This Week in Social (Weeks of May June 1)
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.
GIFs Come to Facebook (Read more at Mashable)
Facebook has announced limited support for GIFs in user News Feeds. The GIFs cannot be uploaded to Facebook, however. They must be posted as links.
The new feature is available on desktop and mobile, but support is limited to profiles, meaning Pages do not have the feature.
GIFs have become a language in and of themselves, akin to emoticons. Facebook was going to have to offer some support eventually. That support is limited, however.
We’ll see how the feature takes off and if Facebook puts more support behind it, including extending it to Pages. Right now, it looks like Facebook is dipping its toes in the water.
Pew Research Finds Facebook is Primary Political News Source for Millennials (Read more at Pew Research Center)
Pew Research Center released a study looking at where different audiences are getting their news. The study looked at the political news consumption habits of 3,000 adults across three generations: Millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers. The study’s findings were interesting.
Baby Boomers primarily (60%) get their news from local TV. Millennials, on the other hand, primarily (61%) get their news from Facebook. Gen X fell in the middle with nearly a 50/50 split between the two news sources.
Twitter was not common among all groups, but most common among Millennials with 14% getting political news there in the past week.
Pew Research Center's director of journalism research said it best. “When it comes to where younger Americans get news about politics and government, social media look to be the local TV of the millennial generation."
The findings are a fascinating comparison between the groups. Now, it could be argued that this gives Facebook too much control, and maybe it does. That being said, news has always been controlled by someone or some group, so maybe Facebook is simply the new filter for information.
Instagram Adding CTA Buttons to Ads (Read more on Instagram for Business)
Instagram will soon be launching call-to-action or CTA buttons to ads run on the platform. The CTA buttons will allow users to sign up on a website, buy a product or download an app, according to Instagram.
Along with the buttons, Instagram also announced that it will soon start working with Facebook to expand its targeting options. Advertisers will be able to target by demographics and interests, while also leveraging their own customer data. On the user end, they’ll have more control to provide feedback and improve the relevance of the ads they see.
Finally, Instagram is working with Facebook’s ad buying platform to bring more advertisers onto the platform and to automate the ad buying process.
Instagram’s potential as a buying channel has always been there, but advertisers, until recently, have been very limited in their ability to drive users to their owned properties where they can make purchases. This move starts to change all of that.
Now, advertisers can use the platform to not only show off their products but turn interest into action.
It’s also good to hear that they’re taking steps to automate the ad buying process. Opening up to more advertisers has the potential to really help businesses get more out of the platform. But they’re also making the wise move of improving targeting to ensure that these new advertisers don’t mean irrelevant advertising.
Pinterest Launching Buyable Pins (Read more at CNET)
Pinterest has just launched Buyable Pins, which will allow users to make purchase directly on Pinterest by simply tapping a ‘Buy It’ button that will display next to the ‘Pin It’ button. The feature is expected to launch at the end of this month with Macy’s, Nordstrom and Nieman Marcus already onboard.
‘Buy It’ buttons will be available on iPhone and iPad initially but will soon be coming to Android.
The feature does not cost advertisers or users anything to use. Although, this will likely entice advertisers to promote their Buyable Pins with paid support.
We are seeing buy buttons everywhere from Google to Instagram. We’re also seeing similar efforts from YouTube, and Facebook and Twitter testing the waters in this area. Social platforms are becoming commerce destinations, which certainly makes the digital landscape interesting, especially when you think about what this means for sites like Amazon and other online retailers.
News Quick Hits
- Facebook has a new feature that enables end-to-end encryption on notification emails sent to user email accounts. Users need to list their OpenPGP keys on their profiles to enable the feature. (Read more at The Next Web)
- Foursquare will soon launch a new feature that will allow users to order rides from Uber directly through the Foursquare app. (Read more at Recode)
- Facebook is reportedly working on a new tool for business Pages that would allow community managers to create standard responses. The feature is called Saved Replies, and they can be added to a Facebook interaction with a customer using a single click. The feature will automatically incorporate the customer’s name in the response to add a level of personalization. (Read more at The Next Web)
- SoundHound, the music identification app, has launched Hound on Android. Hound is a personal assistant app that merges voice recognition and natural language understanding to deliver results to users. Hound will allow users to search based on navigation, do local search, check weather and stocks, look up hotels and flight information, check timezones, get the news, search for photos and videos, calculate mortgages, convert currency, and perform other tasks. (Read more at SocialTimes)
- Ello, a service that considers itself to be the anti-Facebook, has launched a “love” button to allow users to easily click and show their support for site content. It’s Ello’s version of a Like on Facebook or a Favorite on Twitter. (Read more at SocialTimes)
- Swarm has launched an update that allows users to message the friends of their friends. Users can deny messages from friends of friends, and the feature can be turned off. (Read more at The Next Web)
- Facebook has launched a lightweight Android app called Facebook Lite. The app takes up 1 MB of space and uses far less data than Facebook’s regular app, making it ideal for areas with low connectivity. (Read more at Venturebeat)