This Week in Social (Weeks of July 21 and July 28)
This Week in Social is a weekly digest of some of the biggest stories in social media marketing news. These stories are the show notes for the Brave Ad World Podcast. Each story is discussed at a deeper level on the podcast.
Week of July 28
Facebook Requires Users to Send and Receive Messages Through Messenger (Read more at AllFacebook)
Facebook is forcing all users to send and receive Facebook Messages on mobile devices through its standalone Messenger app. They started the requirement in Europe in April and noticed that people responded 20% faster when using the app than when using the main Facebook app.
The Messages tab will be removed from Facebook's main app on most mobile phones. The mobile web, iPad, feature phone, Windows Phone, Paper and desktop versions of Facebook will not require the Messages app. Facebook is notifying users via email and within the Facebook mobile app to switch over to Messenger.
Facebook will face a degree of backlash from users resistant to change, but Messenger is absolutely a superior experience. It requires less load time than opening up the full Facebook app and is better suited for quick one-to-one communication with friends. It's also not much of a surprise. Facebook has been talking about doing this for awhile. Now, it's completing the unbundling of Messages from the core Facebook app.
Twitter Impresses Investors with Q2 (Read more at AdAge)
Twitter has been the subject of much scrutiny, especially when it comes to user growth. This week it reported its Q2 earnings, and the news was good:
- Twitter gained 16 million users hitting 24% growth from last year and reaching 271 million monthly active users.
- It also grew revenue 124% over last year, hitting $312 million. 89% of revenue came from advertising.
- Mobile also increased 29% from last year hitting 211 million and representing 78% of its active users.
- Timeline views increased 15% and advertising revenue increased 100% over last year, hitting $1.60 per thousand timeline views.
Wall Street was very impressed with Twitter stock up 35% and surpassing $50 per share at one point.
Twitter was expected to report lower numbers than it did, and the World Cup may have helped. It was able to develop new experiences and products for users during the games, and it maintained its reputation as the world's water cooler for real-time information.
Today, Twitter can be seen anywhere. It's across media, but many people seeing it aren't signing up as users. Twitter's challenge will continue to be leveraging its awareness and ubiquity to convert people into active users. It will have to do that without a massive worldwide event driving people to it, but for now, the platform looks to be in good shape.
Instagram Launches Bolt (Read more at The Verge and The Next Web)
Some Android Instagram users noticed an ad within Instagram for a "one tap photo messaging app" called Bolt two weeks ago. The ad did not lead anywhere, but speculation rose that it may be a messaging app to compete with Snapchat. The ad did lead a free calling phone app already called Bolt to publish a post encouraging Instagram to change the name.
This week, Instagram launched it, and the speculation was correct. Bolt is a one-tap photo and video messaging service. Bolt is now available for iOS and Android in New Zealand, Singapore and South Africa. According to an Instagram spokesperson, the app's launch is limited to "make sure we can scale while maintaining a great experience. We expect to roll it out more widely soon."
The app works by asking users to sign up using a phone number. It is not connected to Instagram accounts in any way. From there, they can add friends and then tap on a friends face to send a photo and hold on a friends face to share a video.. Content can be edited to include captions, and almost exactly like Snapchat, messages disappear when swiped away. However, they must be swiped away, so users choose when to delete them. Users can respond by adding text to an image received or by sending a new message.
It relies on the idea of making messages temporary and very easy to send.
This is a very interesting move by Instagram. Facebook, which owns Instagram, recently launched an ephemeral messaging service called Slingshot. Slingshot has been criticized as not being very usable, and Bolt may be its back-up plan to break into the ephemeral messaging market. It's limited rollout strategy is interesting. This may be to test the app to provide an optimal experience as they explain, or it could be a way to build up excitement and demand in countries like the United States. Regardless, Facebook is pushing hard to compete with Snapchat.
Twitter Acquires Madbits (Read more at Gigaom)
Twitter has acquired Madbits, a company that is, according to its website, "primarily interested in the task of image search, and the creation of intelligent, dynamic image sets, to automatically organize large databases of images." It's efforts have allowed it to organize and gather information from media that may or may not have tags or other information.
The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Twitter has taken steps to emphasize image usage on the network by recently allowing multiple photos in a tweet, tagging of people in a photo and GIFs. This technology will certainly be used in some way to encourage more visuals in tweets.
But it will also likely be a way for Twitter to organize the trove of data on the network. It's acquired services like Gnip and Bluefin Labs for the purpose of analyzing data generated by users. This is another step by Twitter to make use and sense of its data.
LinkedIn Launches New Tools and Reports Strong Q2 (Read more at The LinkedIn Blog and AdAge)
Q2 earnings reports kept rolling with LinkedIn reporting strong results. Revenue was up 47% over last year at $534 million. This beat estimates of $511 million. The ad business fared very well, up 44% from last year and hitting $106 million.
Sponsored Updates contributed to the growth and will continue to be a focus for the company. It also launched Direct Sponsored Content to allow advertisers to test ad messages and optimize based on performance.
LinkedIn also reported 300 million users. LinkedIn's stock rose 8% in after hours trading.
LinkedIn looked very strong, and it needed to. Facebook and Twitter both reported positive numbers, and LinkedIn's diverse monetization plan that includes premium subscriptions, advertising and talent acquisition offerings have propelled it toward positive growth.
LinkedIn did not stop with Q2 reports, however. It also launched a new set of tools for b-to-be marketers. The tool is part of Sales Navigator and is designed to expose new leads.
It does this by letting sales teams know if someone in their organization is connected with someone at a target company, reducing the need for cold calls. The tool will also notify sales teams when targets change jobs or are mentioned in the news.
The service is valuable for $1,200 per year/per seat for corporations or for $60 per month for individuals. In addition to working within LinkedIn, information from Sales Navigator can be pushed to CRM tools, keeping everything integrated.
This is the kind of tool only LinkedIn can offer. It streamlines the selling process by delivering information based on what it knows users need and are looking for.
News Quick Hits
- LinkedIn has altered the way profiles look on mobile devices to make it easier for users to get relevant information when they're short on time. It does this by prioritizing content from most to least important. First, it shows what you have in common. Second, it displays a person's work and interests. Lastly, it dives into work history. (Read more at CNET)
- Facebook Gifts is shutting down completely. The feature that originally allowed users to send physical gift to friends and then rolled back to only allow users to send gift cards will shut down on August 12. The feature did not gain the traction Facebook had hoped to see. (Read more at CNET)
- The blogging platform Medium is rolling out sponsored content, the first of which comes from BMW. The content campaign will last for six months and include 100 stories created by Medium's Creative Services Team. This is the first sign of plans from Medium to monetize its platform. (Read more at Digiday)
- Snapchat is working to raise a new round of funding that would value it at $10 billion. Snapchat is currently one of the top-10 apps in 20 markets, and it notably turned down an attempted acquisition from Facebook for $3 billion. Its potential investor is China-based Alibaba. This comes at a time when Snapchat is evolving to offer in-app experiences such as geotargeted filters and Snapchat Stories, both of which offer potential opportunities for brands to buy into the platform. It also shows potential for users to make in-app purchases. (Read more at Bloomberg)
- Instagram is executing a test with Mercedes-Benz that targets Facebook users who previously saw a Mercedes ad on Instagram. The test shows how Facebook and Instagram will work together from an advertising perspective. (Read more at Digiday)
- LinkedIn is rolling out a 'Follow' button to millions of its users. This allows individuals to receive updates from others without connecting with them first. The move is intended to improve LinkedIn's publishing and content creation capabilities. The button appears next to posts when users log into the home page as well as on member profiles via the 'Connect' button. (Read more at ReadWrite)
- Twitter has acquired the password-sharing service Mitro. Mitro offers a browser extension for users to store and share passwords. Mitro will continue to work on its products, which primarily allow many users to share passwords with one account. (Read more at CNET)
- Slingshot has released an update that allows users to instantly send viewable reactions to reactions. Before users had no way to respond directly to a sling. They'd have to either send a new sling or react to another unrelated one. The update encourages more back-and-forth communication. The update also includes an aggregated My People list to make finding friends easier and the option to send SMS invites for people to join Slingshot. (Read more at The Next Web)
Week of July 21
Facebook Launches Save for Later Feature (Read more at TechCrunch)
Facebook has introduced a new way for users to interact with News Feed content. They can now save content and view it later with a feature called Save that is available on iOS, Android and Web versions of Facebook.
According to Facebook's Daniel Giambalvo, "Every day, people find all sorts of interesting items on Facebook that they don't have time to explore right away. Now you can save items that you find on Facebook to check out later when you have more time."
Users who save content are the only ones who can view those items unless they choose to share with friends. Unlike services like Pocket or Instapaper, content is not cached for offline viewing.
The feature is available by tapping the arrow on the right corner of a post and electing Save. After that users can select the 'More' screen and select 'Saved.'
The feature is almost a no-brainer for Facebook. Twitter has the 'Favorite' option, which some users use to save tweets they'd like to reference later, while others treat it as a 'Like' button to let people know that they appreciate the tweet.
A save for later feature was almost necessary for Facebook, which is used to share a wide swath of content from family stories to deep, engaging articles from publishers. Sometimes users don't have time to click through and read an article. This feature allows them to reference a piece of content later. The good news for content creators is that it has the potential to extend content's life and not get buried by other stories just because a user doesn't have time to truly appreciate it upon first sight.
Yahoo Acquires Flurry (Read more at AdAge)
Yahoo has purchased mobile analytics company Flurry in an effort to steal some mobile ad share from Facebook and Google, which own two-thirds of all mobile ad spending.
Flurry has gained a solid reputation for being one of the stronger mobile analytics players, and the acquisition is intended to position Yahoo as a strong mobile first company under the leadership of Marissa Mayer. First, Flurry will give Yahoo better insights and understanding for how users are interacting with mobile apps that Yahoo can then offer to advertisers for targeting. Currently, Flurry is used by more than 170,00 app developers, and the service tracks 150 million sessions each month. It's data set is massive with 5.5 billion app sessions per day across 1.4 billion devices.
Flurry has strong relationships that Yahoo can instantly tap into with the acquisition. It offers the potential for Yahoo to build a strong mobile ad network.
Flurry shows that Yahoo is serious about doing and investing more in the mobile space. However, it lags behind significant competition from Facebook to Google to Twitter. Yahoo won't get there with Flurry alone, but it has shown that it is starting down that path.
LinkedIn Acquires Bizo (Read more at The Wall Street Journal)
LinkedIn has acquired Bizo, a b-to-b digital advertising company, for $175 million. Bizo has helped previous clients, including Microsoft and AMEX, measure their display and social ad campaigns for b-to-b audiences.
Bizo CEO Russell Glass said in a blog post, "LinkeIn's mission is to connect the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful, while Bizo's is to help b-to-b marketers get to the right people."
LinkedIn has been working to increase its ad revenue with its rapidly growing Sponsored Updates ad offerings. This is an area the professional social network aims to grow as its user base is a clear differentiator from other social networks. Bizo will help it do that.
Foursquare Completes Its Evolution (Read more at VentureBeat)
Foursquare announced that it would be going through a makeover not long ago. That included launching a separate app called Swarm, where users can check-in and see where their friends are and share their locations with friends. The second part of that evolution is within the banner Foursquare app, which no longer has a check-in option and instead focuses on local search, discovery and recommendations. That's where users will be able to make recommendations to each other.
Well, the new Foursquare is finally here, and it includes a new logo in the form of a stylized 'F.' Foursquare will now tailor recommendations to users based on their tastes, experts they follow and where they are. Users who choose to activate ambient recommendations without opening the app will receive suggestions without opening Foursquare.
Even though it's separate, Foursquare will still work in conjunction with Swarm. The experiences in both apps will sync. In fact, users who have both Swarm and Foursquare installed will be able to check-in through the Foursquare app.
Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley stands by his two-app approach. Of course, this has meant some angst from loyal users. It also means competing more directly on recommendations with the likes of Yelp. Foursquare is competing directly without that strong check-in differentiator. This is a big moment for the network, which has lost some of its luster since it first launched.
Facebook's 2Q Earnings Show It's More Mobile than Ever (Read more at AllFacebook)
Facebook shared its Q2 earnings report. It now has 1.32 billion monthly active users (up from 1.115 billion one year ago) and 1.07 billion mobile monthly active users (way up from 819 million one year ago).
Revenue is up 61% over least year hitting $2.91 billion. Advertising is up 67%, bringing in $2.68 billion.
The key stat, however, was that mobile ad revenue made up 62% of total ad revenue. Last year at this time, it represented 41%.
This quarter, Facebook has taken steps to improve ad targeting and launched premium features like video ads. We've also seen it invest in building an ad network to increase ad revenue, while not relying on growing its user base or just placing ads on Facebook.com.
Facebook continues to impress by showing it can evolve, grow and surpass expectations. Not long ago, it had many skeptics, but Facebook has shown that it can be a serious mobile company.
News Quick Hits
- VentureBeat cites two unnamed Facebook executives who say Facebook will be releasing sequential video ads on the platform, allowing advertisers to deliver a series of video ads to users based on what messages an individual has already been exposed to. They typically start with an ad to build awareness and then end with an ad intended to close the sale. These sequential ads will work across desktop and mobile devices. (Read more at VentureBeat)
- Facebook's Oculus VR acquisition has closed. The FTC has approved the $2 billion acquisition for the maker of virtual reality headsets to belong to Facebook. (Read more at The Wall Street Journal)
- Amazon has launched a self-serve media buying tool to allow agencies and advertisers to purchase ads to run across Amazon sites and its network without the assistance of the sales team. The move is intended to increase profits, demand from smaller advertisers and revenue form advertisers who don't necessarily want to go through traditional sales channels. The tool features the same targeting and measurement options as what is offered by the Amazon sales team. (Read more at AdAge)