Google is preparing to deploy a major update to Gmail, one that will start rolling out next week and progress over the next few months.
Gmail is the world’s most popular email platform, with some 1.8 billion users, according to TechJury. The service accounts for over a quarter of all opened email, or 27%. Needless to say, given how popular the service is, Google doesn’t take Gmail updates lightly.
The company plans to begin deploying a new integrated view, beginning February 8.
We’re introducing a new, integrated view for Gmail, making it easy to move between critical applications like Gmail, Chat and Meet in one unified location.
Initially, users will be able to opt-in to the new experience. Beginning April 2022, however, the new integrated view will be the default, although users can still go back to the legacy view if they prefer. At the end of Q2 2022, the new view will be standard and the company will no longer provide an option to revert back to the previous layout.
Popular chat and social media app WeChat, known as Weixin in China, has announced it is suspending new subscriptions as it deploys a security upgrade.
WeChat is wildly popular in China, and among Chinese populations around the world. Owned by Tencent, the app was the target of the Trump administration over security concerns, before earning a reprieve under the Biden administration.
The company says the security upgrade is necessary to bring the app into compliance with local laws and regulations, and will prevent new subscriptions while in progress. The upgrade is expect to be finished in August.
“We are currently upgrading our security technology to align with all relevant laws and regulations,” the company told Reuters.
“During this time, registration of new Weixin personal and official accounts has been temporarily suspended. Registration services will be restored after the upgrade is complete, which is expected in early August,” it added.
Twitch is rolling out threaded chat replies, in an effort to help individuals better communicate in chaotic chat threads.
Twitch is a popular streaming platform that gamers, ASMR aficionados and others use to stream their activities. The platform includes a chat option for fans to communicate with each other and the content creator.
Unfortunately, when thousands of people are watching a stream and chatting, the chat window can quickly become chaotic. Twitch is now working to address that problem by rolling out threaded chat replies.
Chat Replies help you keep the conversation going, even when chat is going off.
Try out new message threads, keyboard shortcuts and more, now available to all communities on Twitch.
Discord has ended talks with Microsoft — over the latter attempting to buy the chat platform — and will focus on going public instead, according to reports.
Discord got its start as a place for gamers to chat and communicate. The platform is especially popular as gamers play competitively, or in games that require coordinating large numbers of participants. In the wake of the pandemic, however, Discord has been rebranding itself as a general purpose chat app, as opposed to strictly one for gaming.
The company was in discussions with Microsoft for the Redmond-based company to purchase it. The combination seemed like a good fit for both parties, especially with Microsoft’s Xbox platform and gaming focus.
The talks have ended, however, with Discord rejecting a $12 billion bid from Microsoft. According to Bloomberg, the company will now focus on going public.
Representatives of both companies declined to provide Bloombergwith a statement.
Discord is working on repositioning itself as a chat platform, rather than a gaming messaging platform.
As millions of people have been sheltering in place, working from home and relying on communication tools to keep in touch, chat and video conferencing apps have become all the rage. While Discord started out as a messaging platform for gamers, it would appear it is growing far beyond that and moving into the general communication space.
In a blog post, CEO Jason Citron said the company has spent the last year finding out what mattered most to its users. Based on that information, it quickly became apparent that many individuals were using Discord to be part of an online community, engage in meaningful conversation and have a place to belong.
“You came to us and said Discord was this place. And for millions of you, it already felt like a home,” writes Citron.
“Today, many of you use Discord for day-to-day communication. You’re sharing thoughts about books, music, and art, creating servers to just be yourself and share moments with friends. Since we launched in 2015, Discord has grown to more than 100 million monthly active users. You spend 4 billion minutes in conversation daily across 6.7 million active servers. On a weekly basis, that’s 26 billion server conversation minutes across 13.5 million active servers.”
Citron then goes on to highlight the changes Discord is making to keep up with the way people are using it. These changes include improving the branding to focus on chat, making Discord “hostile to hate” and improving the onboarding experience.
It’s a safe bet that Discord will probably continue to grow and benefit from this move, especially as digital communication is more important than ever.
Secure messaging app Signal has added the ability to transfer one’s chat history on iOS devices.
Signal is a popular messaging app that is widely considered to be the most secure messaging platform available. It is used by Edward Snowden, and even Senate staff are encouraged to use it.
One glaring issues on iOS has been the inability to transfer your chat history to a new device. Instead, moving to a new device meant leaving behind all your Signal threads (this writer can personally attest to how frustrating it was). Now, however, it seems Signal has finally brought this feature to iOS.
“Signal iOS now includes a new feature that makes it possible to switch to a brand-new iPhone or iPad while securely transferring Signal information from your existing iOS device,” writes Nora Trapp on Signal’s blog. “As with every new Signal feature, the process is end-to-end encrypted and designed to protect your privacy. Transfers also occur over a local connection (similar to AirDrop), so even large migrations can be completed quickly.”
The only caveat is the transfer process requires access to the old phone, so it won’t work if it has been sold, lost or stolen. As long as you still have the old phone, however, simply install Signal on the new phone and go through the registration process. After entering your number, the app will ask if you want to transfer your messages from your old device. If you opt to migrate, your old phone will provide a migration prompt, while the new phone will generate a QR code. Scan the QR code on the new phone with the old one and the transfer will begin.
This is excellent news for Signal fans and eliminates one of the few pain points associated with having the most secure communication possible.
Despite a heated rivalry, Slack has announced support for Microsoft Teams calls.
Slack and Microsoft Teams are vying for control of the corporate messaging market. Teams boasts the larger user base, while Slack prides itself on having more engaged users. Both platforms have their unique advantages. Teams benefits from being part of Microsoft’s software ecosystem. Slack, on the other hand, is quickly setting itself apart as the option for companies who compete with Microsoft and are reluctant to rely on the software giant for their communications.
In a move few would have expected, Slack has announced that it now supports Microsoft Teams calls, eliminating one more reason why some users might migrate away from Slack. Now, in organizations where different departments use different options, the newfound interoperability should help ensure Slack doesn’t become an extraneous platform.
As the company’s description highlights, individuals can “bring video conferencing where your team is already working in Slack, from launching a call to joining meetings directly from event reminders.”
This is a good move on Slack’s part and should further solidify its place in the corporate messaging world.
Facebook has announced the release of a native Messenger app for both Windows and macOS.
While users could access Messenger via their web browser, the new apps will allow users to benefit from a desktop environment, including larger screens and multitasking. As an added benefit, messages sync across mobile and desktop devices.
“Now more than ever, people are using technology to stay in touch with the people they care about, even when physically apart,” writes Stan Chudnovsky, VP of Messenger. “Over the past month, we saw more than a 100% increase in people using their desktop browser for audio and video calling on Messenger. Now with apps for MacOS and Windows, the best of Messenger is coming to desktop, including unlimited and free group video calls.”
Facebook hopes the new apps will make it easier for people to stay in touch at a time when social media and digital connections are more important than ever.
Microsoft just announced a bevy of new features for Microsoft Teams, bringing Outlook integration, targeted communication, new files experience and more.
Microsoft is currently battling Slack for dominance in the corporate messaging space. Slack has recently netted some high-profile customers, driven in part by companies who compete with Microsoft not wanting to be dependent on their software. On the other hand, Microsoft has at least double Slack’s user base and touts Teams’ deep integration with the rest of their software as a key advantage.
With this latest round of updates, that integration is front-and-center, starting with Outlook.
“Teams is the hub for getting work done with your team—but we know that that is not the only way people communicate,” writes Marissa Salazar. “We have built this new integration between Outlook and Teams to make it easy to collaborate no matter where the conversation is taking place. The user can move an email conversation from Outlook, including attachments, into a Teams chat or channel conversation by clicking on the ‘Share to Teams’ in Outlook. They can also share a conversation from Teams to an Outlook email by clicking on the more options (‘…’) icon in a conversation.”
The update also brings targeted communication, allowing team members to use @mentions to send communication to everyone assigned to a particular tag. The update also rolls out the new SharePoint-based file experience to all users. Another interesting feature is live captions in Teams meetings, which should help “those who are deaf or hard of hearing, have different levels of language proficiency, or are connecting from loud locations.”
All-in-all, the February update includes a number of significant improvements that are sure to help Microsoft continue gaining new users.
In a big win for Slack, Business Insider (BI) is reporting that IBM is deploying the messaging app to all of its 350,000 employees.
Slack is locked in a rivalry with Microsoft Teams, with the two companies battling for the corporate messaging market. Microsoft Teams recently doubled Slack’s user base, and has kept the pressure up with TV ads. In spite of Microsoft’s momentum, however, IBM has chosen Slack as its messaging app of choice. This, in turn, helps Slack make the case that it can compete with Microsoft on the largest scale, in the most mission-critical environments.
“Going wall to wall in IBM — it’s basically the maximum scale that there is, so we now know that Slack will work for literally the largest organizations in the world,” Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield told BI.
Konrad Lagarde, director of IBM Toolbox, told BI that one of the reasons IBM went with Slack was their willingness to meet IBM’s needs. When Lagarde first starting using the app, teams were limited to 2,000 individuals. With some departments larger than that, IBM needed an app that could scale better and Slack was willing to add the necessary features.
IBM also likely chose Slack over Microsoft Teams as a result of increasing competition between the two computing giants. Microsoft is second in the U.S. cloud market, and IBM has increasingly staked its future on moving into the cloud. In fact, IBM’s recent earnings were buoyed by its cloud business. Just as many retail companies are turning to Microsoft rather than relying their prime competitor Amazon, IBM probably wants to avoid relying on a company it directly competes with.
Either way, today’s announcement is good news for Slack and will likely help the company continue to attract business, both large and small.
Video meetings, persistent team chat, and consistent in-person connections are all important for keeping a connected feeling with remote employees, says Lisa Walker, Vice President of Brand & Corporate Marketing at Fuze. “Remote employees will always talk about how they feel disconnected from HQ and disconnected from the company,” notes Walker. “That’s just one of the things you always hear from people who are remote.”
There is Just a More Personal Connection With Video
What’s really interesting in managing a distributed team is the importance of video meetings. We know that if a leader turns on video then the rest of the employees on the call will turn on video as well. You have to lead by example there. The nice thing about video is that you are seeing everybody. There is just a more personal connection when you are able to see everyone.
What I say to both managers and employees participating in video call is that it is all about creating the perfect frame. You don’t have to have a clean house, but you have to have a clean shot of yourself in the video. There is kind of a personal brand here. If you have a large team on a video conference from around the country or around the world, everyone has that opportunity to present a personal brand moment. You should be curating at least one good frame. There could be chaos around that frame but there is an opportunity for you to be consistent on that weekly team call.
Video Meetings Help Remote Teams Feel Connected
Every time that team call happens and that video flips on you know what you are getting from people. That’s what we are talking about in terms of work mode. You have to create environments where you can be productive. One of those important environments is video. I think it is really important as a manager to have those video meetings. In those video meetings when you get together, start with a few of those conversations that are more personal and then segway into company updates.
Remote employees will always talk about how they feel disconnected from HQ and disconnected from the company. That’s just one of the things you always hear from people who are remote. Make sure that you are getting ahead of things your team may be hearing about the company. It’s important that you give a very transparent company update when starting a video call. Then get into the team stuff. Just do those first two things off the bat to make sure the team is feeling connected.
Keep a Persistent Team Chat Going
Second, for me is chat. Some people do it over Slack. We obviously here do it over Fuze. There are lots of different tools out there. Keeping a persistent team chat going in that asynchronous communication is just a great way to have the team feel bonded. They will talk about personal and professional in that chat stream and that’s fine. For specific projects where it needs to be more formal, you can create those project chat streams that are separate.
Fuze Team Chat Platform
Bring People Together In Person
The third thing, which is the hardest, because it cost more money, is bringing people together in person as often as you can. For us, within the marketing team at Fuze, we do that twice a year at a minimum. We just did that this past week. It was wonderful. We had our sales kickoff and then we stayed together as a marketing team yesterday and had that time together. Make sure that you are finding those opportunities and making the case for budget if you need to.
The other thing that a lot of managers don’t do and is a potential missed opportunity is that when you are out in other cities meeting with customers or at a conference if you have an employee within striking distance, meet them. Even if there is no office there, take them to coffee or lunch. Take those opportunities, don’t just fly in and out. If you have employees in that region, find a way to go have a personal connection with them and meet face to face.
Fuze sees itself as part of the future of work movement. Digital technologies are generating significant opportunities for both people and companies alike. Employees are demanding consumer-like experiences to match technology in their personal lives, with greater flexibility on where and how they work. Work is personal and employees want the opportunity to choose their workstyles, schedules, and tools.
Facebook has a new app for business chat called Work Chat, which is part of its Facebook at Work program.
You have to have a Facebook at Work account to use the app, and right now, those are only available to select companies.
If you do have one, however, you can use the app to send messages to co-workers or create group chats with multiple co-workers.
The app makes use of Facebook’s chat heads, so you can keep up with conversations as you use other apps. The app also provides a directory of other employees from which you can easily start new conversations.
The ability to turn off notifications is included.
One of the biggest criticisms of Facebook at Work when it first launched was a lack of features like this, so this is certainly a step in the right direction. It likely still has a long way to go to catch up to services like Slack when it comes to team communication, but Facebook turning Messenger into a platform should help a great deal with that as well.
While Facebook’s app is Android only for right now, TechCrunch reports that the iOS version is on the way.
Does Twitter need a group chat feature? Would you use it?
According to the company’s CFO, group chat is one of the functions high up on their future innovation list. Speaking at the Citi Global Technology Conference in New York, Twitter’s Anthony Noto hinted that the company is looking into direct messaging between multiple users – clearly Twitter’s foray into group chat. As of now, users can only direct message one other user at a time.
In the context of discussing a football game, Noto had this to say, per The Wall Street Journal:
“I’m not sure I want to have (that) conversation in front of my boss and the rest of the 271m global users. I might want to take that to a private setting which you can do through direct messaging. Today you can only do that one to one as opposed to one to many. So that’s an example of innovation around sharing or expression that we can pursue over time.”
In other news from Noto’s talk, Twitter’s head of product has apparently put search at the forefront of his priorities.
“If you think about our search capabilities we have a great data set of topical information about topical tweets, the hierarchy within search really has to lend itself to that taxonomy,” said Noto. He went on to say Twitter needs “an algorithm that delivers the depth and breadth of the content we have on a specific topic and then eventually as it relates to people.”
Messaging is big right now. Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion dollars. Snapchat is reportedly worth $10 billion. Facebook just unbundled and turned a lot of its focus to a standalone messenger app. Every day, millions of people use Twitter to communicate – but mostly publicly. It sort of makes sense for Twitter to want to give its users a way to chat privately and more efficiently.
Google announced some improvements to Hangouts chat in Gmail. This includes Google Apps for Business and Education users.
Users will now see an updated user interface in their conversation list. This includes status markers as green bubbles. Also, the displayed contacts are in order of most recent chats.
The new version also includes recent conversation snippets and a new contact search button.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Puli (a type of Hungarian Sheepdog) has to be one of the most popular dogs in the world – at least one of the most “liked.” Back in 2011, Beast Zuckerberg got his own Facebook page (in clear violation of Facebook terms, hrmph). And since then, he’s racked up over 1.5 million likes.
Every now and then Beast (or mom & dad, perhaps) will post a nice little update of the dog doing sheepdog-like things – like sheep herding, for instance.
But now, it seems as though Facebook has integrated Beast into one of its products.
You can now download a sticker pack featuring Beast the dog inside Facebook Messages for iOS and Android.
You know – stickers. Those chat emoticons on steroids that Zuck and crew unveiled back in April alongside chat heads. You can access stickers by tapping the little smiley face inside the message box when you’re chatting on mobile.
And you can downloaded additional sticker packs for free – now Beast is one of those packs:
Now that’s cute. Unnecessary? You betcha. But it’s so damn adorable.
Some users are seeing a new notification when they open up a chat window today – Facebook notifying them that they can now send photos in chat.
“New! Send a Photo in Chat. Choose an image to send instantly,” reads the message.
Clicking on the camera icon allows you to upload images from your computer. The photo recipient will be able to click the photo inside the chat box and it will open up in original resolution.
I’ve reached out to Facebook to confirm that this is rolling out wide and I’ll update this article when I hear back.
Facebook is testing a new way to let users know which of their friends are online and available for chat.
We’ve seen some version of this indicator all over the place for years, but the newest home for Facebook’s green dot indicator seems to be directly in the news feed. Appearing right next to the users’ name inside a news feed story, Facebook’s green dot lets users know that the person is online and ready for messaging. Here’s what it looks like:
We spotted this test on an account that has the new news feed, and were unable to find a similar icon inside the mobile news feed. I’ve reached out to Facebook for comment and will update when I hear back.
UPDATE: Facebook confirms that they are running a limited test to put “presence dots” in the news feed. For now, that test is only for desktop.
You may recognize that little green dot from Facebook’s chat sidebar on both desktop and mobile. There, the green dot for availability is accompanied by a mobile device icon that signifies that the user has Facebook for iOS or Android downloaded, so they have the ability to see messages on their phones.
Way back in 2011, Facebook added the chat indicator next to users’ names on their profiles (the old profiles, way before Timeline).
Are you snapping ephemeral photos with the Snapchat app? If not, you may be quickly becoming the minority.
Apparently, Snapchat is processing more photos daily than Instagram. And not just more – nearly four times as many.
The figure was announced today by Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel at the D: Dive Into Mobile conference put on by All Things D.
According to Spiegel, Snapchat is moving upwards of 150 million photos across the network every day. If you compare that to another popular photo-sharing service like Instagram, you find that Snapchat is moving a significantly more amount of total photos. Instagram currently boasts 40 million photos taken per day.
Of course, Instagram and Snapchat are very different services. Instagram is about long-lasting photos, ones that can be liked, commented upon, and browsed in a social networking frame. Snapchat, on the other hand, is a lot more focused on person-to-person communication.
If you’re unfamiliar with Snapchat, the premise is quite simple – but rather ingenious. Users can send short photos or videos to other users – self-deleting photos or videos being the most important aspect. Users can designate exactly how long they want the photo or video to stay viewable, after which time it will disappear. The app even notifies the sender if the recipient tried to make the communication more than ephemeral by taking a screenshot.
When it first launched, Snapchat defended itself against allegations that it was simply an app for sexting. On its face, it does appear like the perfect sort of app to send sexts without the fear of permanence. And believe me, I’m sure that there is plenty of that going on. But with 150 million photos taken daily, it’s clear that Snapchat is more a serious player and less of a niche sexting app.
Earlier this year, it became clear that Facebook saw Snapchat as a competitor when they released their “Poke” app. To say that the Poke app is heavily inspired by Snapchat is putting it the best way possible.
Oh, and speaking of Facebook, they say that they see “more than 300 million photos uploaded every day.” By that figure, Snapchat is seeing nearly half of what Facebook sees every day. Now that’s incredible.
Facebook is currently testing a new look to chat on desktop – one that looks nearly identical to the way chat appears on the Facebook Messenger app.
The new design has blue and white chat bubbles, instead of the simple text that users currently see. According to AllFacebook, Facebook looks to be testing the new desktop chat for a small set of international users.
Facebook has just announced an update to their iOS app, the first major update since they launched version 5.0 back in August.
Version 5.1 of Facebook for iOS brings multiple photo sharing and a bunch of chat-oriented updates.
Now, users can access their chat list in two new ways. First, there’s now a button on the top right of the app. Second, users can swipe to the left to pull over their chat list. So, swipe right for navigation menu, and swipe left for chat list. With this update, Facebook for iOS now mimics Facebook on desktop.
Once you’ve accessed the chat list, you can now edit the order of your friends to put your most-talked-to buddies at the top. Each friend also sports an online indicator that lets you know if they are currently available or tells you how long they’ve been active but idle (on mobile).
Finally, Facebook brings Facebook Gifts to iOS. It’s been available on Android for some time. The caveat here is that this is only for U.S. users and you must already be a part of the small Facebook Gifts test in order to have the functionality on mobile. Facebook is currently working on rolling Gifts out to more users.
Back in August, Facebook released a completely rebuilt app with version 5.0. The app abandoned HTML-5 and instead opted for Objective-C, looking to combat the criticism that the old app was clunky, slow, and unusable at times. Within a few weeks, the app’s star rating had jumped from 1.5 stars to 4 stars thanks to the redesign.
With the old Facebook Messages layout, all of your messages were laid out in descending order (most recent at the top). When you clicked on a particular thread, you were taken to a different page where the message thread was displayed. Facebook has just announced that you’ll no longer have to navigate back and forth between your inbox and your actual messages.
The side-by-side view is one of the improvement that’s part of the newest update to Facebook messages. Now, your inbox will appear on the lef-hand side, and you actual message threads on the right. Everything on the same page – awesome.
Facebook has also added multiple photo functionality to messages, as well as emoticons.
Also coming along with this update: better search and navigation. You can now search by user name and keyword as well as utilize new keyboard commands.
