed a new rap music app called BARS. The app will allow users to create and share their raps to professional beats by their favorite rap artists.

In celebration of International Women's Day, Pinterest decided to empower women by displaying their work on Pinterest Shop. 

Also, Pinterest announced the creation of an International Women’s Day fund to donate to organizations that support women affected by the pandemic.

To check out the new Pinterest Shop collection click here.

In celebration of Women's History Month, TikTok said it will highlight female content creators on its platform.

Also, throughout March, TikTok will ‘focus on different themes around embracing and celebrating the diverse and growing community of women on TikTok’. You can visit TikTok’s Women's History Month page to see the program's details and featured creators.

Like we said before, Twitter’s free era might be over soon as the company announced the rollout of its first paid subscription feature called ‘Superfollow’. With this feature, users will have to pay to check out tweets from their favorite content creators.

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“Superfollow” will combine the community trends of Discord, the newsletter insights of Substack, the audio chat rooms of Clubhouse, and the creator support of Patreon into a creator subscription, according to TechCrunch.

On a side note, Twitter continues to fight the infodemic by putting vaccine misinformation warning labels on tweets that spread rumors. 

Famous video game digital distribution service, Steam, will allow users to share all the games from their PC to practically anyone who doesn't have a Steam account, anywhere, for free. 

^{Image Credits: Steam}

• Nintendo just released first Wii update since 2018 - March 1st
• Fortnite to feature Batman’s next comic series in a crossover [PS5, Xbox Series X, PC] - April 20th
• Apex Legends [Switch] – March 9, 2021
• Final Fantasy XIV [PS5]  - April 13, 2021
• Resident Evil 8: Village [PS5, Xbox Series X, PC] on May 7, 2021

Feb. 23-25: Mobile World Congress [Shanghai]

March 2-4: Microsoft Ignite [Virtual]

May 11-12: IBM Think 2021 [Virtual]