SOCIAL
Instagram’s Testing a New Set of Animated Selfie Stickers for Stories

Instagram looks to be testing yet another Stories addition, with Twitter user Václav Blahout sharing these images of a new, animated selfie sticker tool that overlays graphics and effects related to different emoji characters on top of your image.
The option is available (to those who can access it) via a new ‘Selfie’ sticker option, and the rounded, selfie stickers can be applied as many times as you like within a Stories frame.

If it does get a wider release, it would be another creative consideration for your Stories. And it looks impressive – you can imagine that it will prove popular, if, again, it does, in fact, end up getting the green light.
Blahout is based in the Czech Republic, so the new function may only be available in certain regions, or to selected users, at this stage (we’ve asked Instagram if they can provide any info on this).
The new sticker adds to the growing list of Instagram Stories features being pumped out by the app – in the first three months of 2020 alone, Instagram has:
Given the rising use of all social platforms amid the current lockdowns, it makes sense for each app to be pushing out new tools and tests now, in order to gauge and maximize interest. It’ll be interesting to see, then, which of them takes hold, and becomes a more popular, useful element – and which tests fade out, never to be heard from again.
Either way, there are now a lot more creative options for your Stories updates.
We’ll update this post if/when we receive more info.
SOCIAL
Jack Dorsey Exits Twitter Board, Clearing the Way for the Elon Musk Era at the App

While there’s no new news on the Elon Musk takeover saga, we do have another reminder that Twitter’s leadership team is never going to be the same, regardless of what comes next, with co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey today leaving the Twitter board, effective immediately.
Dorsey’s full exit removes another big chunk of experience from the company – over the past two weeks, Twitter has lost:
- Consumer product leader Kayvon Beykpour, who’d worked at Twitter for four years
- Head of revenue product Bruce Falck (5 years)
- Ilya Brown, a VP of product management (6 years)
- Katrina Lane, VP of Twitter Service (1 year)
- Max Schmeiser, head of data science (2 years)
That said, Dorsey’s move, isn’t a surprise.
Back in November, when Dorsey announced that he was standing down as Twitter CEO, he also noted that he would stay on Twitter’s board till around ‘May-ish’ to help incoming CEO Parag Agrawal and incoming Twitter Board chair Bret Taylor with their respective transitions.
Of course, back then, Dorsey couldn’t have predicted the chaos on the horizon, but despite the distractions of an imminent takeover, Dorsey has decided to stick with his original plan, and step away from the platform that he helped build.
That clears the path for a new era under Elon Musk, who has vowed to make significant changes to the way that Twitter operates – though of late, Musk seems to be more distracted by stats on population decline and political conspiracies than he does in completing the Twitter deal.
On May 13th, Musk said that his Twitter takeover offer was effectively ‘on hold’ pending more data from Twitter on its fake profile count, which it pegs at 5% of active users. Many users have since shared partial evidence that, in their opinion, proves that this number is not correct, while Twitter itself has maintained that there’s no such thing as ‘on hold’ in the takeover process, and that it’s preparing for the deal to close sometime soon.
Musk says that he won’t pay full price for something that’s not what he believed he was purchasing.
But then again, Musk also waived doing detailed due diligence on Twitter’s business, in order to reach an agreement faster, which means that he may be tied to the purchase anyway, regardless of what Twitter or anyone else may find here.
For his part, Dorsey has been a strong advocate for Musk, and his interest in Twitter, and has noted several times that he believes Musk is the best option to ‘save’ the company.
Elon’s goal of creating a platform that is “maximally trusted and broadly inclusive” is the right one. This is also @paraga’s goal, and why I chose him. Thank you both for getting the company out of an impossible situation. This is the right path…I believe it with all my heart.
— jack (@jack) April 26, 2022
Now Dorsey is getting out of the way to let that happen, which will mean that none of Twitter’s four founders remain in any position to advise or guide the platform in any direct capacity from now on.
That could be a good thing. Twitter, of course, is a far cry from what it was in the beginning, and maybe now it needs to detach from its founding concepts to reach its next stage.
But again, that’s a lot of experience heading out the door, with current CEO Agrawal also on the chopping block, according to Musk’s statements.
How that impacts Twitter’s future direction is hard to say. Again, Musk has already flagged significant changes, but without experienced voices advising him on what’s happened in the past, he could be doomed to repeat previous mistakes, impeding the company’s progress even more.
Or maybe it makes things easier, without the constraints of past limitations holding things up. I would lean towards the former, but clearly, Musk has his own ideas about how he’s going to transform the app, once he does, eventually, take control.
Which seems like more of a ‘when’ than ‘if’, but maybe Musk has some other trick up his sleeve to either reduce his offer price or get out of the Twitter deal entirely.
Either way, massive changes are coming to the app, which could alter the way that it’s used entirely.
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