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In what will hopefully become a regular feature I look at some of the top stories from the world of digital and social media over the past seven days.

Facebook Bluetooth Beacons.

Facebook have announced the launch of their own Bluetooth Beacons. These neat little boxes represent one of the latest devices entering the race to make the physical web a reality.

Facebook’s beacon will allow businesses with a physical location to to engage with people visiting the business. When customers visit a business they’ll be prompted over Bluetooth to open Facebook and will see a greeting, place tips and other useful information about the business.

This will be particularly useful to those businesses in the hospitality, tourism and service industry where customers are keen to share their experiences and interact with the business online.

To sign up, or find out more, check out the link below:
https://www.facebook.com/business/a/facebook-bluetooth-beacons

Twitter will remove the 140 character limit from Direct messages.

Have you ever written a message on Twitter and realised that you haven’t said everything you have wanted to say? If so that’s about to change (well for those making direct contact anyway).

Twitter is changing the character limit from 140 to 10,000 characters in direct messaging. This will be particularly useful for businesses using the platform as part of their customer service strategy, who may in the past have struggled to deal with the customer’s need directly without moving over to email or call.

Read more about the change here:
http://metro.co.uk/2015/06/12/twitter-to-remove-140-character-limit-from-direct-messaging-5243018/

Ad’s on Instagram.

Instagram has made changes to its advertising targeting options, bringing over a lot of audience targeting features already found on Facebook. However, if you’re in the UK you’ll need to wait as Instagram ads haven’t launched here yet, although they’re expected to be making their way to the UK later in the year.

Read more:
http://blog.business.instagram.com/post/120537653811/the-next-steps-for-ads-on-instagram-new-formats

The power of Apple Keynote.

It’s that time of the year where many of the big players make announcements about their upcoming plans for improvements over the coming weeks, months and years. Perhaps the biggest of those events is the Apple Keynote.

This year Apple have announced they are making key changes to their software, making Safari more powerful and more advanced. They are going to make “Mission Control” smoother, faster and easier to use. Siri is going to have some new features making hands free a better experience and you’d never want to leave home without your phone as Apple pay is coming to the UK. (Finally I here many of you say!)

Apple Keynotes have a certain way of going on a bit, so to save you the ear ache we found this under 3 minute cut of the key announcements the best was to get the key points without too much of the hype.

Watch:
http://www.cultofmac.com/326283/apple-wwdc-2015-keynote-in-just-two-and-a-half-minutes/

Pinterest.

Last but not least – Buyable pins will be coming to Pinterest. Now that’s Pinteresting!

Read all about it here:
https://about.pinterest.com/en/buy-it

I hope you’ve found this post interesting, of course please feel free to add your own links and stories in the comments below.