10 social media features you're probably not using

Did you know that you could tag people on Twitter?

Or that you could download your friends' profile photos on WhatsApp?

Here are some interesting features of Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp that you're probably not aware of.

Facebook

You can change your username

Facebook has now made it easy for a user to change their Facebook page's username.

Any administrator can now change the page's URL directly from the Page.

To change the URL, one has to go to their Facebook page, click 'Edit Page>Update Info, fill in Basic Information and 'Change Username'.

Note: The user can however change it only one single time.

Unfortunately, if a user has more than 200 Likes they cannot change the overall name of the Page

You can change your 'Voice'

There is a new tab on Facebook pages, in the menu bar called 'Voice'.

The add-on of this tab is a pretty subtle change, but it helps to stop users from getting confused about whether they're engaging as themselves or a page.

It gives you the option of be liking, commenting and interacting as the page or yourself.

Twitter

You can tag up to people in a tweet

Twitter allows you to tag upto 10 people every time you add a new photo to a tweet.

These tags don't count against your 140 characters.

The tagging option can be found just below the compose box for your tweet.

You could mute an account

If you aren't really interested in knowing the details from a certain account or receive too many spams on your newsfeed, rather than opting to unfollow someone, you could mute the account for as long as you'd like.

This feature is quite helpful for those looking to maintain a low profile online.

Click on the 'More' drop-down and choose 'Mute' from the list of options.

You can share more than one photo in a single tweet

Sharing up to four photos in a single tweet is now an added feature of Twitter.

When composing a tweet, upload an image and then click on the 'Add more' option to keep adding more images.

You can organise your tweets 

Collections -- a new type of timeline on Twitter.

It gives you more control over how tweets are organised and delivered on the platform.

You can create the collection; give it a name, and select which tweets you wish to add -- manually or by using the API (Application Program Interface).

Collections have their own pages on Twitter.com, are public, and can easily be embedded on your website.

WhatsApp

You need not update your new phone number

On getting a new data SIM, there's no need of registering the new number and adding contacts to WhatsApp.

All you need is to carry on using WhatsApp with your previous number.

When you activate WhatsApp with the new SIM, you'll be prompted by the messaging service to register the new number.

You can just ignore the pop-up or cancel it, and your WhatsApp should work linked to your old number, while using your new data SIM.

You can get rid of blue tick marks

WhatsApp had recently released the new read receipts feature that shows a blue checkmark when someone sees your message, which resulted in quite a big backlash against it.

To recover from this backlash, they have released an update for WhatsApp.

This feature is however only currently available to Android users who are on the all new beta version of the app.

You have to download the beta and head to your Android phone's settings, enable Unknown Sources to install the APK file as it's not in the Google Play Store yet.

Users can just access Privacy via Settings and disable Read Receipts.

You can recover old messages

Sometimes, we delete the conversation and later on realise that we should not have deleted that message.

To recover the deleted conversation, there are two tips for WhatsApp users:

To recover messages that are 7 or less days older, you will have to re-install (uninstall and then install the WhatsApp).

During the re-installation process, WhatsApp will prompt you to restore.

After clicking restore, you will get all your deleted messages.

You can download your friends' profile pictures

WhatsApp does not allow anyone to download the profile picture.

But, there is a WhatsApp trick that can help you do this easily.

First navigate to SD Card > Whatsapp > Profile Pictures.

The folder has every profile picture that has been checked.

Photo: Reuters

The author Zafar Rais is founder and CEO at Mindshift Interactive.