This Week in Social (Week of December 7)
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.
Facebook Shuts Down Creative Labs (Read more at The Verge)
Facebook’s startup company Creative Labs is being shut down. Creative Labs gained notoriety by building experimental social apps that played with user expectations through unique interactions and interfaces. So with the shuttering of Creative Labs comes the end of the apps it developed like Slingshot, Rooms and Paper. They will be removed from all app stores.
No one that worked for Creative Labs is being laid off. They’ll find other roles within the organization.
The apps from Creative Labs often left us asking more questions than expressing excitement. They often, at best, borrowed features from other apps like Snapchat, but sometimes borrowing meant outright copying.
Still, the apps did prove to be worthy experiments that played with the way people are used to interacting. For example, with Slingshot, users couldn’t open a message until they sent one of their one. The app failed to take off, but the experiment on user experience was worthwhile.
Hopefully, the team will be able to continue to help Facebook grow in other experimental areas like virtual reality through Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus Rift.
Facebook Updates Customer Communication Tools on Pages (Read more at Facebook for Business)
Facebook Page managers are gaining new native features.
Facebook has added a new section within brand Pages activity tabs that curates all comments people leave on their Pages and allows page managers to respond to comments in a streamlined fashion. In addition, Facebook has several other new tools.
First, Pages can set their average response times to options like within minutes, an hour, hours or a day. Facebook will set this for Pages based off of their averages if admins don’t do this themselves. Page admins can also set “away” messages and instant auto-replies to acknowledge receipt of a message. Page admins now have new tagging features that allow them to add notes to a message thread. Finally, Facebook has updated Facebook messages for Pages by aggregating all comments and posts someone has shared on a Page with their messages in reverse-chronological order. That way, Page admins can see all of the interactions someone has had in one place.
Facebook has certainly deemphasized Pages in favor of advertising over the past couple of years, but its emphasis on messages, especially from a customer service standpoint, is heating up. These are some great tools that make messages customizable for each business. For example, some small businesses can’t be as responsive as a business with dedicated staff for responding, and they shouldn’t be held to the same standard. These changes make the platform much more approachable for brands of all sizes, which, for Facebook’s benefit, will encourage brands to embrace it as a customer service channel.
Twitter Testing New Timeline (Read more at Slate)
Twitter is currently testing a timeline that does away with showing tweets in reverse-chronological order. Multiple users have tweeted that their timelines aren’t appearing in order, and many are concerned. In addition, many can’t decipher the factors that are determining the order tweets are displayed.
Twitter released a statement that said, “This is an experiment. We’re continuing to explore ways to surface the best content for people using Twitter."
This isn’t the first time Twitter has experimented with algorithm-driven feeds. They introduced “While You Were Away” months ago to showcase the best tweets that a user missed out on since last logging in. And we can likely expect more of this. Twitter’s new CEO Jack Dorsey has shared that the feed is where a lot of experimentation will take place, and all of that is in an effort to make the platform more welcoming for new users. Those experiments meant to invite new users, however, may push away loyal users who experience them first.
Twitter Targeting Ads to Users Not Logged In (Read more at AdAge)
Twitter is now showing ads to the 500 million people who, according to Twitter, visit the platform but don’t log in. In this test, whenever someone interacts with a tweet, be it in Google search results, within an email or within a third-party app, Twitter will show ads to those individuals.
Twitter is grouping these non-logged-in users in one large audience pool that advertisers can pay to target, essentially growing Twitter’s potential advertising pool to 820 million people. Previously, it was limited to 320 million people who log-in. The ads display when viewers are looking at Twitter profile pages or tweet detail pages.
Twitter sits on a considerable base of users who use the platform but purely from a content consumption perspective. This test allows Twitter to leverage that audience. And for advertisers who want to achieve reach, it could make a lot of sense. That will, however, come at the cost of strong targeting, since advertisers will not be able to garner as much information for users who aren’t logged-in. Still, it’s a move that makes sense for Twitter as it looks to generate more revenue.
News Quick Hits
- Twitter is uncropping photos viewed through its Web interface. This removes the need to click to expand the images. Twitter is also changing the way collections of images are displayed by enlarging the first image uploaded with smaller thumbnails of the others. (Read more at Mashable)
- Pinterest has acquired Pext and The Hunt. The terms were not disclosed, but these two bring Pinterest’s total acquisitions to nine. Pext is a tool that displays images based on the text you type in order to create a meme easily, so it could add to Pinterest’s image recognition capabilities. The Hunt is a social shopping community dedicated to fashion. Users can post a photo of something they’re looking for, and the community will help them find where the item can be purchased. (Read more at AdAge)
- Tumblr has launched a new feature that allows users to send Tumblr posts as messages. The feature comes in conjunction with a new in-app chat feature. Users who tap a paper airplane icon at the bottom of a post will be able to send it as a message. (Read more at The Next Web)
- Facebook has updated its advertising policies for Instant Articles. It will now allow publishers that are part of the program to include more advertising on the articles it shares on its platform. Publishers will also be able to promote “related articles” at the bottom of Instant Articles, which will include sponsored posts. The change comes after publishers expressed concern over an inability to generate enough revenue using Instant Articles. (Read more at The Wall Street Journal)