Time Alerts on Consumption of Facebook and Instagram

Facebook announced on Wednesday, August 1 -Facebook and Instagram will soon let you know just how long you have spent on these social network platforms. As they have a set of time management tools for Facebook and Instagram users. The tools will monitor your time on the networks and will send you control notifications, and also users will be able to set a daily time limit.

Many social media users are aware of how easy it is to open the app to check notifications only to end up spending 20 minutes scrolling through memes, blog posts, and pictures of relatives and watching videos. Today’s new set of tools are just one of the updates the network has launched since CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared that his 2018 goal was to make time on the networks time well-spent, reducing passive consumption and increasing engagement on the networks.

This time management tool will be available in the settings menu on both Facebook and Instagram — on Facebook, the option is called “Your Time on Facebook” while Instagram users can find similar tools by tapping on “Your Activity” from the settings menu. The new feature as on daily bases will display the time you spend on these social network platforms, with a graph chart activity by weekday.

With this new tool the users will get a reminder alert from Facebook or Instagram they’ve reached a set amount of time spent on the network. Facebook isn’t going to shut you down, but it will send you a pop-up notification if you’ve lost track of time scrolling through the news-feed. And if you are not interested in getting the pop-up notification then there is an option to temporarily “Mute Push Notifications” in the settings section.

Early in June the new features were leaked, join a list of changes designed to create less passive consumption and more interaction, including a pop-up button and Instagram’s new notice that “You’re all caught up.”

Facebook and Instagram says, the updates are rolling out soon.”

Snapchat now lets you use speech recognition to animate your face

Getting bored with sticking out your tongue, blinking or raising eyebrow to get that Snapchat Lens to change? Here’s Snapchat’s latest Lenses respond to audible keywords. Rolling out starting Wednesday, August 1, the new Lenses animate will trigger by using specific English words.

As reported by TechCrunch, the new lenses use speech recognition instead of facial recognition to identify when to trigger an animation. By using single-word triggers to animate the augmented reality mask. Saying “OK” for example will bring up the hand symbol in one while saying “love” brings dancing hearts in another. On-screen instructions will let the users know what word will trigger the effect.

Earlier this year the update follows the first audio reactive lenses, but respond to specific words instead of changing with the volume like the lenses was launched this May. Snapchat also has Lenses that play audio and voice-altering options. The voice-activated Lenses join other animated options, like opening your mouth to hurl rainbows or a slabber puppy tongue.

These animated lenses could make videos popular by using the triggered words to add the effect at a certain point in the recording. This also work for taking photos, before, after or during the animation. So there is no requirement to stick your tongue out or raise your eyebrows, all you have to do is smile, pout, duck lip or make whatever expression you can maintain, just after saying the keyword.

“Snapchat says it will begin to make around five to six of these new lenses available to users within the next week. They’ll appear periodically in the Lens carousel along with the others, starting today, Wednesday August 1st.

The lenses will prompt users how to trigger the animation, when launched, Snapchat says.”

Now things going to get more interesting as these lenses can help to keep Snapchat users engaged, and could potentially turn into a technology in future.

 

Do you plan on using this new Snapchat feature or not? Let us know down in the comments below.