Top Articles: “Stories” Are The New Form of Storytelling
Week 22, 2018
Virtually every social media platform (and some other digital platforms) have some type of Stories feature. These are the ephemeral photos and videos that only last 24 hours, meaning that it is special to experience them. Stories are quickly becoming more popular than regular newsfeeds. This is significant because these platforms were built on newsfeeds until Snapchat came along. But what really matters for consumers is the experience, the UX. Ecosystems are built on UX Design. In other words, experience matters and format is as important as content.
Stories are about to surpass feed sharing. Now what?
By Josh Constine from TechCrunch
Across Facebook, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger, Stories creation and consumption is up 842% since 2016. The ephemeral, vertical video is the new means of communication and brands need to take advantage of this type of storytelling. Branded messages are now backgrounds, overlays, and a feeling–much different from the headline, text, and link advertisers are used to. Though the ultimate Stories format is still being tested by each company, the tool is not going away and consumers clearly prefer this mode of social interaction.
Airbnb’s new Stories feature is an attempt to sell a new business line: Travel services
By Shirin Ghaffary from Recode
Airbnb is one of the handful of non social media companies creating their own take on Stories. In Airbnb’s case, Travel Stories are used to share their Airbnb experiences. What’s interesting is that theses Stories are not tied to a particular rental, but are grouped into destinations. This opens the door for content about location-specific experiences like restaurants or museums, which ties into their existing Experiences product. Airbnb is expanding and linking its ecosystem so that users and brands can easily transition between their products.
Facebook Stories reveals 150M daily viewers and here come ads
By Josh Constine from TechCrunch
After 14 months since launch, Facebook has finally released the number of daily active users on their Stories platform. Now that there are 150 million users, they have begun beta testing advertisements on the platform. The ads are 5–15 seconds, which is pretty lengthy for digital. Facebook also plans to give more data on consumer actions, which could be interesting since they already track how consumers tap and scroll through Instagram. Facebook also has a much more international focus, which has been much ignored by competitors like Snapchat.
Facebook adds Voice Posts, Stories archive, and new cloud storage features
By Thomas Ricker from The Verge
Facebook had been focusing on innovation like audio Stories for countries without native keyboards and cloud storage for those without large storage on their phones. These developments are now being released in India with global plans soon. The voice messages in particular are interesting for brands. Videos and photos aren’t always the easiest way to share and sometimes audio without image has a much larger effect. Audio is a tried and true method of marketing, so FB audio is not a stretch.
72% of consumers prefer videos to text marketing
By Dan Alaimo from Retail DiveOn a related note, more consumers prefer visual content to textual content. This makes sense as platforms are moving away from text-based interfaces and consumers are moving right along with them. Even reviews are coming from video content these days.
Curated by Hadley Stork
