Social Media News — November 2016 Roundup

We’ve rounded up all the latest social media news for November 2016 from the top social media sources. Watch the video below to find out what happened this month in social media:

Facebook

• Facebook for Workplaces ‘We’ve brought the best of Facebook to the workplace — this means that you can chat with a colleague across the world in real time, host a virtual brainstorm in a Group, or follow along with your CEO’s presentation on Facebook Live.’ (highlight from website). Facebook Workplaces aims to be ‘priced competitively’ which implies that the service will not be free. Will your business make the infrastructure switch? Find out more.
• Zuckerberg unveils new ‘Facbook VR’ beta at Oculus OC3 event. The VR demo shown by the Facebook CEO boasted touch-controllers, user avatars & emotion recognition/gesture-tracking.
• Controversy as Facebook & Google to cut down on ‘fake news’ — Internet Giants Facebook & Google have pledged to cut down on the amount of ‘fake news stories’ that appear in both search results & the newsfeed. Barack Obama praised the decision, stating that ‘misinformation — is harmful to democratic institutions’. However, there have been some concerns regarding what techniques will be used to identify alleged ‘fake stories’.

Snapchat

• Snapchat releases Snapchat Spectacles, to be trialed in specific locations and distributed by ‘Snapbot’ vending machines. In September, Snapchat released a sneak-peak of their first hardware unit dubbed Snap, Inc’s ‘Spectacles’ which enables users record video and take photos from their glasses in a similar fashion to ‘Google Goggle’s’. Spectacles are now being trialed in select locations in the US with PR buzz generated by the Snapbot’s placement in strategic public locations. Want your own pair? Visit the Spectales site and try to find a Snapbot.
• Friends to pushed back up the newsfeed to take priority over discovery pages following mass user controversy. Recent backlash by snapchat users cause Snap, Inc to backtrack on previous changes to the app regarding advertising and placement of discovery pages over friends. Controversial decisions by Snapchat have been backtracked on due to negative user feedback. Previous decision to bump friends lower down the interface than discover pages has been u-turned by developers at Snap, Inc.

Instagram

• Instagram Live? Maybe… Rumours say that Instagram is currently testing a new live video service in Russia.
• Watch out Snapchat! Instagram Stories grows to over 100m active users in only 60 days.
• Kanye’s back on Instagram. After a 2 month hiatus and a series of recent tour cancellations, Kanye West returns to Instagram by bizarrely uploading 99 low-res magazine photos — all which have now attracted hundreds of thousands of comments & likes.

Pinterest

• Pinterest promoted videos have now been rolled out for UK users. Promoted videos launched in the US back in August. New changes to Pinterests ads platform now mean that promoted video features will now also be available to marketers in the UK and will allow them to extend the effectiveness of their video content.
• Pinterest Dynamic Retargeting is now available. Pinterest Dynamic retargeting creates new opportunities to retarget to custom audiences based on your website traffic using the Pinterest Tag Tool.

Vine

• The Death Of Vine. Twitter pulls the plug on video-looping platform Vine after months of being unable to find a buyer for the platform. Vine’s initial troubles began back in May, when content creators started to leave for other platforms such as Facebook & Youtube.
• Despite being unable to secure financial investment, Vine still attracted a significant base of user traffic there is still large internet subculture which is still mourning the close of the video sharing site which shows that the app clearly has a small, albeit dedicated user-base that will actively miss the platform and due to this heavily engaged userbase, I feel that it is a shame to completely ditch the app.
• It’s easy to wonder that, if Instagram had incorporated Vine into it’s advertising platform in the same way that Facebook has incorporated Instagram, would it have been possible to turn Vine into a profit center?
• https://twitter.com/ThomasSanders/status/791680964749434880

Originally published at Trendjackers.