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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?
Twitter Updates Direct Message: Twitter has changed “how direct messaging works so that it’s even easier for you to communicate one-to-one or with a chosen group of people, anywhere in the world.”
Vine Enhances Sharing: The new updates on Vine “means you can quickly and easily revine, send posts to your friends via Vine messages (VMs), and share to Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.”
Facebook Rebalances Content on the News Feed: The goal of Facebook's updates to the News Feed is to “give you the right mix of updates from friends and public figures, publishers, businesses and community organizations you are connected to.”
Twitter Introduces Highlights: Twitter Highlights is “a simple summary of the best Tweets for you, delivered via rich push notification.”
Introducing Highlights. Get the best of Twitter every day, sent to your Android device: https://t.co/9ZUWgX9lcC pic.twitter.com/sYuu7YUO4D
— Twitter (@twitter) April 23, 2015
Facebook Adds Domain Insights: “Understand the value Facebook is driving to your website, even if you have not implemented Facebook platform features such as social plugins.”
Twitter Introduces Product and Policy Updates Aimed at Combating Abuse: Twitter's latest product and policy updates will help “develop a platform on which users can safely engage with the world at large.”
Vimeo Redesigns its Video Categories: Vimeo has completely redesigned its categories “to help you find videos you’ll love.”
Other social media news worth following:
Facebook Tests a New Messenger App, Hello: “Hello connects with Facebook so you can see who’s calling, block unwanted calls and search for people and places.”
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Facebook Announces Anthology, a New Branded Video Program: “Anthology that will have publishers and digital video producers including Vice, Vox Media, Tastemade and Funny or Die creating videos for advertisers — in collaboration with Creative Shop, Facebook's in-house agency — that would run as ads on the social network.”
Facebook Will Retire Like Box Plugin: “With the release of Graph API v2.3, the Like Box plugin is deprecated and will stop working on June 23rd 2015.”
Here’s a cool social media tool worth checking out:
Hipstamatic DSPO: A new social photography app for iOS.
Weekly Video Tip:
How to Run a Facebook Ad Campaign
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Some interesting studies to note:
Facebook Reach and Engagement Analysis: A new study from Locowise found that average organic Facebook Page likes grew by 0.53% in March 2015 and, on average, posts on Facebook pages reached 2.60% of their total audience. Of those reached, 11.83% typical engage with the brand. On average, posts with links reached 4.48% of the total page likes. Text-only status updates came second with 2.62% and photo reach was at 2.14%. The lowest reach was for video posts at 1.85% of the total audience.
IAB Internet Advertising Report: The Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers released their latest U.S. internet advertising revenue report covering 2014. The report is consistent with online marketing trends from recent years, with rapid overall growth in online ad spending and an emphasis on mobile.
Q1 Digital Advertising Benchmark Report: According to new research from Adobe Digital Index, brands on Facebook posted 31% more frequently in Q1 2015 in year-over-year comparison. This increase is attributed to an attempt to offset the decline in organic reach. The study reports that organic impressions were down 35% year-over-year, while paid impressions rose 8% over the same time period. As expected, live streaming apps Periscope and Meerkat took off in Q1 2015 with Periscope taking a slight lead in terms of mentions.
Q1 2015 Social Trends Report: A new study from social advertising and data company, Kinetic Social, compared Q1 2015 ad performance across Facebook and Twitter. Overall ad performance on Facebook was up 266% year-over-year and click-through rates for both desktop and mobile video ads increased by  57% from Q4 2014 to Q1 2015. As a result of this higher performance, 31% of Facebook ad budgets have shifted to video ads.  Mobile accounts for 57% of Facebook ad budgets on Kinetic Social's platform, whereas Twitter only accounts for 25% of ad spend.
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