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 Letting Users Prioritize News Sources Based on Trust

Facebook is continuing to update how its news feed algorithm surfaces news to its users. Just a week prior, Facebook announced that users will be seeing a lot more content from friends and family in their feeds and much less news content from publishers and unpromoted posts from brands.

With all of that being said, some news content will still make its way into the feed, but only publishers deemed “trustworthy” by Facebook users will be given prominence. Facebook is going to begin surveying users to evaluate sources’ trustworthiness through polls. Aggregated data will rank a publisher’s overall trustworthiness. The higher the trust, the greater that publisher's presence in the news feed will be.

More established publishers are welcoming the news as it has the potential to weed out unreliable news sources.

That being said Facebook’s survey has proven to be less than desired, consisting of two simple questions:

Do you recognize the following websites?
How much do you trust each of these domains?

The survey has been criticized as being overly simplistic when considering the significant consequences it may have.

Facebook is doing what it can to remove any blame it may have in how news is surfaced on the platform. In a series of moves that started with cutting publishers out of the feed, Facebook is now putting power into the hands of its users.

Facebook has been grappling with its power over the past few weeks. While it’s response was initially one that claimed that critique was overstated, it’s now shifted to accepting some degree of responsibility, responsibility it no longer wants. The challenge society faces as Facebook cuts news content is many people have gotten very used to getting their news from Facebook. Now, society is going to need to be retrained to get news from elsewhere, and hopefully, those untrustworthy sources many users were following before will be replaced by more credible sources of information.

Snapchat Makes Additional Investment in App Install Tech

Snapchat is working to improve its app install ad technology in an effort to lure advertisers. Now, advertisers will be able to use deep links to connect users from ads to specific sections of apps. Beyond that, advertisers will have more granular metrics to understand how ads driving to apps are performing.

App install ads are nothing new for Snapchat. They’ve had them since 2016, and when they launched they were joining a crowded marketplace of other platforms like Facebook that offered similar ads. This update, however, gives the ads greater flexibility by not just driving users to an app or to an install page but also drive them to a specific section of the app and then measure the events users initiate when they are in the app.

App install ads have proven to be key revenue drivers on other platforms, and now, Snapchat is working to do more to gain a greater share of that pie. The majority of Facebook’s mobile ad sales are assumed to be app install ads.

Snap has some success under its belt. Playdemic saw a 27% return on ad spend when it drove installs for Golf Clash, and Peak Labs used Snap ads to drive 1.7 million downloads in two months.

Instagram Partners with GIPHY to Add GIF Stickers

Instagram has added a new feature to Stories that allows users to add animated GIF stickers to their photos and videos on Stories. Thanks to a partnership with GIPHY, users have access to 100,000 animated stickers, which are searchable.

Right now, Instagram has only 4.2 million users aged 12-17, while Snapchat has 16 million. This move is another one aimed at Snapchat as Instagram looks to recruit younger users and generate engagement from them on the platform. These will add another dimension to communication between younger users on the platform, but they also open up an opportunity for brands looking to communicate with them. Brands hoping to connect with younger users should put these to use.

Snapchat Breaks Stories Out of its Ecosystem

Snapchat’s making it easier for users to share their Stories by letting them distribute them outside of Snapchat itself. Now, users can send links to their Stories to others, so they can view them without the Snapchat app.

Once a user wants to share a Story, that user can hold down on the Story’s tile on the Discover page. From there, users can copy a link and distribute it via email, text, Twitter and even Facebook. On Facebook, it won’t auto-play, similar to YouTube, and on Twitter the Stories play within tweets. The links will be available past 24 hours, the typical time a Story is available on the Snapchat platform. For example, Our Stories will be available for 30 days. Stories can also be deleted by their creators.

Snapchat’s had some growth issues, and this move gets Snapchat content out of the Snapchat ecosystem where it can be experienced by more than its users. Twitter took a similar step with embedded tweets, and Facebook has allowed for embedded posts since 2013. This puts Snapchat in front of a larger potential audience, which could have a positive impact on its total user numbers.

Twitter Working on Camera-Focused Interface

Twitter wants to make it easier to post videos to its app, so it’s working on a Snapchat-inspired feature that centers user focus on the camera. The goal of the feature is to get users to share video clips of what is happening in the here and now.

Currently, the act of sharing photos and videos on Twitter can be cumbersome. The app is much more focused on consuming content than creating it, but by putting the camera more front-and-center and not hiding it in the Compose section, Twitter could encourage people to “think" video when opening the app.

Live or near-live video content has been an on-again-off-again focus for every social platform, but Twitter has consistently stuck with it, signing deals for live news shows and featuring recent sports clips from various publishers. This is consistent with that approach, but it flips the script just a bit by focusing users on creating video content, not just consuming it.

News Quick Hits

Facebook is not bidding to live stream Thursday night NFL games. Over the past few years, the NFL has been opening up one and two-year deals for bidders to compete for streaming rights for Thursday night games. Twitter was the original partner, and it was followed by Amazon. Facebook has competed for rights in the past, so it is noteworthy that they’re not taking part in this round of bids.
Twitter is notifying 677,775 users that they were exposed to Russian propaganda over the course of the 2016 election period.
Amazon’s checkout-free convenience store opened this week to all customers, not just employees. The store is called Amazon Go, and it lets shoppers scan a QR code, shop and leave without going through a checkout. Cameras on the floor and ceiling record what they purchase.
The number of sponsored Instagram posts from influencers increased by 198% from 2016 to 2017. The rise in posts featuring #ad is likely driven by two factors. First, the FTC cracked down on sponsored Instagram content in 2017, so this increase is partially driven by influencers actually following appropriate disclosure practices. Second, brands are looking more and more to online influencers who focus on specific content segments from fashion to gaming over celebrities.
Twitch is giving content creators “video producer” tools that allow them to create landing pages, countdown timers and reruns of specific content in an effort to allow them to build excitement and hype around upcoming streams. Viewers who visit a landing page will be able to opt-in for alerts when content is available. Separately, Twitch announced a multiyear deal with Disney to offer exclusive content from some of the world’ biggest gaming influencers.
Facebook signed a major deal with Esports company ESL. The move brings two of ESL’s most popular competitions exclusively to Facebook with HD content that can also be viewed in virtual reality.
Facebook has acquired the company Confirm. Confirm created technology that verifies government-issued identification. The company will shut down, but Confirm’s technology will be used in a variety of ways by Facebook. One immediate way may be helping users who are locked out of their accounts. Facebook typically requires official IDs to reestablish access.
Nielsen just added Instagram to Social Content Ratings. It will join Facebook and Twitter in Nielsen’s measurement of activity linked to television networks and programs in an effort to evaluate viewer engagement.
Google is expanding its Mute This Ad program to allow users to stop ads from following them across devices. The update allows users to block all “reminder ads” from specific advertisers if they so choose. That being said, if a user visits an advertiser’s website after 90 days, the ads can return.
Snapchat is now letting users upload old photos from their camera rolls without adding the white border that used to mark photos as not being the latest and greatest. The photos will still note that they were not shot within Snapchat, but the border of shame is no longer part of the content.