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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 to Remove Share Counts: In a recent update, Twitter announced that “Twitter share counts will no longer appear alongside Tweet buttons AND third-party direct access to tweet share stats will be curtailed.”
Blab.im Rolls Out Co-host and Notification Features: The ability to add co-hosts on Blab has been “the most requested feature and an amazing one at that.” Blab also added notification controls, which will “let your followers know you're on air.”
Facebook Explores New Mobile Profile Features Including Video Profile Photos: Facebook is “unveiling some new, mobile-friendly features for Facebook profiles [that] give you more opportunities to express who you are and control the content showcased in your profile.”
Twitter Launches Buy Now Button for Select Ecommerce Retailers: Twitter announced a “number of partnerships that will make it easier for retailers of any size to sell products, digital goods or services directly within a tweet via Buy Now.”
Facebook Rolls Out New Page Messaging Features: Facebook introduces “new communication features for pages, including more ways for customers to send private messages to businesses and new tools for page admins to manage and respond to messages.”
Facebook Previews Video in Carousel Ads: Facebook will roll out “the ability to add video to the carousel format.” Facebook also announced three other updates being released to help advertisers capitalize on mobile and improve the ads experience: TRP buying, brand awareness optimization and mobile polling.
Our Take on Top News This Week
In this blab from October 1, 2015, Michael Stelzner and guests discuss the top news in social media. Discussion topics include Twitter's plans to build a new product that will expand beyond the 140-character limit, upcoming improvements to Facebook mobile profiles, the implications of share counts being removed from Tweet buttons, the newly integrated Buy Now button on Twitter and the new co-host and notification features on Blab. Subscribe to future shows here.
More social media news worth noting:
Google AdWords Announces Two New Products: Customer Match and Universal App Campaigns: These innovations to Google ads promise to “help you be there and be relevant in those intent-rich moments that truly matter.”
LinkedIn Integrates With Cortana in Windows 10: LinkedIn has “teamed up with Microsoft to natively integrate LinkedIn into Cortana, Microsoft's digital personal assistant.”
Skype Makes Skype Translator Available to More People: Skype introduced “six voice languages, English, French, German, Italian, Mandarin, Spanish, and 50 messaging languages into the Skype for Windows desktop app.”
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Google Redesigns the Google My Business Portal: Google has “updated [its] navigation to make it easier to access the primary features, and more straightforward to access multiple locations if you use Google My Business Locations.”
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Tumblr Adds New Layer of Privacy Controls: With a new toggle on Tumblr, “you can choose whether or not your blog is viewable on the web. If you switch it off, your followers will still be able to see your posts in their dashboards (and like them, and reblog them), but anyone who tries to visit your blog at its URL will just get a big fat 404 error.”
Other upcoming social media news worth following:
Twitter Plans to Expand Tweets Beyond the 140-character Limit: “Twitter is building a new product that will allow users to share tweets that are longer than the company’s 140-character limit, according to multiple people familiar with the company’s plans.”
Blab Cover Images Coming Soon: Blab suggested that users “start designing your Blab show card.”
Need something to do? You could start designing your Blab show card. Just in case that happens soon or something… pic.twitter.com/hVFRxcxMRl
— Team Blab (@blab) September 30, 2015
Here are some cool social media tools worth checking out:
Agorapulse Mobile App: The updated version of Agorapulse social media management tool, Social Media Inbox, boasts an improved interface and is now available on Android and iOS as a mobile app.
Carbon: This relaunch of the easy-to-use website and online store builder tool Weebly delivers a fresh, new set of tools “to help grow your business, enhance your site and share your story with the world.”
Some Interesting Studies to Note:
Post Types That Rule the Facebook News Feed: Quintly examined over 80 million Facebook posts (photo, video, link, status, etc.) shared between June 2014 and June 2015 by more than 100,000 accounts. According to their findings, video posts receive the most interactions (likes, comments, etc.) on average, followed by photos, status updates and links.
Social Insights on the Luxury Fashion Industry: Brandwatch analyzed the online presence of 32 luxury fashion brands and examined their customers' increasingly influential role in shaping the public's perceptions of these brands. For example, Twitter audiences account for over 99.63% of the conversation surrounding the luxury fashion brands analyzed. This report shows how the brands interact with their audiences on social.
The 2015 U.S. Mobile App Report: According to a new study from comScore, some 29% of smartphone users over the age of 18 listen to podcasts on their phones at least once a month. This figure climbs to 41% among the 18- to 34-year-old age range, specifically. A survey of 1,084 adult smartphone users in the U.S. also shows that 18- to 34-year-olds are 44% more likely than the average user to listen to podcasts on their device at least once a week.
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What do you think? How will the loss of Twitter share counts impact your business? Please share your comments below.
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