This Week in Social (Week of November 9)
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.
Pinterest Unveils Visual Search (Read more at The Next Web)
Pinterest has a new feature for mobile that allows users to search visually. When users see something in a pinned image, like a piece of clothing, they can tap the screen search icon that is now in the top right corner of an image, and crop the visual to focus on the item they’d like to see search results for.
For example, a user could see a visual for a living room and zoom in on a lamp that he or she is interested in and then receive search results similar to the lamp. Users will also be able to filter the search results by selecting tags based on what they’re looking for.
This further puts Pinterest in the realm of being a search engine, and marketers should take note. This is a play at changing the way people search and going immediately from a picture that serves as inspiration to action in the form of browsing similar items.
The interesting piece will be seeing how quickly users adopt or don’t adopt this feature. It’s clearly made for marketers. It’s not clear that its made for users.
Snapchat Claims 6 Billion Video Views Per Day (Read more at TechCrunch)
Facebook announced that it now has more than 8 billion daily video views, but Snapchat revealed they aren’t far behind sitting at 6 billion video views. The difference between Snapchat and Facebook is Snapchat’s only been around since 2012, and it’s not taking video lightly. The ephemeral sharing platform has added Lenses to act as filters over videos and photos, as well as the ability to speed or slow down video content.
Views are always a bit of a suspect metric because Facebook counts any view as something that autoplays onscreen for 3 or more seconds, while Snapchat videos can be no longer than 10 seconds. With all of that in mind, it’s not an apples to apples comparison. But that doesn’t take away from the importance of the data. Snapchat has blown up, and it’s easy for marketers to dismiss it as being just for kids, but people are using it and using it heavily.
Facebook Launches New App Called Notify (Read more at CNET)
Facebook’s latest app is here for iOS, and it is called Notify. Notify will alert users on news, weather, sports, politics, business, science, music, fashion, gaming, food, shopping and entertainment thanks to partnerships with CNN, The Weather Channel, Fox Sports, Fandango and others.
The notifications will display within the app in a feed similar to what users already receive on their mobile devices, but the information coming in is connected to their Facebook accounts. Facebook will tailor the notifications to user interests and media habits.
Users who see something they’re interested in will be able to bookmark them for later or tap to open them in a web page for more information.
From a a publisher standpoint, Notify is a way for them to get their content in front of more people at the risk of sacrificing installations on their own apps, but Facebook’s popular. It may be a way to achieve mass reach for publishers quickly. On the other hand, Notify brings a lot of features that users already have on their phones with apps and alerts. This could run the risk of being another thing demanding users’ attention, so it will be interesting to see if users are interested in installing the app.
News Quick Hits
- Instagram has selected 40 companies to be part of its Partner Program following a move earlier this year that allowed marketing tech providers to build tools for its platform. The partners included in the program come in three categories: ad tech for ad buying and planning, community management for managing an Instagram account and content marketing with tools to aid in finding content to post to Instagram. This serves as another step for Instagram becoming a key marketing driver. (Read more at AdAge)
- Tumblr has added instant messaging to its mobile app and Web version. The feature allows users to send questions and respond to each other. (Read more at the Tumblr Staff Blog)
- Facebook’s 360-degree ads are now viewable on iOS after being unveiled for Android in September. AT&T, Corona and others are already participating, and Page admins can upload 360-degree videos and edit initial camera positions and vertical fields of view. (Read more at Facebook’s Media Blog)