News Bytes and Blogs _

Cannes Lions, a communal event to celebrate the creativity of this world, will honour Mary Wells Lawrence with the coveted Lion of St Mark award this year. She is the founder of Wells Rich Greene in the year 1966, which is touted as one of the first agencies to be found, owned and run by a woman. Lawrence was the first female CEO to be traded on the big board of the New York Stock Exchange. Instituted in 2011, Lion of St Mark is an award facilitated each year at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for a lifetime of services to creativity in communications.

Snapchat’s new features to facelift advertising in the platform

Snapchat has announced a raft of new features with more emphasis given on advertising. One of the major features is the ‘Snap Original’ running exclusive shows for the audience. The ‘Happening Now’ feature will connect the users with the latest breaking news. The new Snapchat Action Bar will highlight the prominence of the content, foregrounding features like Discover and Snap Map. Experts say that this will help advertisers to run video ads. Snap Map will have business listings as a way to promote small businesses. The landmark technology is evolved for better shared AR experience. Snapchat has expanded its Creative Kit to include AR with dynamic lenses as well.

Facebook introduces new knowledge panel like information boxes

Facebook has introduced a new panel like feature ‘knowledge boxes’ that pops into the user search queries. The information will be sourced from Wikipedia, enabling users to look up to entities without having to leave the platform. The feature is not limited to just entities, but even a search non-entities are listed in these boxes and redirected to the respective pages upon clicking. By providing more information that users typically find only on search engines, Facebook is finding a way to retain their users on their platform. From a brand perspective, businesses can gain more exposure as their information is available on Facebook even when they don’t have a dedicated Facebook account.

Google My Business launches ‘Extra Hours’ for local businesses

As business starts to reopen, Google My Business has introduced a new feature to give local businesses more flexibility with their business hours. Business can now set up “more hours” in Google My Business with special times for seniors, pickup, kitchen, and more. They can even set these hours by day of the week and multiple times per day. This will give more flexibility for the business to streamline their operations after resuming and make sure that they implement regulations on the sideline of Covid-19. The feature has specific services or specials like access, brunch, delivery, drive-through, happy hours, senior hours, and takeout as special categories for adding the extra time.

WhatsApp testing new feature that lets you search for messages by date

WhatsApp is reportedly gearing up to add a new search option in chat windows, wherein users will be able to search for messages by date. The feature is said to be in the earliest, alpha stages of development, so it is likely that it will not come to your devices any time soon. However, as and when it does, it can be a big improvement particularly for those who regularly use WhatsApp at their workplaces. As of now, the initial report says that the search by date feature is being worked on for WhatsApp for iOS. However, WhatsApp is known for maintaining parity between its Android and iOS apps, so when it releases, it will likely be for both versions of the messaging app.