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.

Snapchat Launches Campus Publisher Stories

Snapchat has launched Campus Publisher Stories, which is a partnership with college newspapers around the United States to launch weekly editorial content for Snapchat distribution. Snapchat will sell ads against the content, and ad revenue will be split between Snapchat and the school.

Currently, four schools are taking part, and they join dozens of publishers already creating content on Discover. Snapchat hasn’t opened up Discover to local publishers until now.

The offering from Snapchat is pretty limited at this point, but for advertisers looking to reach a targeted audience of college students who are difficult to reach through other channels, this could be an ideal fit.

Snapchat’s not doing anything incredibly groundbreaking with this, but what it is doing is diversifying its pitch to advertisers. Moves like this tell advertisers that Snapchat is scalable to their needs with a diverse set of tools to reach their desired audiences.

Facebook Brings New Ad Options to Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories have taken off in a big way with 50% of businesses having created a story in the last month. Now, Instagram wants to capitalize on that further by taking the Canvas format that launched on Facebook over to Instagram Stories.

Canvas works the same on Instagram as it does on Facebook by offering users the opportunity to swipe up after seeing an an ad. That takes them to an immersive ad experience.

Along with Canvas for Instagram, Instagram’s also allowing advertisers to use content they’ve created in Stories organically in paid ads. This can be done in Power Editor and Ads Manger.

Instagram Stories has proven to be a big success and embraced by advertisers at the same time, so this appears to be another big step in monetizing the product. This is perhaps the biggest advertising evolution for Stories since they added advertising.

Facebook Expands Bonfire Test

Growth among teen users may be slowing for Facebook, but it’s not sitting idly. The social network is testing a competitor to Houseparty called Bonfire.

Bonfire allows users to video chat with multiple friends all at once, and much like Houseparty, those users each get their own section of a user’s phone screen. Houseparty users can add effects to their videos to add a degree of interactivity.

Currently, Bonfire is only a test, but the popularity of Houseparty among teens has meant Facebook is prepping a competitive product, and one way Facebook identified Hosueparty as a threat is through Facebook sign-in usage on the app. Now, Houseparty sits at about 20 million users.

This move is not all that surprising. Facebook’s made it clear that it has no qualms in copying competitors and pushing into their territory, and Facebook’s done this with limited success in the past. Most of its app experiments fail, but the learnings and features are implemented into one of its flagship products. That’s the approach Facebook took to combat Snapchat, and now it appears to be following a similar trajectory for Houseparty.

News Quick Hits

Facebook is reportedly ready to spend $1 billion on original content for Facebook Watch. Facebook aims to compete with the likes of Netflix, Amazon and even Disney for user attention and time spent watching online video.
Apple News is signaling a potential pivot to video with a new featured video section inside of the app. The video is curated by Apple News editors.
The Facebook Live API has been updated to allow publishers to create higher quality live video. It will now automatically configure encoders to the optimal settings to help streamers stabilize their videos. Streamers can also now determine the exact frame and moment they go live as it was confusing when a stream was actually live to streamers prior to this.
Facebook appears to be testing a feature that saves videos for users to watch later while they aren’t on Wi-Fi. Users part of the test are directed to watch videos with a lightning bolt symbol to view them without using their mobile data.
Twitter has announced 35 new live content providers who will be making video for the platform, including Fox Sports Asia, Buzzfeed Japan and Bloomberg Asia Pacific. This round of partnerships focuses on Japan, India and Australia, major sources for Twitter users. This brings the number of live video content providers to about 200 at this time.
Instagram users can now share Stories via direct messaging thanks to a handy paper airplane icon in the bottom corner of Stories. Once tapped on, users will be granted a list of contacts they have the ability to send the Story to. Stories have proven to be incredibly popular, so this opens up one more way to engage with the feature.
Apple announced new products this week, including a 4K Apple TV, an Apple Watch with cellular connectivity built in, a new iPhone 8 and a more premium iPhone X that features edge-to-edge display, the ability to unlock with a face scan and a $999 price tag.
Pinterest is sitting at 200 million monthly active users, according to the latest stats. Last year it was at 150 million users.