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Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news.
To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.
What’s New This Week
LinkedIn Announces All Groups Will Be Made Private: In an effort to improve the quality of conversation in groups, “…only Group members will be able to see the contents of conversations, and only members will be allowed to contribute. LinkedIn also won’t allow search engines to crawl the discussions, another key, it believes, to providing a trusted private space for people to communicate.”
Facebook Slowly Rolls Out Reactions: Facebook is “beginning to test Reactions – an extension of the Like button that gives people more ways to share their reaction to a post in a quick and easy way.” Facebook will begin testing this new feature in two markets, Spain and Ireland, “to make sure to get [it] right” before releasing it more widely.
Twitter Debuts Moments in the U.S.: “Moments helps you find the best of Twitter as easily as tapping an icon – regardless of who you follow. Just visit the new tab called Moments, where you will discover stories unfolding on Twitter.”
New! Find the best of Twitter in an instant with Moments: https://t.co/QAKGUSVBbT pic.twitter.com/KAjfkysVKC
— Twitter (@twitter) October 6, 2015
Facebook Opens Lead Ads to All Advertisers: “Now lead ads are available to advertisers everywhere with a host of additional features that make signing up for business information easy for people and more valuable for businesses.”
Facebook Rolls Out Verified Badges for Local Business Pages: Facebook has “started rolling out verified badges for local businesses,” which will help people “find the right and authentic accounts” for local merchants. Currently, theses verified badges “are available for businesses with a physical location in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand.”
Periscope Delivers Embeddable “On Air” Button for Broadcasters: The new Periscope On Air button “displays the user’s live status and username. The special thing about the widget is that it comes to life when you’re LIVE!”
Facebook Establishes New Audience Network Performance Metric: The new Advertiser Outcome Score (AOS) for the Audience Network is “a measurement system that evaluates publishers’ ad placements by their ability to drive outcomes for advertisers, such as app installs, purchases or registrations.”
Rest in Peace Cindy King, Editorial Director for Social Media Examiner: It is with a heavy heart that we announce that Cindy King passed away on Tuesday, October 6th.
She was a true servant and sacrificed her time for this company to the very end. She will be missed.
Our Take on Top News This Week
In this blab from October 9, 2015, Michael Stelzner and guests discuss the top news in social media. Discussion topics include the upcoming changes to LinkedIn groups, enhanced features for Facebook Notes, the introduction of Twitter Moments and the announcement of Facebook Reactions. Subscribe to future shows here.
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More social media news worth noting:
Facebook Mobile Integrates In-App Photo Editor Tool, Doodle: Facebook’s latest photo editing feature, Doodle, “lets users draw on photos” and “joins the built-in filters, text overlays and stickers users can add to their pictures through the Facebook app.”
YouTube App for iOS: This newly redesigned app for iPhone and iPad makes it easier to find what you love on YouTube and offers new in-app editing tools.
Pinterest Expands Buyable Pins to More Retailers and Platforms: Pinterest is “excited to bring Buyable Pins to new commerce platforms so more businesses can sell their products on Pinterest.”
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Medium Announces New Features and Design to Mobile and Desktop: Medium added “a slew of updates to bring [it] to the next level and in the process make it more powerful, more fun, more democratic and more essential.”
Facebook Introduces New Tools and Resources for Broadcasters: Facebook rolled out “a new set of tools and resources – and some improvements to existing products – to help broadcasters more deeply engage fans.”
Vine Shows Similar Vines for Android: “When you tap Similar Vines under a post, you’ll see additional Vines based on the new recommendation engine [Vine has] been working on.”
Tumblr Includes “More You Might Like” in Posts: You can now “have your post pages show related posts from the rest of your Tumblr.”
Other upcoming social media news worth following:
Twitter Announces Video Monetization at Scale for Twitter Amplify: “With this update, advertisers can run video ads against premium content automatically based on their preferred content categories — without having an existing publisher-advertiser deal in place.” This new offering is “now available in beta to select publishers and advertisers in the U.S., with plans to expand globally over time.”
Reddit Launches Digital Magazine, Upvoted: “The site will feature anywhere between 10-40 stories a day, written by a team of writers and editors. They will scour every nook and cranny to cover Reddit’s untold stories, conduct interviews, and, in some cases, orchestrate podcasts or video content.”
Google Introduces Accelerated Mobile Pages Project: Working with publishers and technology companies including Twitter, Pinterest, WordPress.com, Chartbeat, Parse.ly, Adobe Analytics and LinkedIn, Google announced “a new open source initiative called Accelerated Mobile Pages, which aims to dramatically improve the performance of the mobile web.”
Here are some cool social media tools worth checking out:
Lightroom Mobile App: This free iOSÂ app is now available as a stand-alone mobile image editor. The same update for Android is coming soon.
Dataminr for News: This real-time discovery tool transforms data from Twitter and other public sources into actionable signals, identifying relevant news as it’s breaking.
Some Interesting Studies to Note:
U.S. Smartphone Subscriber Market Share: This July 2015 U.S. market report from comScore MobiLens and Mobile Metrix examined key smartphone trends including the top mobile apps. The findings show that Facebook’s main mobile app ranked as the top smartphone app, reaching 73.3% of U.S. users. This is followed by Facebook Messenger (59.5%), YouTube (59.3%) and Google Search (52%).
Pew Internet Research Center Social Media Usage Study: When Pew Research Center began tracking social media usage in 2005, only 7% of American adults were using social networking sites. Over the past decade, nearly two-thirds of American adults (65%) now use social networking sites. The study also explored demographic trends across age, gender, race, ethnic, community and socioeconomic differences.
Digital Publishing: Increasing Advertiser Value Through Data and Identity: Econsultancy surveyed client-side marketers, managers and executives working within publishers that have an online presence. Forty percent of digital publishers surveyed describe their display ad revenue as either stagnant or shrinking, yet spending on this channel continues to increase. In the U.S. alone, publishers currently spend $25 billion annually on display ads, and this number is growing about 20% year-on-year.
What do you think? Are you active in LinkedIn groups? Please share your comments below.
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