Twitter’s feed has been living in the past in regard to visual content for years, but now it integrates previews of photos and Vines to bring something other than text and links to its primary means of presenting content. No longer will users have to click through blind links to see photos on the service. Certainly, this is a minor update that should have taken place long ago, but its effects could be felt in a big way as Twitter grows and begins to create a service closer in look and feel to more familiar social media formats.
Tag: Facebook
Smirnoff Pushes Mixhibit App
In a world where brands are continuously looking to stand out, sometimes custom jobs yield the most impressive results. Such is the case with Smirnoff’s new app, Mixhibit. The Diageo-owned vodka purveyor is making a big global marketing push behind the app, which allows users to amalgamate Tweets, Facebook posts, and Instagram photos of themselves and their friends into a custom-made video, which includes a soundtrack. The videos are thereafter entirely portable, and can be shared across the social sphere. The goal is for the app to “do for video what Instagram has done for photos,” according to Smirnoff. Whether such lofty goals will be realized is certainly up for debate; nonetheless, it’s a nifty campaign that leverages a deep integration into the social sphere.
Facebook Restarts Mobile Ad Network
After a 9 month hiatus, Facebook is once again launching its mobile ad network, which displays Facebook ads outside of the social network in mobile ads and sites. The goal of the relaunch is to improve the relevancy of the ads over the results from the first test, which resulted in low margins. The delay likely resulted from the combination of low margins and the need to channel money into mobile app install ads and Facebook Exchange, which is driving the ads in the first place. And now that the infrastructure is in place, it looks like the technology is likely here to stay.
Facebook Posts Now Embed Into WordPress
In a development that will certainly please bloggers but that will also apply to brands, Facebook posts are now embeddable directly into WordPress blogs. It works by grabbing the Facebook post’s unique URL, which can be acquired by clicking the date stamp under the post. Just copy and paste the URL into the editing pane of the WordPress blog, and any embeddable media in the Facebook post will also be added. This new feature will be quite powerful, particularly for the possibility of embedding promoted, or advertising-focused posts across media on the Internet.
Facebook Releases Larger Link Images
For the past year, brands have resorted to advertising on Facebook with default, thumbnail sized images that weren’t exactly ideal for driving clicks, responses, or conversations. But today, the social network debuts larger images for link shares on desktop as well as mobile ads. The idea is that larger images will help to drive conversions from simply glancing at an ad to actually clicking on it, reading it, and interacting with it. When posted, it becomes a giant link that will point users to a respective website. It fits with Facebook’s June announcement that it was going to cater to marketers even more in the near future, and laid out a new ad format that effects page post link ads, page like ads, offer ads, and more.
Facebook Hashtags Aren’t Useful For Viral Reach
A new study shows that Facebook hashtags aren’t useful for viral posts – and in fact, post without hashtags have greater reach than those with hashtags. Facebook recently copied this feature from Twitter in June to add context and shared interests; EdgeRank Checker’s study, though, examined over 500 pages in the past few months, and discovered that hashtags only bring views to brands’ pages incidentally, rather than intentionally. There was a decrease in the amount of engagement per fan in posts with hashtags, and there is no correlation between the amount of fans and the greater positive impact on a brand’s engagement. Moral of the story: Facebook branding doesn’t work well with hashtags.
Facebook Debuts Shared Photo Albums
Facebook announced shared photo albums, a new feature that lets multiple users upload images to the same album. The original owner of the album can add up to 50 contributors, who can each share up to 200 photos to an album. Album creators can choose a setting that allows contributors to invite others – or retain total control over an album. It’s easy to see how companies can invite large numbers of consumers to collaborate on crowd-sourced albums showcasing a particular product, or wrapping offers up into album-sharing functionality. It could prove to be a powerful marketing tool to galvanize visible support.
Facebook Shuts Down Physical Gifts
The social network’s gifting service, Facebook Gifts, is officially pivoting away from physical gifts in the interest of providing entirely digital offerings. The service was initially introduced as a method of physically connecting people beyond the digital network, but of all users gifting on Facebook, only 20% chose physical gifts through partners like Magnolia Bakery, Dean & DeLuca, and Brookstone. The remaining users opted for digital gift cards through services like iTunes, which it plans to continue. For their plans to extend beyond the Internet, though, Facebook still offers the Facebook Card, which allows you to preload a single card with different amounts of money to spend at brick-and-mortar stores. Combined with its mobile payments feature, the social network still might have a compelling real-world payments strategy, even amidst this defeat.
Facebook Still #1 Social Network Among Teens
According to a new study by the Pew Research Center, Facebook remains the post popular social network among teens, and its use increased from 93% to 94% over the last year. The second most popular social network was Twitter, used by 26% of teens. Myspace, however, saw a rapid drop from 24% to only 7%. Instagram officially became a player in the space as well, with now 11% reporting that they use the photo-sharing service, and it’s popular amongst older teens who are looking to get away from their parents and families’ prying eyes on Facebook.
Facebook & JackThreads Partner For Mobile E-Commerce Payments
According to reports, Facebook is offering mobile shoppers the ability to pay with Facebook via their login credentials the same way that users can pay with PayPal, and the pilot program will feature JackThreads. Facebook users often already have credit card details on file with Facebook if they’ve purchased Facebook Credits and Gifts, and those members would be able to use those same stored details to purchase real-world items from mobile apps without having to re-enter credit card information. It would provide Facebook with an immense amount of detail about purchasing habits and e-commerce intent, and would also stack up as a formidable contender to PayPal’s present dominance of the mobile e-commerce market.
