This Week in Social (Week of July 27)
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.
Google+ Requirement Removed from Google Products (Read more at The Wall Street Journal)
Google+ is continuing to evolve, and as it evolves it’s clear that it’s becoming less and less of a focus for the company.
Google will no longer require users to sign up for Google+ to create a YouTube channel or use other Google products. YouTube will be the first to have this requirement removed. Previously users needed Google+ accounts to use any Google service, including Gmail.
This is another step following Google’s decision earlier this year to remove Google+ Photos and shift users over to Google Photos instead.
Bradley Horowitz, chief of Google+, wrote, “While we got certain things right, we made a few choices that, in hindsight, we’ve needed to rethink.” Google+ will live on with a focus of connecting users around specific interests.
Now, many are saying that this is the end of Google+, but that may be overstating things. Google+ has a small but very vibrant community, and special features like Google Hangouts are going nowhere. Google+ as we know it is dead, but Google+ features will live on.
Google’s strategy with Google+ was to create a unifying identity for users across all products. That led to a great deal of user backlash and resentment toward Google+. They felt forced into it. Google appears to be rethinking everything and reevaluating what it really wants from Google+.
Twitter Grows Ad Revenue but Not Users (Read more at AdAge)
Twitter’s Q2 earnings report was a mix of good and bad.
The report was the first since CEO Dick Costolo left the company and interim CEO Jack Dorsey took the helm. The good news was that revenue is up 61% year over year. Ad revenue rose 63%, hitting $452 million, and 88% of that revenue was mobile advertising.
The bad news is the same thing that’s been plaguing Twitter for some time, user growth. Users grew 15% year over year. It now has 316 million monthly active users, 80% of which are mobile monthly active users. It’s also worth noting that 12 million of those users participate via text messaging by receiving updates from certain users, so they have not registered to create their own Twitter accounts.
In response, Twitter announced that its first integrated marketing campaign will roll out by the end of 2015, and Twitter will be hiring a CMO. The campaign’s goal will be to bring in new users, while focusing on a new feature that curates tweets around live events, currently called Project Lightning.
Jack Dorsey stated that they are not happy with their audience growth, and that could be a problem. It could deter advertisers, even though ad revenue appears to be growing at the moment. Twitter needs to win the reputation game, and the only thing that will do that is new users. Marketing may help it get there, but Twitter may have reached its limit in terms of the number of users who want to use the platform.
Facebook’s Q2 Earnings Don’t Disappoint (Read more at Mashable)
Facebook reported its Q2 earnings this week, and as has been the trend, it did not disappoint:
- Facebook now has 1.49 billion monthly active users, up 13 percent over last year.
- 968 million users are active daily.
- Revenue was up $4.042 billion, 85% higher than last year.
- Facebook has 1.31 billion monthly mobile active users, up 23% over last year.
Perhaps the most telling number was 76%. That’s how much of the company’s total ad revenue comes from advertising on mobile devices.
“Mobile is the engine of our revenue growth,” stated chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.
Facebook continues to bring in massive amounts of ad revenue in mobile, something that other platforms, including Twitter and LinkedIn have yet to truly figure out. That, paired with Instagram expecting to bring in $600 million in mobile ad revenue this year, makes Facebook as much of a mobile juggernaut as ever.
News Quick Hits
- Snapchat has updated its Discover feature by adding BuzzFeed and iHeartRadio as publishers. Yahoo and Warner Music will no longer be participating, however. (Read more at AdWeek)
- Yelp’s Q2 earnings disappointed investors. The company announced a $1.3 million loss on revenue of $133.9 million. This was Yelp’s second disappointing quarter in a row. In response, Yelp is planning to phase out display advertising and focus on selling native and local ad products. Display accounted for 6% of the company’s revenue, while 81% came from local advertising. (Read more at AdAge)
- Yahoo has released a new app called Livetext. Live text allows users to video chat with each other but without sound. Users must text to communicate. Users are then able to show their reactions via facial expressions but converse by passing along text messages. Messaging is a crowded space, and Livetext seems to place unnecessary barriers to communication. Facebook tried to place barriers to communication with Slingshot, and that did not do too well. (Read more at AdWeek)
- Periscope will allow users to mute notiifications for specific users. That way users won’t receive a push notification when specific users go live. (Read more at Mashable)
- LinkedIn managed to beat expectations in its Q2 earnings report. Revenue grew 33%. It also noted that Premium Subscriptions increased 22% over last year. Despite the news, shares fell as Wall Street grew concerned over how much of LinkedIn’s positive growth came from its acquisition of Lynda.com. LinkedIn also shared that it has 380 million users. LinkedIn also announced that it will be cutting down on the number of emails it sends to users. Users will now receive a single email highlighting the most important news from the network, instead of multiple emails each day. (Read more at The New York Times and Mashable)
- Facebook is testing profile tags for users. The feature, if rolled out fully, would allow all users to add tags to their profiles as well as receive tags submitted by friends. The feature is very similar to the tags LinkedIn users have become accustomed to. (Read more at Fortune)
- Yahoo is purchasing Polyvore, the fashion-focused mood board curation website that features clothing and accessories. Polyvore has the potential to tie in to Yahoo Style and Yahoo Beauty. (Read more at AdAge)