Social Media News – Week of 6/22
Twitter is testing new ways to make it easier to discover products and places.
Two weeks ago, there were four changes to the major social media platforms. Last week, there were seventeen. This week, we’re maintaining that influx of changes, with the major platforms facing fourteen new changes. We’ll be covering each of these in this blog post, so read on to find out more.
1. Good news for brands that advertise on Facebook: Facebook is rolling out substantial upgrades to Ads Manager and Power Editor. These changes include new data, date range adjustments, more performance data, and an enhanced editing capability. Learn more here.
2. Do you ever feel like your best friends get lost in a sea of constant Facebook updates? This has been an issue on Facebook for a while, but the platform is looking to fix this with its latest update, “See First.” This new feature allows users to select profiles and Pages that they want to see at the top of their Facebook feed.
3. Recently, Facebook has become a better platform for finding and reading breaking news and trending stories. Previously, it was only easy for users to find and follow Pages that published stories; now it will be easy for users to find and follow specific authors. Facebook’s newest feature, “Author Tags,” will make it much easier for users to find quality content written by authors that they enjoy.
4. If you’ve tagged people in photos recently, you’ve likely noticed the fact that Facebook often recognizes and suggests people by selecting a face without being prompted with a name. Impressive, right? Prepare to be even more impressed: Facebook has developed a way to recognize people even if their faces are obstructed; the platform can now recognize people based on clothing, hairstyles, and body language with an 83% accuracy rate.
1. Twitter introduced GIF and video capability recently, so this latest update was inevitable – these GIFs and videos now autoplay in user feeds. This will take a little getting used to, but the feature can be turned off if users don’t want to see this in their feeds.
2. Artificial Intelligence has become a popular topic recently, making Twitter’s acquisition of Whetlab, an AI startup company, a very smart move. We can’t wait to see how this improves Twitter’s machine learning efforts!
3. You may have heard rumblings about Twitter’s latest groundbreaking experiment, Project Lightning. This new update will bring event-based curated content to Twitter that will allow both users and non-users to follow events instead of people, and will make the platform much more image-friendly.
4. Hearts or stars? That’s Twitter’s current dilemma. The platform is testing out hearts in the place of stars as a way for users to “favorite” Tweets. Why? We aren’t sure, but we can’t decide which we prefer.
5. Shopping on social may soon be the next big thing. Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram have all become much more ecommerce friendly and it looks as though Twitter is doing the same with the platform’s new Products and Place pages. This update will organize Tweets about products and brands on specific, dedicated pages. As of right now, Twitter has only invited a small group of curators to share collections, but it plans to expand this list over time.
1. Pinterest has been working on improving its search feature over the past year. This week, the platform has rolled out five new improvements to this search feature, including: new typeahead functionality, new filters, autocorrect, trending searches, and verified accounts.
Snapchat
1. Snapchat has played around with ads from time to time, but is still finding its footing when it comes to the best way to allow brands to advertise on the platform. Previously, this meant showing sponsored Snapchat stories. Now, the platform is testing out sponsored geofilters. Right now, the only sponsored geofilter belongs to McDonald’s – users who are in McDonald’s and take a Snapchat will discover that one of the filters they can apply to their photo is of McDonald’s-branded burgers and fries. We’re looking forward to seeing what other brands produce for these geofilters.
YouTube
1. There’s nothing quite like watching a viral video only to discover later that it was a hoax. YouTube’s newest feature, Newswire, is attempting to weed out these hoaxes. Only verified videos will be allowed – this is a great step for YouTube, as it will lend a much larger amount of credibility to the platform.
Periscope
1. Well, it has finally happened. Periscope is looking to monetize its platform and is doing so by rolling out sponsored streams. The first brand to run a sponsored stream will be Nestlé. The question remains: will people tune in for videos of ice cream?
Instagram
1. On Tuesday, June 23rd, Instagram revamped its search functionality. This redesign allows users to easily discover new content with trending hashtags, trending places, and featured photo and video collections. To find out more, read Instagram’s article on the matter here.
Those are all the changes we’ve found for the week of June 22nd. The world of social media is always changing, so be sure to check our blog or social media each week platforms to read our social media roundup!