January: monthly social roundup
Snap Inc. bases its international hub in the UK
In a move that indicates the company’s belief in a post-Brexit UK, Snap Inc. (the newly-branded company behind Snapchat) has chosen the UK as the location for its main international hub, named Snap Group Limited. The company has given the reason for this as being down to Britain’s “strong creative industries”, as well as the fact that the UK is where its advertising clients are, where over 10 million daily Snapchat users live and where talent is already being recruited. The decision follows a wave of fears shared by smaller tech companies, who worry that a ‘hard’ Brexit may have a detrimental effect on the British technology sector.
Facebook Pages can now ‘go live’ from a desktop
Earlier this month, Facebook saw an update that lets Facebook Pages go Live from their desktop web browser, with an obvious benefit for video blogging (vlogging). The ability to do this means streams will gain from an easy and stable camera setup, as opposed to the complicated mechanics of live streaming from a tablet or smartphone. In addition to this, Facebook now lets Page admins designate other users ‘Live Contributors’: users who have the ability to stream on behalf of the Page whenever they choose. This will have a practical impact for news sites, allowing individual journalists to share Live videos but not having to be given full administrative access to the Page. Although only available to businesses and brands with a Facebook Page, it is likely that this will spread to all users in time.
Facebook includes adverts in Messenger home screen
Following last year’s foray into sponsored private messages, Facebook is taking advertising one step further and including card-style ads in Messenger’s home screen. The sizeable card ads (which, as seen in a very small test run in Australia and Thailand, take up almost half the screen) will sit under a ‘Sponsored’ heading, between ‘Favourites’ and ‘Active Now’. They show an image thumbnail, two lines of copy and a call-to-action button (such as ‘Learn More’), suggesting the intention is for them to be used as a way to drive sales and build brand awareness. Facebook has said that “people are regularly messaging businesses with over 1 billion messages sent between people and businesses on Messenger each month”.
Twitter introduces looping videos in memory of Vine
Following the sad closure of 6-second video app Vine, Twitter has decided to integrate the looping video function into native videos posted on its app. The platform will now automatically loop all videos that are shorter than 6.5 seconds, whether posted from a Vine Camera, Snapchat, or any other source. This seems to be a move from Twitter to retain the users who used Vine religiously and who previously said they would instead share their content on Instagram to utilise the looping function. This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, however, as it was revealed in the Vine FAQs released on Twitter. This won’t save Vine, although Vine clips will still be watchable on Twitter if already published there. The notable downside is the loss of the Vine community and searchability, which was a huge draw for people to use the app.
Google+ adds improvements based on user feedback
Since the new Google+ was launched in November 2015, Google has been continuously working on the platform and listening to its users’ comments. The latest updates – “much requested” by those who use the social network – automatically hide low-quality comments, place more of a focus on visual content and include Events in Google+’s capabilities. The updates came into play earlier this week, with the purpose of making the platform “the best place to connect around the things you care about”.
Twitter drops e-commerce function
E-commerce doesn’t appear to have worked as well for Twitter as it would have liked; around eight months after a report said the platform was stopping development of its ‘Buy’ button and was dissolving its e-commerce team, the Twitter sales channel is being shut down. The change is a result of Twitter moving away from e-commerce and choosing to focus instead on the website conversions objective. Although the ‘Buy’ button will be no more, there will still be a ‘Donate’ button to encourage users to donate to charity and other non-profit organisations.
Facebook’s Journalism Project wants to strenghthen ties with the news industry
The Facebook Journalism Project is Facebook’s latest programme, intended to foster closer ties between the platform and the news industry. The platform plans to introduce new storytelling formats and evolve the currently-used formats such as Live, 360 video and Instant Articles. The platform also intends to focus its efforts on local news, emerging business models, and hackathons, and will also now offer e-learning courses on Facebook products, tools and services for journalists. Facebook also emphasised its intention to curb news hoaxes and fake news.
LinkedIn gets an overhaul with a focus on connections
LinkedIn has released a new look. The new LinkedIn format and design reflects the app, so that the user experience is the same whether on desktop or mobile. LinkedIn has included a few features that are worthy of highlighting, including: streamlined navigation; smarter messaging that helps users connect and unlock new opportunities – there will now be insights served up across the site that will help people connect and break the ice when talking to one another; a richer feed relying on a combination of algorithms and human editors to keep users informed; a more intuitive search function and more specific insights into those viewing published content.
The first third-party emoji evaluation for branded emjois and stickers
Now emojis are part of everyday language, with around 6 billion sent every day around the world on mobile messaging apps, it’s about time that they become measurable on social media. The visual mobile messaging startup Emogi has partnered with Moat, an analytics company, to offer brand insights, measurement and analytics for emojis, stickers and GIFs across various apps (including Kik). Emogi allows for the automatic insertion of emojis, stickers and GIFs in conversations when a relevant term is mentioned (for example, offering a branded sticker from a doughnut brand when the food is being discussed in Kik’s messenger). Third-party measurement heralds the dawn of a new age, given there was a 609% year-on-year growth of emoji use in branded campaigns between June 2015 and 2016.
Written by Harriet Chamberlain, Head of Digital (@HLChamberlain)