Slightly later than normal due to the UK Bank Holiday, here’s my summary and opinion on the latest social media news plus new developments from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Periscope, Pinterest plus what could be a game changer from Google.
You can watch me go through last week’s news on THE #SocialToday SHOW below. If you watch the replay on a mobile device please click Follow (on Android) or Live Subscribe (on iOS) to receive notification when my live broadcasts start. Feel free to ask me questions by posting in the Comments or tweeting me @intranetfuture.
Facebook – Facebook announced their Q1 results and here are some key stats. Earnings were $1.51bn, a big increase from $512 million a year ago. The world’s largest social network continues to grow too despite reaching saturation point in developed countries. The number of users rose 3.71% with total monthly active users standing at a whopping 1.65 billion people. As if we didn’t know, Facebook is now the dominant mobile platform. 91.52% of Facebook’s monthly active users use a smartphone or other mobile device to access their news feed while 60% only ever use a mobile. In the UK, mobile only users amount to 80%. Advertising revenues fell following the Christmas bonanza but revenues are still over $1 billion per month.
Facebook as once again sponsoring National Small Business Week with a series of online and in-person events.
Facebook has introduced automatic captions for video ads, making it easier for businesses to create a video ad. Captions on videos and video ads are useful for viewers that don’t wish to play the video with sound on Facebook which is the majority.
Facebook Live is now available on Android in the UK for Pages but it appears not yet for Profiles. If you live in the UK and have Live on your Profile on your Android device, I’d love to hear from you.
Facebook has created apps for its main platform for Messenger and for Instagram for Windows 10.
Instagram – Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed that the changes to Instagram’s newsfeed mean that priority is being given to posts with higher engagement, so it’s important to make sure your posts are interesting and or entertaining otherwise they will be less visible.
LinkedIn – LinkedIn’s first quarter results for 2016 show that it continues to grow steadily and has now reached 433 million users. Social sharing has increased more than 80% reflecting the increasing popularity of ‘posts’ (blogs on LinkedIn).
LinkedIn have launched LinkedIn ProFinder, a new professional services marketplace similar to PeoplePerHour and Fiverr. that helps you find the best freelance or independent professionals in your local area. It’s being piloted across the US but if you’re a professional living elsewhere who wants to be listed you can register your interest. It’s an obvious move for LinkedIn given the data held on freelance professionals and it could prove very popular. If you haven’t updated your LinkedIn profile lately ProFinder is another reason to do so. Learn more at our LinkedIn workshops in Cheltenham and Cardiff.
Twitter – Unlike Facebook whose shared soared following their results Twitter’s shares fell 13.6% as the firm struggled to attract new users and advertisers.
In what is in itself a small change but one with significance regarding it’s purpose, Twitter has moved out of the social network category on the iOS app store and into the News section.
Periscope – Periscope has added new audience statistics including ‘time watched’ plus a graph of your viewers showing your broadcast’s moments with the most reach. Initially, on available only for iOS, these new features will be rolled out to Android in due course.
Dig deeper into your broadcasts with a live viewer graph and improved stats on iOS! ?? pic.twitter.com/WDABAn2lLW
— Periscope (@periscopeco) April 27, 2016
You can also now sketch as Periscope calls it or doodle on your live videos whilst broadcasting. Handy to highlight items on your broadcast or to illustrate a point.
Pinterest – Ads have finally launched in the UK! Pinterest users with a business account can now setup up Engagement Campaigns and Traffic Campaigns. Pinterest is also launching featured collections in the UK which are curated collections of trending topics specifically tailored for the UK. They will also be available in France, Germany, Brazil and Japan.
Google – Google is testing a news platform called Twitter Posts which allows publication of 14,400 characters of text and the ability to publish up to 10 images or videos in any post. Posts last for 7 days. Following the opening up of Instant Articles on Facebook to all publishers, as reported last week, could this spell trouble for Twitter and news websites ?
Number of the week: My number of the week is 3 million. That’s the number of businesses that Facebook is serving with its video platform.
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See you again soon on social media!