This Week in Social (Weeks of March 30 and April 6)
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 Launches Scrapbooks to Help Parents Share Photos (Read more at TechCrunch)
Facebook is no stranger to baby photos, but the social network wants to do more. Now, parents can create “Scrapbooks."
The feature allows users to collect photos of their children and share the photos with specific friends. Once a child turned 13, Facebook plans to allow parents to hand off control to the child.
The feature is available in the Family and Relationships tab of a user profile. Once a user identifies him or herself as a parent, the user can start a scrapbook.
This is a feature that certainly makes sense and fits well within the Facebook ecosystem, but what could make this even more interesting is the long-term play. Parents using the feature are essentially creating pre-profiles for their children with plans to hand it off. For Facebook, this could mean getting users on the platform early and then working to retain them for the long-term. Although, it’s certainly unclear how many teenagers will want to inherit profiles populated by their photos from growing up.
Twitter Plans to Put Ads on User Profiles (Read more at Mashable)
Twitter plans to start displaying Promoted Tweets within user’s profile pages in a new test. The ads will display when a visitor finds his or her way onto another user’s profile. The ads will be broken up separately in a stream and will be marked with “Suggested by Twitter.
Only logged-in users will be exposed to the ads. The ads, at least for this test, will not be displayed on the accounts of verified users.
This is clearly a test because there’s so much more Twitter could be doing with this. For one, it would be a great way for Twitter to target ads to users who aren’t logged in but are simply visiting profiles, and Twitter’s partnership with Google that involves displaying tweets in search results could drive more visits to profiles. Second, verified accounts make the most sense for displaying these ads. However, the challenge comes when competitor ads are displayed on profiles of brands or celebrities who endorse particular products.
It seems Twitter is ready to get more out of every page view.
Facebook Launches New App Called Riff (Read more at Facebook Newsroom)
Facebook apps Paper, Slingshot, Rooms, Messenger and others have a new app joining the family. This one is called Riff, which is a “tool to make videos with friends."
The app works by having one user create a video and giving it a specific topic, like #AprilFools. Friends can then view the video and add their clips. Eventually, the video becomes a collaboration with multiple clips submitted by many people.
Once a friend adds to your video, his or her friends can then see it and add to it.
Facebook’s track record with these apps is mixed at best. Most apps have turned out to be flops, but that’s not really the point.
Riff has the potential to tell Facebook more about how people use and consume video that it can then apply to some of its flagship platforms. Riff and most of Facebook’s apps are experiments.
Riff is also similar in that it is very much inspired by an existing app. It looks like Riff got more than a few ideas from the app JumpCam.
YouTube Launches More Interactive TrueView Ads (Read more at AdAge)
YouTube is adding interactive cards to TrueView ads that will allow advertisers to add interactive elements to their video ads on the platform The cards can hold additional content like related videos, playlists and other external links.
Advertisers will only be charged if users watch the entire ads or if they click on an element in the interactive cards. Users will have to click a button to actually show the cards and enable the card overlay.
Advertisers previously had annotations to accomplish similar tasks. These cards, however, are much more aesthetically pleasing and inviting for viewers.
It will take time for users to get used to interacting with them, and it will take advertisers time to think through creative for them in terms of the right content and how to present it. The move looks to be a beneficial one from a creative standpoint but is also clearly a good deal for YouTube which stands to use this to generate additional revenue.
Facebook Messenger Comes to Desktop (Read more at Recode)
Facebook now has a Web version for Messenger. The app is available at Messenger.com, but messaging functionality is still also available within the desktop Facebook experience.
According to Facebook, the reason for Messenger.com is to give users who simply want the messaging capabilities a place to go outside of Facebook. Currently, the website does not include features like payments or third-party apps, which Facebook announced at this year’s f8 conference a few weeks ago.
Messenger.com shows how open Facebook is to getting users onto Messenger, even if it means Facebook.com taking a hit. Messenger, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are Facebook’s flagship brands at the moment, and it looks like Facebook plans to push Messenger even more, especially as apps for the platform start to roll out.
LinkedIn Acquires Lynda.com (Read more at Forbes)
LinkedIn announced that it acquired the education platform Lynda.com. Lynda.com offers thousands of educational videos across multiple subjects from marketing to photography. The acquisiiton was reportedly for $1.5 billion.
LinkedIn has not revealed how Lynda content will be leveraged. Will users be able to access the content for free or will they continue to pay a fee? The details are still in the works.
LinkedIn’s move is an interesting one. This is a huge content play for the social network, which has evolved into a platform in its own right. Lynda is full of high-quality training videos that LinkedIn could use in multiple ways. It could charge a fee for users as Lynda already does, or it could make it a free part of the platform. For example, you find a job you want to apply for, but you don’t have all the skills, LinkedIn could then link to relevant training materials within that job listing for users go and train up.
News Quick Hits
- YouTube is experimenting with 4K video running at 60 FPS. The video sharing platform has compiled a small collection of videos in this ultra-high resolution. Most displays will not be able to display the resolution at full quality, but YouTube seems to be prepping for a 4K future. (Read more at TechCrunch)
- Facebook will test its solar-powered drones that will be used to beam the Internet to unconnected parts of the world this summer. Because they are solar-powered, the drones have the potential to stay in the air for an extended amount of time, even years. Facebook will join Google’s Project Loon, which has a similar mission but uses balloons, instead of drones. (Read more at The Wall Street Journal)
- Vine has upgraded the resolution of Vines users can share. Users can now share 720p videos. Perviously, they were limited to 480p. (Read more at TechTimes)
- Twitter is opening up its Curator product that allows organizations and media companies to filter and then display tweets next to content. This could be used by a news service to, for example, display real-time tweets related to a city council meeting. The service competes with Storify. (Read more at TechCrunch)
- The EU is arguing that Facebook is in breach of user consent laws with how it tracks the browsing behavior of users. The EU argues that Facebook tracks users without their consent. (Read more at The Guardian)
- Facebook has added a ‘Subscribe’ button to the events sections of pages that will allow users to sign up to receive notifications when a page posts a new event. (Read more at SocialTimes)
- Instagram has added new editing features. Now, users can fade shadows. They can also tweak the tint and highlights in their photos. The features are available within Instagram’s editing tools. (Read more at The Next Web)
- YouTube’s app for kids, dubbed YouTube Kids, has been hit with a complaint filed with the FTC. The complaint says that YouTube is violating advertising safeguards set up to protect children with the app, which is designed to curate safe content for kids to watch. The complaint alleges that YouTube violates several laws aimed at protecting kids from advertising. YouTube contends that child advocacy groups and organizations were involved in developing the app. (Read more at CNET)
- YouTube is going to be launching a paid service for users that will remove ads and provide access to exclusive subscription-only content. YouTube content creators are being forced to comply. If they choose not to, their videos will be set to Private. (Read more at The Next Web)
- Twitter’s Discover tab has been retired. Instead, info like what topics are trending will be housed within a ‘Search’ tab. Trends will include descriptions to provide additional context. (Read more at Recode)