This Week in Social (Week of May 9)
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 Accused of Suppressing Conservative News (Read more at Gizmodo)
Facebook’s trending section took some heat this week after it was reported that its curation team was told to suppress conservative news. Topics related to Mitt Romney, Rand Paul and other conservative perspectives were reportedly prevented from displaying in the trending section on the platform, preventing the topics from getting the attention that they would have gotten otherwise.
Facebook has denied the allegations saying that it has rigorous guidelines in place to “ensure consistency and neutrality.” They add, “Those guidelines do not permit the suppression of political perspectives. Nor do they permit the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or one news outlet over the other."
Still, the US Senate’s commerce committee has responded with a letter to Mark Zuckerberg requesting more information on the claims.
No matter where you stand on the political spectrum, it’s not right if Facebook did take these actions. And whether or not Facebook did this, the accusation raises the issue of mistrust between Facebook and its users further. People routinely use Facebook, but there is still a lingering hesitance to place all trust in the platform. Facebook’s record on holding true to high standards of neutrality has been scrutinized in the past when Facebook experimented to see how sad content would affect the moods of people versus happy content in the News Feed. This just adds another layer to the speculation around Facebook’s agenda and how it views its users.
Google’s DoubleClick Gets More Support for Native Ads (Read more at AdAge)
Google’s DoubleClick for Publishers has made it easier to sell native ads that work across multiple screens and experiences.
The move is inline with Google’s long-term plans to make native advertising easier to buy and sell across programmatic ad exchanges. Although, that isn’t the case at the moment. Google’s aim right now is simply to improve the experience as ads can look vastly different depending on the screen a user is viewing the content on. Google does that by fitting marketers’ content, including images and headlines into designs for each screen.
Native advertising is growing in importance in a world with ad blockers. So it makes sense for Google to work to make it work better at scale. This is one step in getting closer to that reality, which will greatly benefit Google, advertisers and publishers.
Amazon Looks to Compete with YouTube (Read more at AdAge)
YouTube may be getting some competition from an unexpected source, Amazon. Soon users will be able to post videos to Amazon and then earn money from advertising, rentals, subscriptions and royalties. Amazon will also distribute $1 million per month to the makers of the 100 most popular programs.
The move follows Amazon’s current offering of movies and TV, which is in competition with Netflix and Hulu.
The goal is to create a video sharing platform for professional video producers, so the service is akin to Kindle Direct Publishing, which lets authors go around traditional publishers to get their content out into the world.
Taking on YouTube is quite the undertaking, but Amazon has the capital to at least attempt to do it. Still Amazon seems to be competing more with Vimeo, which has become a haven for professional content creators to get their content out into the world. What may make Amazon attractive is the multiple ways to monetize content. In return, Amazon would get a fair amount of original content and the users that come with it.
Facebook Updates Dynamic Ads (Read more at SocialTimes)
Dynamic Ads, ads that automate product ads by showing people ads with items they’ve expressed interest in, have gotten an update from Facebook. The first is that the ads are now available on Instagram. The second is that brands can use custom audiences through websites to better target users who have shown what Facebook calls “stronger intent.” That intent might include visiting a site repeatedly or spending a long time on a particular website.
The move underscores Facebook’s focus to better connect brands with people who are ready and eager to buy, and the expansion into Instagram shows that Facebook really sees these ads having an impact on mobile.
YouTube Launches Messaging Feature (Read more at Wired)
Every platform, it seems, is upping their messaging capabilities, and now YouTube is jumping in with a messaging feature of its own. The feature, which is only in testing, allows users to share videos with friends using an additional tab within the app. No more copy and pasting links and then sending. Once a video is sent, a conversation is started, allowing users to respond to each other with video and text.
YouTube’s video dominance, especially when it comes to mobile, has been threatened by the rise of Snapchat, Facebook Video, Instagram and other players. Messaging is one way YouTube can work to add functionality to its own platform to keep users on it for sharing video content, instead of heading off to other platforms to share content with friends.
Google Launches iOS Keyboard (Read more at AdAge)
Google has launched a new keyboard for iOS users. The keyboard is called Gboard, and it allows users to search within it. For example, to send an emoji of a dog, a user just needs to search “dog,” and beyond that users can search for information like addresses, images or anything else online.
Search results display in cards with information, and users can then send that information or content to a user they’re texting with or messaging.
Google joins other keyboards, like SwiftKey and most notably, Microsoft’s Word Flow, which released only a few weeks ago. The move shows that Google plans to maintain its search dominance with greater integration into multiple mobile operating systems. Gboard brings search to user’s fingertips every time they’re typing on their phones. This also shows more integration is coming across platforms with both Microsoft and Google working to get their platforms more integrated into iOS.
News Quick Hits
- Spotify is launching 12 original video series. Partners for the content range from actor Tim Robbins to Def Jam Records co-founder Russell Simmons. Each show will have episodes that last from a few minutes to 15 minutes. This content is phase one for Spotify, and it focuses on music. Phase two will include comedy and animation programming. Spotify’s slowly been taking steps to incorporate more video into its platform, but it does acknowledge that music is its base. (Read more at AdAge)
- Spotify is working with Krux to analyze listening data and pairing it with third-party demographic data to target advertising. According to Spotify, this data can be used as a proxy for user activities and moods. (Read more at AdAge)
- LinkedIn, a platform that really led the pack when it came to curating business news and blog posts from influencers, has started to lag behind when it comes to content consumption and sharing. But it’s taking steps to remedy that by developing its version of Facebook’s Instant Articles, which allow content to load very quickly and make content consumption on the platform a more enjoyable experience. (Read more at BuzzFeed)
- Bing is experimenting with showing tweets in search results. Google started integrating tweets in search last year. It’s unclear whether or not this test will become an official feature, but as with Google, tweets showing up in search results gives Twitter more visibility, especially to users who otherwise weren’t planning on going to Twitter. (Read more at Venturebeat)
- Tumblr has launched Tumblr Labs, an initiative that lets users test experimental features that have not been integrated into the core platform. Experiments include one that changes the color of a post to the color of its Tumblr, an option to have more scheduling options for a user’s queue and others. Users can opt-in to the feature through Lab Settings. (Read more at Tumblr’s Blog)
- Instagram has made a big change to its logo. It now has a flatter, multi-colored design, and apps related to Instagram, including Layout, Hyperlapse and Boomerang have similar designs. The goal of the design was to make it more “reflective of the community.” The apps also now have cleaner designs with less color to put more emphasis on users’ photos and videos. (Read more at Mashable)
- There’s a new app sign-in button giving Google, Facebook and Twitter some competition. This one comes from Slack, which just debuted a 'Sign-In with Slack' log-in feature to allow users to sign into sites and services using their Slack log-in credentials. (Read more at The Next Web)
- Facebook is definitely a mobile-first company, but that doesn’t mean they stray away from desktop. Their messaging app WhatsApp now has a desktop app. It perviously offered a desktop version but not an app. (Read more at Recode)
- Instagram is reportedly rolling out business profiles, and new details are continuing to emerge. Business profiles will have a chart icon that allows business managers to get access to analytics that include, follower locations, gender and age of followers, as well as content impressions, reach, clicks and top posts. (Read more at Later)
- Facebook is rolling out 360 Photos, which will let users upload flat panoramas. Then Facebook will make them 360 photos that let users hold and drag to pan around them. They’ll also be able to view them using Samsung Gear VR. Facebook’s supportd 360 videos since September. (Read more at TechCrunch)