In a few minutes, the Earth's Moon will begin its rude obstruction of the Sun, covering much of the central United States in darkness for just a few seconds. Yes, today's the day of the first total solar eclipse to affect the US mainland in over a century, with the next expected in 2024. And the hype is real. It's a big occasion, for scientists wishing to study the Sun's atmosphere, and the common astronomer just wishing to snap a picture or two or to simply say that "they were there". Among the latter, it seems, are America's dogs. In preparation of the...
Instagram is about to give its 700-million users another way to annoy one another through visual replies. According to a blog post, the Facebook-owned social network is tweaking its direct messaging system, allowing users to now "reply with a photo or video to specific photos, videos, and reshared posts". Previously, direct messaging on Instagram was a simple text-and-GIF based affair. The company has allowed users to reply to Instagram Stories using visual media since July 2017, but Instagram hopes the update to direct messaging will encourage more "visual communication" between friends. But here's the kicker. Instagram: you can now reply with a photo or...
The latest in a long list of celebrities to grace Cape Town is American comedian and talk show host Chelsea Handler. The 42-year-old's Instagram timeline has this week been adorned by pictures of the sights and sounds of the Mother City. While she hasn't mentioned exactly why she's in the city -- it isn't quite tourist season yet, after all -- it does seem as though she's enjoying herself. Got moving today when I needed to remind myself that you do no good sitting around and getting angrier. I fucking hate hiking. I don't anymore. #lionshead #capetown A post shared by Chelsea Handler...
British model Chloe Ayling has said Instagram saved her when she was allegedly abducted and held for ransom in Italy. The 20-year-old claims that she was lured to a fake set, but when she arrived in Milan, two men grabbed and drugged her before shoving her into a suitcase. She awoke handcuffed and was told by masked men that she was to be sold on the dark web to the highest bidder. "When the buyer gets tired of the girl he can give them to others or if she’s not longer of interest she’s ‘tiger meat’," one of them told Ayling. Her...
When Instagram Stories launched back in August 2016, the world just couldn't help but chastise Facebook for copying Snapchat's business model. But 12 months on, a quarter-of-a-billion users later, and yet another possible Facebook revenue stream, it looks to be one of the best digital business decisions made this decade. Snapchat isn't exactly a minnow though. The ephemeral messaging app still boasts an admirable userbase of around 166-million. But it isn't growing nearly as quickly as Facebook's version. Instagram Stories has rocketed to 250-million daily users in a year. In celebrating its birthday, Instagram also shed some more revealing light on Stories'...
Digital All Stars is a series of articles which aims to celebrate the best of South African digital. The articles, which will appear on Memeburn and Ventureburn, recognise and celebrate South Africa’s best digital entrepreneurs, business people, advertisers, and media professionals among others. Earlier this year, we took a look at a list of Instagrammers with less than 1000 followers who should seriously have a slew more. In this edition of Digital All Stars, we revisit a previous topic, but instead raise the bar to 2500 followers. Why? For one, we realised that there's a bevy of accounts across Instagram's sprawling...
Travel company Lonely Planet has a good 1.4-million followers on Instagram, and this past weekend they all got a scrumptious taste of Cape Town thanks to an impromptu takeover. Piloted by travel blogger Monica Suma, Lonely Planet's Instagram photo log briefly turned into a carousel of Cape Town's landscapes and landmarks. Reception was positive too. The five uploaded images -- featuring Chapman's Peak Drive, Camps Bay's Twelve Apostles, Hout Bay, Long Street and the newly opened Silo Hotel at the V&A Waterfront -- racked up a combined 54 000 likes. 'Aside from being a landscape paradise, Cape Town is also one of the...
The latest cold front that scurried across South Africa this weekend brought more than just rainfall to the Western Cape. The province, along with parts of the Northern Cape and Eastern Cape, were blanketed in healthy layers of snow. Thanks to the perfect timing of the front, much of the snow fell over the weekend in these provinces. That gave social media users and adventurers an excuse to pack those puffer jackets, smartphones and head out to document the weather. Below are just some of the snaps of South Africa's latest snowfalls taken by Instagrammers. Table Mountain might not get snow often, but...
Beyonce might've been in the news recently courtesy of her husband's new album, but the singer-songwriter-mega social media star today unveiled her one-month-old twins to the world. And yes, they are utterly adorable. The post hit the social network around 5am Friday in South Africa, and subsequently garnered 3.1-million likes, with 137 000 comments to boot. It's on its way to becoming the most-liked post on the network ever, a title held by Beyonce's pregnancy reveal posted in February 2017. "Sir Carter and Rumi 1 month today," reads the post. Sir Carter and Rumi 1 month today. 🙏🏽❤️👨🏽👩🏽👧🏽👶🏾👶🏾 A post shared by Beyoncé (@beyonce) on...
Did Instagram just add a feature that Snapchat doesn't have yet? And is it actually pretty cool? Is it raining? In Cape Town? Okay, probably not, but the first two definitely happened. The Facebook-owned social network has announced a new feature that allows users to reply to stories with photos, videos or even boomerangs. The feature is included in the latest update, and is simple and user-friendly. To use it, users need only tap on the camera icon at the bottom of a story to take a photo or video. The feature includes all the frills of a normal story snap, including face filters,...
Before yesterday, I had a fairly positive view of Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul. Having only watched the pilot episode, I don't have much of an opinion on his acting, but I know a little about him from my days on Tumblr and various other social media platforms. For instance, I know that he was once on US game show The Price is Right, where he emphatically took to the stage to scream his excitement about losing. But my experience on Tumblr and YouTube never accounted for the disappointment I'd receive upon learning of Aaron Paul's Instagram. At first glance, Paul has...
Last week's cold front brought some extreme weather to South Africa's Western Cape. Along with driving rain and gale-force winds in Cape Town, it also drove hot berg winds to the Garden Route, which fuelled the catastrophic Knysna fire. While the latter is now largely under control, there was another weather phenomenon that some took the time to capture with their smartphones and upload online -- snow. People are uploading their weekend snow adventure pictures in the Western Cape on Instagram The Western Cape's higher peaks this weekend -- including the Matroosberg, the Hottentots-Holland and the Hex River Mountains -- were laced...
Snapcha... sorry, I mean Instagram today announced a brand new feature coming to its Stories feature -- face filters. "Today, we’re introducing face filters in the camera, an easy way to turn an ordinary selfie into something fun and entertaining," the company announced on its blog. Users posting pics or videos of themselves to Instagram Stories can now adorn themselves with furry koala ears, nerd glasses, ice-queen crowns and other things deemed to be "dope af". Today, we’re introducing face filters, an easy way to turn an ordinary selfie into something fun and entertaining. Whether you’re sitting on the couch at home...
Usually its Russia that's on the receiving end of bad driving memes and videos, but last Saturday it was a Chinese motorcyclist who made all the wrong headlines. In Nanchang, China, a motorcyclist collided with a truck attempting to turn into a three-lane road. The bike, caught between the truck's cockpit and dump tray, then exploded, setting the motorcyclist on fire. It all looked a lot like a set-piece in a Michael Bay movie. A motorcyclist in China escaped with his life, and a few more Instagram views, after his fiery crash went viral Remarkably, the motorcyclist didn't sustain any "life-threatening injuries" after...
Here's a turn up for the books. If you were expecting Cape Town's Table Mountain, V&A Waterfront or Johannesburg's Sandton City to be the most Instagrammed place in the land, you've got it all wrong. According to Dutch travel company TravelBird, the Kruger National Park takes the honour of South Africa's most Instagram-famous destination. In fact, the country's largest national park is the only South African venue to feature in the world's top 400, ranking at number 49 in TravelBird's survey, and beating the likes of Boston's Fenway Park, Stonehenge and Mount Rushmore. As for the most Instagrammed place on the planet,...
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