This Week in Social and Digital (Week of February 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.
Twitter Takes Major Steps to Combat Abuse
Twitter is enabling new features to combat abusive behavior on its platform.
Now, Twitter will proactively hide offensive tweets across its platform using machine learning systems. It’s not removed, but if no one sees a hateful comment, there’s less reason for a troll to post it in the first place.
Included with this update is a new “safe search” option, which will automatically hide any potentially harmful content from appearing in search results. It is limited to the web at the moment and is automatically on by default. It can, however, be turned off.
Twitter has also announced that it will be actively policing permanently banned users from creating new accounts. How it will be doing this has not been fully explained, but if successful, it’d be a big step at stopping repeat offenders from simply springing back after being removed.
The abusive behavior by some users on Twitter has harmed the platform, many of its users and brands. Twitter’s developed a reputation for being a place where people are harassed and bullied, which certainly makes the platform less attractive to marketers and potential users, which Twitter is actively working to recruit. Obviously, that’s a reputation Twitter wants to shake.
Twitter’s position, for better or for worse, is more relevant than ever following the election. The awareness of Twitter is there, which may bring more people onto the platform. Twitter needs to ensure those new users have a good experience when they get there and take steps to make existing users feel comfortable using the platform.
This effort has taken a lot of time to rollout, but it now appears Twitter’s doing something about what is a serious problem.
Pinterest Launches Lens to Shop from Your Camera
Pinterest has launched a new feature that allows users to search for Pins using their smartphone cameras called Lens. Users simply snap a photo of a real-world object and Pinterest will show pins related to that object using machine learning and computer vision technology.
The feature shows similar objects but it will also show relevant suggestions. For example, a photo of a tomato will show relevant recipes. The way Pinterest positions it is it “lets your eyes do the searching."
To coincide with the launch of Lens, Pinterest launched some related features, including “Shop the Look” and “Instant Ideas.” Shop the Look allows users to find related products to a Pin. Tapping a Pin with several products in it will allow a user to find products featured the Pin that he or she can buy. Instant Ideas allows users to tap a circle in the bottom corner of a Pin to find more inspiration based on the content related to the Pin.
The feature is very much in line with Pinterest’s latest efforts to position itself as a visual search platform designed for people who are planning months before taking action, versus Google, which is used for planning and making a decision in the moment.
This offers a dynamic way for users to use Pinterest Search in a way that the platform is best positioned to provide more of a payoff because one idea leads to exponentially more. That’s the power of the platform.
Facebook Launching Ads With Sound Guaranteed On
Facebook is giving advertisers the ability to only pay for video ads that are viewed with the sound on, which is a shift for the social network.
Facebook launched video with auto-play content that plays without sound by default. This has led advertisers to edit videos to work without sound and take other precautions, such as adding subtitles to their content. Now, advertisers can choose to only count and pay for views that have the sound on in an effort to make advertisers happy.
Beyond that, advertisers can now pay only when an entire video is viewed. Previously, the only option close to that was to buy “completed” video views up to 10 seconds. Finally, Facebook is allowing advertisers to buy video ad views based on the Media Ratings Council’s criteria. This criteria counts video views that meet the criteria of being viewed for at least two seconds with the video at least 50% on the screen.
It’s taken some time for Facebook to train marketers to be less reliant on sound, but sometimes sound is necessary to tell the story. In those cases, Facebook just isn’t the right platform for that story to be told. Now, that changes, and Facebook becomes a bigger canvas for marketers to tell their stories in the way they need to be told.
Competition in the marketplace from Snapchat to Google and other players seems to be making Facebook less draconian and more open to marketers that don’t prescribe entirely to Facebook’s rules.
News Quick Hits
- YouTube is unrolling live streaming from its mobile app in the coming weeks, but the feature is limited to users with 10,000 or more subscribers to their channels. It’s unclear why YouTube is limiting it to higher-profile creators, but it may be to maintain quality and provide a point of differentiation with Facebook and Instagram, which allow anyone to go live. It could also be because YouTube launched Super Chat, which lets live viewers pay to have their comments appear at the top of a live feed.
- The New York Times is now bundling premium Spotify access with its subscription service. The effort is part of a goal by The New York Times to go from 3 million digital subscribers to 10 million.
- For the first time since becoming public company, Twitter reported a decline in ad revenue. In Q4 2016 it reported $638 million, and in 2015 it was at $641 million. Twitter has gained new prominence with its newfound prominent role in politics, but that has not helped the platform. And with Snapchat becoming a public company, the competition faced by Twitter is only going to grow. That being said, Twitter did show signs of improvement with time spent and tweet impressions growing in double digits. Monthly users, however, only grew 4% to 319 million people.
- Facebook has updated Safety Check by adding Community Help. It allows users to connect in the event of a crisis. The feature offers options, including “find help” and “give help,” which allows those who are able to offer aid, such as food, transportation or short-term shelter.
- Facebook is taking steps to clamp down on racial bias in advertising. Now, Facebook will not allow any ad related to housing, employment or credit that is targeted to include or exclude multicultural advertising segments.