Getting Social in April
The ups and downs in the world of social this April.
Well here we are, officially beyond the one-third mark of 2015. How exactly, we’re not quite sure, but what an excellent few months it’s been. Spring has sprung; trees are doing that green-leaf thing they tend to do, our commutes home are typically well lit (YES daylight savings) and the temperature is more eclectic than we could possibly put into words. Enough chat about the weather, shall we get down to business and address the real reason you’re reading these words?
Social Media in April. To sum it up — some things happened, some things didn’t and in a few cases some things changed. There’s plenty more to say about that, so read on...
Facebook’s Q1 results were announced, noting a total of $3.54 billion in first-quarter revenues (an increase of 42 percent over the same period last year) as well as reporting ad revenue growth of 46%, reaching a remarkable $3.32 billion figure. Monthly active users are said to have grown 13% year-on-year, with mobile accounting for over 40% of the platform’s total audience. That barely scrapes the surface so if you’re interested in knowing more about the numbers, have a read of this great article.
They tweaked their algorithm, meaning the balance of content from pages and friends will alter to suit users based on how they interact on the platform. The impact of said changes on pages will vary, depending on the composition of audience and posting activity. In some cases there is the potential for post reach and referral traffic to decline, but ultimately if pages are posting things that people find meaningful there’s no reason to be concerned.
The good ol’ days of MSN are (kind of) back thanks to our ol’ pal Facebook’s introduction of a dedicated web interface for messenger. As of last month the social network launched Messenger.com — a desktop chat interface for users looking to avoid the social content and chaos of its main site.
And last but certainly not least, Facebook are now allowing page administrators to select a preferred page audience. This update means creators of new pages will now have the option of defining their target audiences, thus allowing brands to speak in a more direct manner to those that they’re hoping to reach.
All Twitter users can now choose to accept direct messages from anyone else on the platform. In the past in order to receive a direct message from another person the pair would have to be following each other, but with the rollout of this new feature anyone has the option to receive direct messages from others on the platform.
They officially revamped their retweet functionality, making it markedly easier for users to plug other people’s tweets and add a commentary of their own. This update allows users to skip the copy-pasting nonsense that was previously required, whist prompting them to add comments before hitting the Retweet button.
They introduced Highlights, a “fast and simple summary of Twitter,” that allows users to catch up quickly on the tweets that are most relevant to them via rich push notifications. To begin with Highlights will only be available to Android users, although we don’t expect it to be too long before its rolled out to other operating systems
And redesigned their homepage, allowing logged out users a glimpse into what’s happening on the site. The update is initially rolling out to the platform’s US users, and is expected to reach other parts of the world in the coming months.
Snapchat’s Brand Stories are on an indefinite hiatus. A spokesperson for the network confirmed last month that Brand Stories (the platform’s original ad unit) aren’t currently available, hinting that they may be back one day but in a different form. Obviously we’ll keep you in the loop, so watch this space as the situation unfolds…
YouTube celebrated its 10th birthday with a trip down memory lane. The first video to hit the video service was posted by Jawed Karim, the platform’s co-founder and discusses Elephants trunks. See below.
If any of the above hasn’t made sense, or you don’t have the time/energy to think about it, then get in touch with us. It’s kind of what we’re good at.
Alternatively, if you totally understand everything we just said it would mean a lot if you hit the ‘Recommend’ button below! True story.
