This Week in Social and Digital (Week of February 13)
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 Cutting Back on Products Offered
The news from Twitter has not been good as of late, and some of that bad news is due to its shrinking ad business, which went from generating $641 million in ad revenue in 2015 to $638 million in 2016. That news also comes comes at a time of upheaval in which Twitter has refocused its mission to being “the best and fastest place to see what’s happening in the world and what people are talking about.”
This simpler mission for its platform is not reflected in its suite of ad products, which has become too cumbersome for some advertisers. That has led Twitter to reevaluate its suite of products from Promoted Tweets to direct response ads to see what’s working for both users and advertisers. Twitter has cited both Promoted Tweets and direct response ads as declining in revenue.
Where Twitter sees some hope is in video and becoming the indispensable platform that bridges first and second screens. Video is likely to be Twitter’s focus, but nothing has been confirmed at this time.
Twitter’s been working to find itself for some time, but a lot of that has been talk with little action. Now, Twitter appears to be making the turn for change. It’s taken steps to trim back by not focusing on Vine, removing the Buy button and selling its developer platform Fabric to Google.
The next step is looking at what it can offer advertisers. That won’t only help Twitter. It will also help advertisers understand better the role Twitter is best positioned to help them achieve their goals.
Facebook Working to Secure Music Deals
Facebook is taking major steps to secure a deal with music publishers and labels that could mean “licensing music for the entire site,” according to president of the National Music Pubishers Association David Israelite.
That could be potentially huge and open up an enormous music catalogue to users to add to the videos they share to Facebook. But more importantly, it would make things much more competitive with Google-owned YouTube.
As Facebook continues to focus more and more on video, a music licensing deal would give Facebook and its users access to a trove of content, potentially even leading to a music streaming service of its own. All of that would give the music industry more power to negotiate with YouTube, even though it has the downside of giving users even more access to free music.
The implications are two-fold. First, it would allow user-generated videos to include songs and provide them even more reasons to share video content to Facebook over competitive platforms. Second, it could open up Facebook to include more professional music content, which could transform the way music is shared on the web. Facebook’s size alone would be a threat to platforms like Vevo, and YouTube would have some stiff competition.
Facebook Moves Deeper into Video
Facebook’s ambitions for pushing video are greater than ever as the platform announced several new updates to how it will be handling video on its platform.
Now, sound will fade in and out as users scroll through videos in their News Feeds. Previously, users would have to tap a video to watch it with sound. Otherwise, it was silent in the feed. Videos playing with sound automatically can be turned off in Facebook’s settings. Phones that are set to silent will still have videos in the feed play with the sound off.
The next update is to vertical videos, which were popularized by Snapchat, which embraced vertical filming through mobile devices. Now, vertical videos will look better on Facebook thanks to a larger preview of vertical videos.
Another update adds the ability to keep watching videos while you scroll through your feed. Users can now minimize a video into a picture-in-picture view that will allow them to keep watching a video while they browse the rest of Facebook. These picture-in-picture videos can be dragged to any corner of the screen.
Lastly, as expected, Facebook has launched a new video app for set top boxes, including Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Samsung Smart TV. This is meant to allow uses to watch Facebook videos from Pages users follow, top live videos and recommended videos based on interests on larger screens.
These changes range from being simple updates to huge shifts. The first being sound on automatically on videos. The fact that videos played with the sound off automatically was kind of what saved auto-play videos from userin the first place on the platform, but now, it makes a lot more sense why Facebook is now offering advertisers the ability to only pay when their videos are watched with sound. That works for Facebook financially because it will be the default. It appears pressure from advertisers to have videos play with sound has come to a head. Now, we see how users respond.
The other big update is related to the TV app. Facebook has become a dominant player in receiving advertising dollars, but it has more competition in the realm of video than it has in other areas. This move is about making Facebook a video destination, and it opens up the door for longer-form content that Facebook can place mid-roll advertising around. Opening up its video offering to places outside of Facebook and to a TV app creates more opportunities for Facebook to get ads in front of users without adding more clutter to the core experience.
News Quick Hits
- The makers of Muscal.ly are in the pre-launch phase of launching a new app called Ping Pong, which they describe as “the ultimate video messenger.” It appears to be a Snapchat competitor, but right now, users cannot log in, so the mystery remains.
- Google has released an update to Google Maps, which lets users create lists of destinations that can then be shared with friends via email and social. Users can also follow lists and then access those followed lists through their own accounts. The update is a significant one as it pushes Google Maps a bit from being just a utilitarian platform to being a social one as well.
- Facebook has secured a partnership with Univision that will allow it to stream 46 games from Mexico’s Liga MX soccer league. The move goes after Twitter, which has put a stake in the ground as being the network to view live sports, especially Thursday Night Football games. This deal from Facebook could prove to be the first of many. The game will be available in the video tab for all users in the U.S.
- Twitter is testing a “top videos for you” tab in which it selects videos it thinks a user might enjoy that play automatically without sound. As the social world moves into video, Twitter is certainly jumping on board as it looks to focus its offering for users and advertisers.
- Twitter is testing a feature that hits users who are exhibiting “potentially abusive behavior” with a 12 hour timeout by limiting their content to only followers. This test is part of a larger effort by Twitter to curb abuse on its platform.