What’s Good in Social — June ‘18 Recap

Published in

thesocialnerd

4 min readJul 9, 2018

TRENDS OF THE MONTH

Apple Drops More Emojis: More than 150 emojis from Apple. Android friends be prepared to get a ton of those boxes and question marks from me as I abuse these. (Digital Trends)
Airbnb’s Response to Travel Ban: This isn’t a place where I like to get overly political or anything. However, I think the way that Airbnb responded to the travel ban was genius. (MediaPost)

No More Trending Section: Facebook is killing their trending section on the platform. While I loved it personally (especially when it came to helping write these), it apparently wasn’t very popular overall. (CNN Tech)

Memories: According to Facebook, more than 90 people are using the “On This Day” feature to look back and share memories from years past. So, Facebook decided to aggregate memories in one place under four different sections: On This Day, Friends Made This Day, Recaps of Memories, and Memories You May Have Missed. (WeRSM)
Print Magazine: Although they’re calling it a “marketing program” instead of a magazine, it really is Facebook’s into the print space. Launched in the UK, Facebook rolled out a magazine for business owners. (Facebook)
Facebook Watch Rolls Out News Shows: Eight news shows are the first funded for Facebook Watch. This is on the heels of Facebook announcing that they were doing away with their “Trending” section. Hosting news shows within Facebook Watch allows for greater control of content and is surely a response to fake news allegations. (Digiday)

Shopping Stickers in Stories: A select few brands have been testing a new Instagram feature that allows users to shop directly within Stories. Users see a shopping bag sticker next to products and can purchase from there. I honestly can’t wait until this expands to more brands. (Social Media Today)
Algorithm Explained: Users have continuously been calling for Instagram to go back to their chronological feed. Good news, Instagram heard you. Bad news… they aren’t switching back. However, they did publicly explain how the algorithm works. The focus is on interest, recency, relationship with poster, frequency of usage, how many people you follow and how long you spend on the app. (WeRSM)

4-Way Video Chat: Users can now video chat with up to four people on Instagram via Direct Messenger. What really makes this cool and interactive though is the fact that you can browse your feed simultaneously while chatting via PIP. (CNET)
IGTV: You read that right, Instagram is rolling out long-form video content in a standalone app (it’s also accessible via the Instagram app). Videos are vertically formatted for consumption on mobile and creators are the “channels”. (Instagram)

Twitter Media Studio: Publishers now have a website where they can learn about content production and monetization, see best practices across categories, and learn about products and features. (Twitter)

SeatGeek Partnership: Snapchat and SeatGeek teamed up to allow for the purchase of tickets within the app. This follows the trend we are seeing with users wanting to have the entire experience within their social networking apps. (SeatGeek)

Hashtags Promote Relevance: It’s weird that in 2018 we are announcing that a social networking platform is finally starting to use hashtags…yet here we are. At least they are doing it in a good way. Users will now be prompted to select from hashtags that are interesting to them in order to promote relevant content on their feed. (WeRSM)

Carousel Ads: LinkedIn is also rolling out carousel ads. While they are late to the party, this is also a good move. However, it currently offers ten images and no video as of yet. (Adweek)

New Monetization Avenues for Creators: Advertisers used to be the sole way that creators got paid on YouTube. Now, the platform is rolling out Channel Memberships, Merchandise, Super Chat and Premieres to name a few. (TechCrunch)
Creative Suite for Marketers: The new Creative Suite helps marketers focus on telling better stories based on actionable insights. They’re doing that through Video Experiments, Director Mix, Video Ad Sequencing and Video Creative Analytics. The last mentioned is my favorite as it gives creatives the opportunity to track frames. This can lead to tracking impact of logos, products, or even actors in the spot. (WeRSM)

“Policing Video Content on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter”: A great article that covers how social networks have been responding to demands from brands for a safer space for their ads. (eMarketer)

Driving Detective: If you’re like me and you’re tempted to check your email on the way into work, then this is the app for you. It automatically checks when you’re driving and silences all notifications. (Android)

Geico “Longest Goal Ever”

Gatorade “Heart of a Lio”