This Week in Social (Week of January 4)
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.
Snapchat Building Ads API (Read more at Digiday)
Snapchat is working on an API that would allow advertisers to bypass sales representatives and set-up campaigns on the platform while controlling frequency, targeting and buying precision. Up until this point, Snapchat has been behaving much like Instagram during its early days of advertising—working directly with brands through sales representatives who control the process from beginning to end. An API would allow Snapchat to scale its advertising and allow more brands to leverage it to reach its audiences.
Snapchat’s founder famously dismissed advertising, but the platform clearly is embracing it more and more. Instagram followed a similar path, and now it has an advertising API. This has allowed more advertisers to leverage Instagram, but has come at the cost of a decline in overall quality. But for Snapchat to grow and continue to scale, this is likely a necessary move and one advertisers will certainly welcome.
Twitter Launches Conversational Ads (Read more at AdAge)
Twitter has a new ad unit that it calls Conversational Ads. The goal of the ads is to encourage users, especially influential ones, to have conversations about advertisers.
The ads include a branded hashtag button that users can click. From there, a tweet box will appear with a pre-populated message that may include a photo or video that a user can then tweet. Messages can be changed by users, however, before they tweet them out. Brands only pay for the initial share. If a user shares a brand’s tweet and his or her followers continue to spread the message, those views and shares are free.
Brand messages carry much more value and credibility when they’re shared by people instead of brands, and this ad product offers one way to encourage online word of mouth. That sounds simple, but creating content and tweets people want to share with their followers will be the challenge. Users’ appetites for sharing brand messages are low unless the message is especially entertaining or meaningful. That will be the test brands will face.
Twitter Laying Groundwork for Longer Tweets (Read more at Recode)
Twitter is reportedly working on a feature that would greatly extend the limit length of tweets from 140 characters to 10,000, and the change may be coming as early as March.
Twitter has not confirmed the change, but CEO Jack Dorsey has done everything but, tweeting, “We’re not going to be shy about building more utility and power into Twitter for people. As long as it’s consistent with what people want to do, we’re going to explore it.” His statement was tweeted as a screenshot to make the point even stronger that 140 characters can be very limiting.
The extended tweets being tested display only 140 characters in user feeds with a call to action to see more. Once users click, the tweet is expanded to show more content. Twitter is making every effort to not clutter user timelines with longer, text-heavy tweets.
Expanding beyond the character limit is a big deal. It’s one of Twitter’s most defining characteristics, but it may be a relic of the past. People are already getting around the limit by sharing multiple tweets in a row or taking screenshots of longer statements. It’s a limitation people try to get around.
Still, it’s difficult to see how this would attract more users, which is Twitter’s biggest challenge right now. Platforms like Medium and Facebook Notes allow users to share long-form content, and Twitter has, up until now, been about sharing thoughts and linking out to great content. This would make Twitter even more of a media hub, and there are already many players filling that void.
It makes sense for Twitter to want to do this. It’s a limitation without a purpose at this point, and the utility is waning. As long as the user experience is protected, I believe current users will adopt it. The timeline should be protected to streamline content consumption and emphasize brevity, and the ability to expand tweets should do that.
Instagram Expanding Spotlight (Read more at TechCrunch)
Instagram’s Spotlight Compilations are going to become more commonplace on the platform. Spotlight, which appears at the top of the Explore tab, curates some of the best video content being shared around a particular theme on the platform. Previously, it’s focused on holidays, but now it will start embracing other, more diverse themes like Powerball and animals.
Spotlight allows Instagram to create a stickier experience for users as well as the ability to discover new content creators. It also elevates video on Instagram, which was originally just for sharing photos.
This gives videos more prominence, which is something every platform seems to be trying to do. It also creates a feature that is in a bit more competition with Twitter’s Moments feature.
News Quick Hits
- Yahoo has shuttered its Yahoo Screen digital video platform. The platform gained notoriety for being the first to livestream an NFL game, housing episodes of Saturday Night Live and releasing an extra season of Community following its TV cancellation. But the platform did not gain traction and the content will move to Yahoo’s Digital Magazine properties in a single location. (Read more at Adweek)
- Snapchat is shutting down its Lens Store that just launched in November. The store allowed users to buy animated lenses for $0.99 each. Instead, users will be given access to ten free lenses each day. Previously, users could receive seven. Snapchat is, instead, focusing on advertising. (Read more at TechCrunch)
- Facebook is shutting down its LiveRail ad server business. LiveRail was acquired by Facebook in July 2014 to help it with automated video ad sales in competition with YouTube and AOL. (Read more at AdAge)
- Biz Stone’s app, Jelly, is back. Jelly is a platform that allows you to search for answers by asking questions and crowdsourcing answers from Jelly’s community. The app is said to re-launch soon, but you can reserve your username now on its website. (Read more at The Next Web)
- Facebook Messenger now has 800 million users, and it’s not stopping there. Facebook’s announcement also shared its vision for the app to make the phone number disappear as users turn to it for messaging, more apps come to Messenger, people use Messages to create Groups and AI makes its way onto the platform. (Read more at Facebook)
- Yahoo is planning to cut 10% of its workforce, which is more than 1,000 employees. (Read more at Business Insider)