Social media news that mattered this week
Here’s my summary and opinion on the latest social media news that matters including new developments from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest.
You can watch me go through the week’s news on THE #SocialToday SHOW below. Please Like my Intranet Future Facebook Page and you’ll receive a notification when I go live in future. Feel free to ask me questions Live, by posting in the Comments or tweeting me @intranetfuture.
Please note that there will be no THE #SocialToday SHOW, news article or newsletter next week as I’m on holiday.
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Facebook have launched its photo sharing Moments app in the Europe and Canada but without facial recognition; users label photos with names of their friends. It’s been available in the US for nearly a year but needed to be amended to meet privacy laws in Europe and Canada. It works by grouping together ‘moments’ which you can then send to Friends.
Facebook will soon launch a 360 Photos feature will let people upload flat panorama pictures taken on iPhones, Google Photo Spheres or from 360 cameras. Once uploaded to Facebook users will be able to hold and drag to pan around the photos, or move their heads to look around them on devices like the Samsung Gear VR.
Facebook Messenger
Messenger Platform, Facebook’s new chatbot service, is going down a storm with developers with “tens of thousands”, according to Head of Product, Stan Chudnovsky, creating chatbots for Messenger. That’s a lot of interest given the platform has only been live for a month. Any business can create a chat bot to carry out transactions such as booking a service or buying a product on Messenger but all chat bots need to be approved by Facebook.
Instagram has rolled out an updated icon and app design, as well as new icons for its other creative apps: Layout, Boomerang, and Hyperlapse. From what I’ve seen on Twitter, the changes have gone down well with users.
Ad retargeting, new features for custom audiences and location and time targeting are now available on Instagram. These give brands and businesses more accurate targeting of potential customers. If you are in the business of selling jewellery, clothing, shoes and other visual products, Instagram advertising is well worth investigating. If you need advice please get in touch.
LinkedIn will soon be adding salary data to vacancy information which will be a helpful move for job seekers.
Last year, Google started showing tweets in its search results and pretty soon Bing will be following suit. This is good news for anyone using Twitter marketing to promote their business.
Pinterest now allows affiliate links on its site following the installation of improved Spam detection systems. Previously they were banned due to abuse by spammers. Legitimate affiliates can add affiliate links behind photos and videos and earn revenue when users click on them and subsequently sign-up for services or products.
[RUMOUR] Some users have noticed that Pinterest has changed the label of ‘Pin It’ on images to ‘Save’ on the desktop. Could this be rolled out to all users? The move would make sense and put it on a par with services like Pocket and Facebook’s ‘Save’ feature.
YouTube
You’ll soon be able to send messages within YouTube with the ability to attach videos. So for example, you can share an inspirational TED talk with a colleague and chat to them about it. The feature called ‘native sharing’ is currently being tested amongst a small group of users. Like ‘native publishing’ it’s a mechanism for keeping users on a social network. In this case, there’s no longer a need to copy and paste a link into an email or other messaging channel and leave YouTube.
Amazon
Amazon has launched a new video upload service called Amazon Video Direct to rival YouTube. It gives content creators the opportunity to monetize original content in several ways including ads. If you’re producing high quality business videos, this service is worth looking into it. Videos can be watched by Amazon Prime members and it’s available in US, Germany, Austria, UK and Japan - find out more.
Number of the week: My number of the week is 1 million. That’s the number of monthly users Samsung’s Gear VR has each month
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About Jonathan Pollinger
Follow @intranetfutureJonathan provides businesses and organisations with social media training that makes them thrive.
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