This week Facebook and Friends are back on the front pages of the marketing news platforms- but Twitter also vies for our attention on this edition of Marketing Updates with Motion Ave.!
Instagram From Facebook Battles Snapchat From Snapchat For Messaging Supremacy, Copies Oversharing
Since its inception Snapchat has positioned itself as the best app to establish connections between close friends. Facebook is now looking to replicate this x10 in their own ecosystem with Threads, a companion app to Instagram that would invite users to share their locations, status, photos, texts and even battery life with their list of “close friends.” Too busy to actively pass all this vital info on to your friends? Engage the “automatic sharing” option that will periodically share breaking news about your battery and where you’re standing (and, admittedly, more).
Sharing is caring here: https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/26/20833903/facebook-instagram-threads-messaging-app-close-friends-snapchat
Twitter Ad Researchers: “Carousel, But More”
Twitter is leaning hard into the carousel ads format to additional campaign types following testing in recent months. Now, carousel ads can be used in tweet campaigns with a larger image panel and a swipeable carousel stream.
Go big or go home here: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/twitter-tests-new-larger-image-tweet-carousel-ad-format/561712/
Facebook Becomes Most Honest Social Media Network Ever, Achieves “Transparency”
Facebook has completed its ‘fearless moral inventory’ and has emerged to the breathlessly waiting public a new network, free of scandal and impropriety forevermore. Just kidding. Facebook by Facebook has begun a veeeeery slow rollout of new transparency and privacy options. Most critical among these is “Off-Facebook Activity,” a new feature that will allow you to see the information that Facebook has collected about you through external sources, that is, through all the websites you have visited and apps you have used besides Facebook as well as the long-awaited “opt-out” ability: once this new functionality finally reaches your country, you’ll be able to tell Facebook to never again pair the terabytes of data it collects on your online behavior with your account again- the social media giant will have to content itself with adding your usage data to its vast anonymized metadata that it sells for billions a year.
Meet the dawning of the new age here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/technology/facebook-tool-privacy-apps-websites.html
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/off-facebook-activity-feature-clear-history
Ads On Instagram’s Explore Feed
Instagram From Facebook brings ads to Explore, offering advertisers the opportunity to insert themselves into the highly-attended feed of most popular content. Through the automatic placement option, advertisers will be able to extend their campaigns to this feed and get greater reach. This new ad option will not be available immediately, but some ads are already being randomly sprinkled into the Explore Feed as part of testing.
Get ready for this new opportunity here: https://business.instagram.com/blog/bringing-ads-to-explore/?fbclid=IwAR1HIM9KvILI7MFyPk1kyPOiqy2WQ-u6Wdn7h3Rjxw7wd7G3NcUnrJQ_qqM
Facebook Creates More Shiny, Imaginary Prizes To Keep You Interested
Facebook launches a new set of badges to reward users who actively participate in groups and pages and encourage them to continue interacting. This feature gives administrators the ability to better understand their fans and try to build a sense of community through reinforcing behavior that keeps their ecosystem active.
Win fabulous prizes here: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/facebook-adds-more-page-badges-to-encourage-engagement/561625/
That’s it for this week! Just wait for more news, more controversy and more ads in the next edition of Marketing Updates with Motion Ave.