This Week in Social and Digital (Week of November 6)
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 Lets Brands Add Messenger to Websites
Facebook has a new plugin for brands looking to connect to users through messages. Messenger can now be integrated into business’ websites, allowing users to interact with chatbots as well as humans using the Messenger system. The move comes at a time in which Facebook is putting more of an emphasis on brands putting Messenger to work.
Last week, it announced that brands will be able to buy space within Messenger users’ inboxes. Facebook’s made it easier for users to find brands’ Messenger presences through search, but now, it’s even easier as users will be able to go straight to a brand’s website to get connected for support.
2018 appears to be a big year for Messenger. Facebook’s been rolling out ways for brands to connect to users by, for example, launching ads for chatbots and other click-to-go-to-Messenger executions. With more than 1 billion users and 200,000 bots on the platform, Messenger is ripe for monetization, which means its potential for being a way to reach consumers is only going to grow.
The line Facebook will have to tread is fine one. Messenger is about intimate one-to-one or one-to-few communication, much like email. Users didn’t take kindly to Google reading their emails to target them with ads, and Google backtracked on that approach. Facebook will need to find that balance between privacy, intimacy and effectiveness for brands.
Snapchat Earnings Portend Redesign
Snapchat reported its Q3 earnings to disappointed investors. Ad revenue came in at $208 million, 62% more than last year but still a disappointment to investors. Snapchat also operated at a loss, down $443 million, which led stocks to drop 20%. The platform's users sit at 178 million, not exactly in the same ballpark as its biggest competitor, Instagram.
That being said, there were bright spots. There are five times as many advertisers over last year, but ad prices have dropped 60%.
Snapchat also revealed plans to completely redesign the app to appeal to a more global and older crowd. The goal will be to make the app more intuitive, and even Snapchat is unclear of what the implications could really be for the redesign.
What we do know is the interface will be streamlined by separating one-to-one content from friends from public content from influencers and publishers. Public content from publishers and influencers will be handled algorithmically to surface content Snapchat deems a user will be most interested in seeing. Up until this point, Snapchat has been sorted chronologically.
CEO Evan Spiegel stated that the redesign will likely disrupt the business in the short term, and the team is not clear how the community will evolve with the product.
It’s tough to judge Snapchat for where it is right now. Facebook started out in a similar situation because it hadn’t done anything in regards to mobile. Facebook evolved, and it appears Snapchat is too.
A redesign is a bold approach because Snapchat is in a unique position. It has a passionate user base that loves Snapchat for what it is, but it needs to grow its appeal. While change could mean embracing a large segment of the population, it could mean alienating those who love it. A redesign is needed, and that redesign could be its saving grace as it was for Facebook or its death knell as it was for Digg.
Twitter’s 280-Character Limit is Officially Here
Twitter’s officially expanding its character limit from 140 characters to 280 following a test it launched in September. The update is available for all languages except Chinese, Japanese and Korean which don’t need as many characters to communicate information. Twitter’s hope is that the this will encourage more use of the platform.
9% of tweets hit the 140-character limit, and only 1% of tweets hit the new 280-character limit in Twitter’s test. Twitter’s assumption is this will help with usability of the platform. Beyond that, users with the longer tweets had more engagement, followers and time spent on Twitter.
One of Twitter’s most defining features is changing, and much like Snapchat with its redesign, that change may be a good thing even if it comes at the cost of angering some core Twitter users. This may lead to improved usability for the platform, or it may mean the magic of Twitter is replaced by verbose tweets just because they can. It also has the potential to change how Twitter is used. Maybe it shifts from being about what’s happening to being more about blogging. Time will tell.
News Quick Hits
- Facebook has officially launched Facebook Polls, which let users and Pages poll others. The polls can be text-based, or they can be spiced up with images and GIFs as the potential answers. Polls can have expiration dates and users can view the results in real-time.
- Instagram is taking steps to improve influencer disclosures on its platform. More users have access to the Paid Partnership tag to easily attach a company to their posts. In addition, creators will be notified if Instagram determines they’ve posted sponsored content without disclosure.
- Apple is launching Apple Pay Cash in iOS 11.2 Beta. This will enable users to send and receive payments using iMessages. The feature will be available to all users when iOS 11.2 goes out of beta later this year, which puts heightened pressure on services like Venmo and Zelle.
- Instagram is relaxing a bit on Stories. Now all photos and videos an a user’s camera roll can be added to Instagram Stories. This used to be limited to content that was 24 hours old or less.
- Twitter has launched “Promote Mode” in an effort to woo small business owners. It gets them 10 promoted tweets per day for $99 per month. The goal is to make advertising on Twitter hassle-free. The system decides which tweets to promote and offers limited targeting.
- Twitter isn’t just increasing the character count in tweets. It’s also increasing the number of characters allowed in display names from 20 characters to 50.