This Week in Social and Digital (Week of July 11)
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 Testing Ephemeral Messaging for Messenger (Read more at Facebook)
Facebook Messenger may soon be taking another page out of Snapchat’s playbook with ephemeral messaging.
A new feature in testing called 'secret conversations' will allow users the option to set how long their messages are visible after being sent. Beyond that messaging will be end-to-end encrypted.
The feature is expected to be available to more users this summer.
Snapchat came out at a time when users were hungry for greater privacy in their personal messaging, and it gained traction around that promise. Now, as Snapchat evolves to allow users to save their snaps, Messenger is evolving to allow users to delete them. It shows just how complicated the social ecosystem really is with each platform offering comparable features for their user bases to keep them from going elsewhere. Facebook entering this market gives users a reason to stick with Messenger instead of defecting to Snapchat but little reason for Snapchat users to defect to Messenger.
Twitter Opens Up Gnip’s Audience API (Read more at Twitter’s Blog)
Twitter announced that it is making Gnip’s Audience API available to all advertisers. This has been in the works since October, but it didn’t want to launch it until it was ready to return insights in real-time, integrate alongside other Gnip APIs, protect user privacy and deliver information that isn’t currently available by looking at public content.
This API will allow advertisers to get demographic data across ten user models or a combination of any two. That will allow advertisers to be more targeted with their ads as well as the content included in the ads.
Beyond that, the API will allow advertisers to create audience segments based on followers of a public Twitter handle, create audiences made up of people who have seen brand’s tweets over the past 90 days or create audience segments based off of first-party data provided by brands. Providing that first party data will allow brands to better understand the Twitter behaviors of people the brand already has in its database.
The automated ad battle is hot with Facebook and Google leading the charge. This move allows Twitter to do much of what it already offered but faster and more effectively. Being able to pair first-party data with data Twitter already has for its audience makes Twitter a more powerful platform for targeting users.
News Quick Hits
- Twitter will be live streaming Republican and Democratic National Conventions thanks to a partnership with CBS News. The content will not include ads, but commercials from CBS’s feed will be played. The move is part of a broader strategy for Twitter to grow its live streaming offering. Beyond that, Twitter also inked a deal with Bloomberg Television to stream its programs this fall. Twitter will sell ads against the content and share revenue with the network. (Read more at AdWeek)
- Twitter has announced that it is now supporting GIFs up to 15 MB in size. Previously, GIFs were limited to 3 MB. (Read more at The Next Web)
- Pokemon Go has taken the world by storm, and now the developer Niantic is planning to offer sponsored places on the game’s virtual map. This will allow businesses to drive players to their businesses while also bringing more revenue to Niantic. It’s essentially what Foursquare tried to do in its earliest iterations. (Read more at CNET)
- Facebook Messenger has gotten 3D Touch support on iOS. 3D Touch allows users to preview conversations with suggested contacts or instantly go to a new message screen. (Read more at SocialTimes)
- Facebook’s Instant Articles are coming to Messenger. Instant Articles will load within the Messenger app almost instantaneously and won’t require users to visit a publisher’s website to view them. This is the first time Instant Articles will be available outside the core Facebook app. (Read more at Mashable)
- Japanese messaging company Line held its IPO this week and raised more than $1 billion. Shares started out at $32.84 and ended the day at $40.80, valuing the company at $8.6 billion. Line will continue to be evaluated with user growth being a primary metric. It currently has 218 million users, and it has said that user growth has slowed. (Read more at AdAge)