Facebook continues to build out its video ad platform by purchasing video ad tech company LiveRail. The acquisition means that Facebook users shouldn’t be surprised to see video ads based on your Facebook profile elsewhere across the Internet, as LiveRail is known for tailoring videos very specifically across platforms and sites. Publishers will benefit, as more relevant ads will help them make the most out of all the opportunities that they have across the web, but the creepiness factor might begin to creep in for users as they see the same videos everywhere.
Tag: Facebook
Facebook’s Psychology Experiment Raises Privacy Concerns
News broke recently that Facebook had manipulated 690,000 users’ Facebook experiences in order to see if a more positive news feed affected user behavior. The experiment only affected news feeds, and in the end found that emotion is contagious: those exposed to more positive posts posted more positive material, and vice versa. What’s concerning, though, is that Facebook – on a whim – decided it would use its users as psychological subjects, which goes against several different types of ethics. It plays into the narrative that is spouted more and more: Internet companies do not have users’ best interests at heart, and are in it for their own financial gain. Whether users will continue to trust Facebook in the same way that they once did a few years ago seems unlikely.
Facebook Home Is Officially Dead
One year ago, Facebook wanted to take over the home screen of the smartphone with a platform known as Facebook Home – it would display Facebook photos on lock screens and provide seamless access to messages, status updates, and the rest of the network. Nevertheless, many users baulked at the total takeover by Facebook; many saw it as an attempt to usurp control, while others still simply preferred the native phone interface. Either way, it didn’t catch on, and now the team has disbanded at the Facebook headquarters. It points to the fact that users want to have control over customization on their screens; social networks trying to impose themselves over the mobile experience can’t claim the space just yet.
Can Brands Get Better Engagement On Messaging Apps Than Facebook?
Messaging apps are the “The New Face of Social Media,” but how do they compare to the old guard when it comes to organic reach and engagement?
Last week Tango, a messaging app with 200M+ users globally and close to 70M in the US, launched brand Channels– and initial results give a glimpse into the looming battle between messaging apps and Facebook / Twitter. The numbers (assuming they’re accurate) are surprisingly impressive for an opening week, with companies like Spotify racking up 119,000+ followers, bands like OK Go gaining 124,000+ fans, and a curated Feedly “World Cup News” channel netting 233,000+ subscribers.
Brands on Tango often get better engagement on posts than they do on Facebook, even with infinitely smaller fanbases. Spotify’s Father’s Day post, for example, asked users on Facebook and Tango to fill in the same blank “Tell us: I listen to _________ because of my Dad,” and yielded 7,625 likes and 1,114 comments on Tango vs. 1,749 likes and 2,369 comments on Facebook. With 4.5M more Spotify fans on Facebook than Tango, the neck-and-neck results may speak to decreased organic reach on Facebook and high engagement on Tango.
A closer look at fan comments, however, reveals that quality of engaged users on Spotify’s Facebook page is much higher. While Facebook fans thoughtfully answered the question by naming artists, Tango comments include a fairly high concentration of random emojis, troll-like statements like “BITCH WHO DO YOU LOVE?,” and other off-topic ramblings.
What Tango does best is organize channels by topic to facilitates discovery. They even tally total followers by category, making it easy to glean what appeals most to the user base: Music (286,000+ followers), Sports (276,000+ followers), Tango Updates (134,000+ followers), Funny & Cute (118,000+ followers), Entertainment (58,000+ followers), and lastly News (36,000+ followers).
In our messaging app white paper we cautioned against replicating Facebook and Twitter content on messaging apps. But in Tango’s case, they’ve appropriated the classic social media news feed, so understandably brands aren’t getting creative like they might on open platforms like Kik. Tango’s initial focus is also on content creators, with no traditional brands like Coke or Pepsi entering the fray yet. Given the success off the World Cup News channel, brands should consider exhibiting creativity by curating a channel tied to music or sports instead of (or in addition to) a standard brand page.
As the summer progresses, expect more brands join Tango to access its 200M users, which means more competition for eyeballs. We may also witness the first few brands with 7-figure follower counts, inevitably turning heads in the broader marketing community. For now, Tango Channels is off to a promising start.
Tinder Becomes More Like Snapchat
As Tinder tries to become more than just a “hookup app,” it’s looking to competitor Snapchat for ideas. Now, Tinder allows you to share “moments,” which are photos that expire after 24 hours, with everybody you’ve ever matched with. The idea is to draw users into the social features of sharing things wth new friends, rather than using it for merely swiping through people to meet up with. It’s a bit of a different outlook for Tinder, who are now competing with messaging apps as well as dating apps.
Second Screen Scare: Facebook Accesses Your Microphone
Facebook’s app can now access your microphone to listen to what’s around you. The current use case is enabling easy sharing of music and video, much like the social functionality on Shazam. Yet, the opt-in feature is having many opt-out with over half a million already signing a petition to nix it altogether.
Sharing isn’t necessarily a pain point on Facebook. People rarely complain that they can’t share something given the ubiquitous “Share” buttons (like the one below this article). In actuality, this is about enriching audience data for advertisers by marrying Facebook data with music and TV consumption. If users opt-in, they could be retargeted based on media viewing and even served up synchronous ads on FB based on what they’re watching on TV.
Facebook Updates Privacy For All Posts
Since the birth of Facebook, public posting has been the default method – until today, that is. In response to continuing calls for user privacy, Facebook is changing the default privacy settings to “Friends Only,” meaning that upon first registering for the network, your post will only be viewable by your friends. It’s a strong message sent by Facebook, a network that’s seen its stock slip lower in recent months relative to “secure” messaging apps like SnapChat. Whether the move increases consumer confidence, however, remains to be seen.
Facebook Sees Users Decline
Although 82% of Internet users between the ages of 16 and 64 have a Facebook profile, new research indicates that in Q2 2014 there was a 6% decrease, across the board, in active usage of Facebook by those users as messaging and picture apps boom. GlobalWebIndex, in conducting a Social study for the first part of this year, notes that Snapchat has seen a 67% increase in its user base, while WhatsApp has seen a 30% increase in the same amount of time and has overtaken Facebook’s Messenger app as the third most popular social app globally. Picture sharing, like Instagram, has shot up as well; Tumbler has seen a 22% increase, while Instagram itself has seen a 25% increase in active users in the last six months. Pinterest is also up 7%. While people continue to visit Facebook, they’re using fewer and fewer things. Overall, mobile audiences are growing globally, signaling a fundamental shift away from interacting via social networks, and towards interacting via messaging.
Moves Will Share Data With Facebook
Moves, the motion tracking app bought by Facebook, had initially reported that they were going to keep users’ data private, and not share with Facebook users’ locations, physical fitness, and the like. Now, in an about face, Facebook has convinced the company to hand over all the data mined from users of the fitness tracker; overnight, the company updated its privacy policy to say that it can share user data with other companies, “including but not limited to Facebook.” It plays into some niggling consumer fears about how Facebook is using data – as Facebook buys up more properties, it is slowly accumulating a powerfully large database of information about millions of people – and how its affiliates are keeping tabs on users. Facebook, for what it’s worth, says that it just wants to provide support for Moves. It will have to continue to keep up the charm offensive to consumer confidence high if it wants to keep people looped into the platform, particularly in light of many realizing how vulnerable their private data might in fact be on the Internet.
Facebook Debuts Business Manager Tool
Marketers have a new way to use Facebook. Called the Business Manager, Facebook’s new tool allows marketers an agencies to manage multiple campaigns across one interface. Facebook has been rolling the tool out over the past month, and it allows users to assign roles to people working across different campaigns. it will also allow agencies and clients share campaign materials within the platform. The ultimate goal is to make marketing and advertising workflow easier on the platform, and to allow more people to use Facebook to monetize campaigns. Furthermore, as these privileges had been previously limited to Preferred Marketing Developers, this seems like a move to get a much broader swath of people onto Facebook for use as a marketing and monetization tool.
