It’s difficult to stay up to speed when the social media landscape is constantly shifting and shaping – we get it! That’s why we provide our partners with a This Week in Social Media (TWISM) e-newsletter. In our weekly newsletters, we share with our client partners the biggest news and insights from the social media world each week. Below, we’ve compiled 12 of the best social media updates from our TWISM newsletters in our What’s New in Social Media: April 2019 Edition.
- Instagram Tests Hiding Like Counts to Reduce Focus on Vanity Metrics: Instagram has begun experimenting with removing the “like” count on a photo in hopes of moving away from vanity metrics on the platform.
- Vine Returns as ‘Byte’ – But is it Too Late for a Comeback?: Back in November 2017, around a year after the demise of Vine, Vine’s co-founder Dom Hofman announced that he had begun work on a follow-up app, initially called V2.
- Facebook Adds New Options for Posting 3D Photos, Including 3D Photos in Stories: 3D photos enable the viewer to tilt to see an alternate angle, giving each image a different perspective. The process is generated through a complex system of image layering and data mapping, using the dual camera setup of more recent model smartphones to create the 3D effect, without any extra effort on the part of the creator. Facebook’s also adding the ability to share 3D images from your desktop, though it is a fairly technical process.
- Facebook Updates Ads Manager, Adds ‘Cost Cap Bidding’: Among the updated functions, Facebook’s adding:
- A new copy and paste functionality in Campaign Creation, making it easier to create your ads
- An auto-naming option for campaigns, ad sets and ad names
- More intuitive ad-level creative and placement editing tools.
- A ‘cost cap bidding’ option for campaigns, which is designed to improve efficiency and results.
- Facebook’s Latest Change to Watch Makes it More Like YouTube: Facebook Watch’s transformation from a video section reserved exclusively for professionally made, episodic shots to video of all kinds, from all kinds of creators, will soon be complete. Mostly a cosmetic change, the change also reflects Facebook’s shifting priorities and strategies since launching Facebook Watch in 2017. With this most recent change, Facebook has fully acknowledged that Watch, like YouTube, is open for videos of all types from anyone.
- Facebook Launches New Brand Safety Controls to Better Protect Advertisers: After YouTube faced major backlash to its ad placements system, which saw brand content placed alongside offensive videos, creating negative association, Facebook has updated its ad tools. Its Block Lists, Transparency Controls and Inventory Filter will now enable advertisers to choose a level of protection they want to apply to their ad placements.
- Pinterest Adds Conversion Optimization, New Video Ad Options: Pinterest has unveiled two new ad options – Conversion Optimization, which provides an automated way for advertisers to optimize their ad reach for a chosen goal, and Promoted Video for conversions, which will click into a landing page that houses the advertiser’s website, as well as a closeup of the video.
- Instagram Now Demotes Vaguely “Inappropriate” Content: The platform has begun reducing the spread of posts that are sexually suggestive, violent or graphic so they may not appear for the broader community in Explore or hashtag pages. Creators currently have no specific guidelines about what constitutes non-recommendable content but will need to be cautious in order to keep reach and engagement high.
- Social Video App TikTok Is Steady-Stepping Into Shoppable Ads in the U.S.: Both brand takeover and in-feed video ads can include links to shoppable pages hosted outside of TikTok, where brands can encourage users to purchase their products on mobile. Brand takeover ads cost between $50,000 and $100,000, and branded hashtag challenges are being sold for a flat fee of $150,000 for six days with promotion.
- Pinterest is Now Up to 265 Million Users, Added 51 Million Within the Last Year: It’s not on the same level of overall popularity as Facebook and Instagram, but Pinterest, which is moving closer to launching its initial public offering, has released some updated usage stats, which show that it now has 265 million monthly active users, up from the 250 million that it reported back in September.
- Snapchat Will Power Stories & Ads in Other Apps: The app announced that its ads will appear in other apps with the launch of Snapchat Ad Kit and the Snapchat Audience Network later this year. It will also let apps like Tinder and Houseparty host Stories inside their own products that users can share directly from the Snapchat camera with Stories Kit. With these new features, advertisers will be able to extend their ad buys to reach both Snapchat users and non-users in other apps.
- Facebook Launches Searchable Transparency Library of All Active Ads: Now you can search Facebook to see how much money a Page has spent on ads in the past year, which Pages’ ads reference specific topics or what a Page’s previous names were. The new feature makes good on Facebook’s promise to increase transparency after the social network’s ads were used to try to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.
Stay tuned for next month’s updates!
