Social Media Day round-up: 6 updates in social media from this week

Social Media Essentials: Facebook hit a new milestone, Instagram lets you reply live streams and Messenger just got more fun

Firstly, Happy Social Media Day! This day, launched by Mashable eight years ago to recognize and celebrate social media’s impact on global communication. The way social networks impact our personal and professional lives is far greater than many would have anticipated. Each week there are new updates and developments in social media, opening up new opportunities for businesses.

To celebrate all things social, here are 6 updates we saw happen this week that could help inform your social media strategy and help keep you up-to-date with what's happened in the world of social media.

1. Facebook community-building tools

Facebook has rolled out some great new tools for group admins that will help them manage their groups more effectively. The aim of rolling out theses changes are to help group admins and moderators to save time and increase the amount of meaningful content to ensure the groups are adding value for Facebooks users. The first to be launched are analytics, membership request filtering, removed member clean-up, scheduled posts, and group-to-group linking. Find out more about this changes is our full summary here.

2. Instagram adds live video replays

Instagram has introduced live video replays to Instagram Stories for 24 hours with a new Share button found at the bottom of the screen once a broadcast ends. Instagram is also seeing the rise of their popular feature stories. it was reported this week that it has over 250 million daily active users.

3. Snapchat rolls out Snapmap

Although Snapchats daily users are decreases they are trying to keep their users interested with new features. This week they introduced Snapmap. This feature gives users the option to share their current location and location-based content with each other. This is currently being rolled out to all users so watch out. You can also view Snaps of events, celebrations and news from around the world.

4. Facebook hit a new milestone

This week Facebook reached 2 billion users connecting and building communities each month. To celebrate this milestone Facebook are sharing three personalized experiences to say thank you and recognize users making meaning contributions to the platform.

The first will be a video celebrating all the good and love each user has spread from their profile called 'Good adds up'. the second experience is every time a user reacts to a friend’s post with Love, wishes someone happy birthday or creates a group, they will see a message in News Feed thanking them. Lastly, they will be featuring facts about how people are contributing to the community and sharing people's inspiring stories.

5. Spotify bot allows groups to build playlists on Facebook Messenger

Spotify has made an exciting expansion in its Facebook Messenger bot by now allowing groups to build playlists directly from within the Messenger app. Spotify did already allow for collaborative playlists across devices but group playlists is a new concept for them.

6. Messenger just got more fun

Facebook Video chats have some cool new features such as animated reactions, filters, masks and effects, and the ability to take screenshots. You can use these features in one-on-one and group video chats. There are five emoji icons you can use to express your emotions and a range of filters. Messenger video chat now let you capture and share your memories, by tapping the camera icon to take a picture of your video chat and save.

What do you think of Facebooks new group admin tools? Would you find them helpful? Do you think Snapmaps will take off or be a big flop? Let us know what you think and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn. Don't forget to join us next week for another weekly round up.