The week in social media news hand-curated by your friends at Fandom Marketing. Tumblr rolls out mobile app install ads, Tumblr and Pinterest are now the fastest-growing social platforms, Former Google+ designer slams service and more.
Twitter: What to expect in 2015
November 21, 2014
Around this time last year, the big question about Twitter was how much would the social network and the company’s culture change after going public. The answer, as we now know, is that it would change quite a bit.
Full story on Mashable
Tumblr Rolls Out Mobile App Install Ads In The Form Of Shareable Sponsored Posts
November 25, 2014
Tumblr this morning is rolling a new mobile-only ad unit called “Tumblr Sponsored Apps” which will allow app publishers to target the social blogging service’s largely Millennial (and heavily mobile) audience with creative posts designed to drive users to the iTunes App Store and Google Play to download new applications.
Full story on TechCrunch
Twitter Expands Its Commerce Lineup With Twitter Offers, Which Link To Your Credit Or Debit Card
November 25, 2014
Twitter just announced that it’s testing a new commerce product called Twitter Offers. This follows the announcement of Twitter’s first commerce product back in September, a “Buy” button allowing users to make purchases directly from tweets.
Full story on TechCrunch
The TSA’s Instagram Feed Is Terrifying and Totally Awesome
November 26, 2014
The Transportation Security Administration hasn’t endeared itself to the public by shuffling every airline passenger in America through full-body scanners and getting up close and personal with a pat-down search if they decline.
Full story on Wired
Tumblr and Pinterest now fastest-growing social platforms
November 26, 2014
Earlier this year, Instagram was leading the pack as the fastest-growing social platform. Now, it’s Tumblr and Pinterest, which have edged out the picture-sharing app for greatest increase in active users. Tumblr’s active users grew by 120% in the last six months, according to new stats released by the Global Web Index first spotted by TechCrunch on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Facebook’s active users grew by just 2%.
Full story on Mashable
Twitter Experiments With Engagement Stats Directly In Tweets
November 27, 2014
Want to know just how many people actually care about what you’re tweeting? A new Twitter experiment spotted by ex-Twitter platform head Ryan Sarver will show many you how users are clicking on the links in the updates you post, with a handy link directly in the expanded Tweet view in the iOS application.
Full story on TechCrunch
Facebook, Google, And Twitter’s War For App Install Ads
An unexpected consequence of our love of apps is that now there’s just too damn many of them. The app stores are overcrowded, leaving developers desperate for a way to get their games and utilities discovered. That is why the app install ad has become the lifeblood of the mobile platform business.
Full story on TechCrunch
Black Friday 2014 Biggest Online Shopping Day Ever: Mobile Up, Social Negligible
November 29, 2014
Black Friday 2014 online sales grew 20.6% over Black Friday 2013, driven by mobile shopping, promotions, and email marketing. This makes it the biggest day in US e-commerce ever. No doubt we could expect the upcoming Cyber Monday 2014 to surpass all previous records to become the biggest online shopping day in US history.
Full story on Forbes
In scathing critique, former Googler says Google+ “has lost its way”
November 29, 2014
Chris Messina, credited with inventing the hashtag, may not be a household name, but he’s well respected in Silicon Valley for his work on communities, social networking, and identity. That’s part of the reason he was recruited to work at Google on a super-secret new project that came to be known as Google+.
Full story on VentureBeat
Former Google+ designer slams the service for being ‘Facebook lite’
December 1, 2014
Google+ is a social network “adrift at sea,” representing a big missed opportunity for the company, a former Google employee who worked on the service says. Chris Messina, who worked on Google+ user experience design before leaving the company over a year ago, wrote a long post on Medium, in which he criticizes the service for not delivering on its initial vision of empowering users with the vast amount of data that Google collects about them.
Full story on Mashable
JetBlue bans Internet celebrity after threatening tweets
December 1, 2014
Airlines are used to getting complaints on social media, but there is a limit to what they will do to make a customer happy. One passenger found JetBlue’s limit on Saturday. Matthew Lush, an Internet celebrity who describes himself as “your new gay best friend”, called the carrier on Nov. 25 because he wanted to cancel a non-refundable ticket. JetBlue’s customer service said that there would be a fee of $150, but Lush wanted a full refund.
Full story on Mashable
Skeletor Is Waging a Twitter Takeover of @Honda. Here Are the Best Moments So Far
December 1, 2014
One of the universe’s greatest villians has conquered the Twitter feed of one the world’s most recognized automotive brands. Yes, it appears that Skeletor, the nemesis of He-Man (both of ’80s Saturday morning cartoon fame), has manned the controls of Honda’s Twitter account, coinciding with the brand’s newest campaign featuring famous toys promoting the Happy Honda Days sales event.
Full story on AdWeek
Twitter’s photo filters just got more like Instagram’s
December 2, 2014
Twitter just tweaked its photo editing features in an update that makes it feel a lot more like Instagram. The company updated its iOS and Android app Tuesday with new adjustable photo filters to give users more control over how filtered images look.
Full story on Mashable
Facebook Bests Pinterest at Converting Sales on Cyber Monday
December 2, 2014
Thus far, Facebook is proving to be social media’s overachiever for the digital holiday shopping season, driving higher average order values for online retailers at materially higher conversion rates than its seemingly more shopping-attuned rival Pinterest, according to the latest data compiled by IBM’s Digital Analytics Benchmark Hub.
Full story on The Street
Why Facebook Still Wins When We Use Facebook Less
December 3, 2014
The average internet user now has 5.2 social accounts, up from 4.7 last year – not a bad thing for Facebook, though. (Image via Global Web Index) Mobile apps usually measure success by how engaged their users are. Are people coming back at least once a month to their service? If not, there’s a problem. Yet that idea doesn’t apply to the granddaddy of social apps, Facebook.
Full story on Forbes
Gangnam Style Has Been Viewed So Many Times It Broke YouTube’s Code
December 3, 2014
Whoops! Just a fun bit of trivia for the coders out there: PSY’s Gangnam Style has been viewed so many times that it broke YouTube’s view counter, making it the very first video to break the reaches of a 32-bit integer.
Full story on TechCrunch
Facebook Relaunches Slingshot As A Snapchat Stories-Style Lifecasting App
December 4, 2014
Reply to unlock didn’t work. Neither did dropping the requirement and just letting people freely send photos and videos to each other. So today Facebook took yet another swipe at Snapchat with the re-release of its standalone media messaging app Slingshot.
Full story on TechCrunch
Social Media and Email Integration Predictions for 2014: Were they right?
December 5, 2014
At Email Summit 2014, marketers were asked: what do you think the relationship between social media and email will be in 2014? Now that Email Summit 2015 is right around the corner, let’s take a look back a few of those predictions:
Full story on Marketing Sherpa
Zuck bashes Tim Cook for saying Facebook turns users into products
December 5, 2014
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t taken too kindly to some comments Apple CEO Tim Cook made a while back that seemed to imply Google and Facebook turned its users into “products.”
Full story on Mashable
Inside Facebook’s Plan to Wire the World
December 5, 2014
Chandauli is a tiny town in rural India about a four-hour drive southwest of New Delhi. India’s a big country, and there are several Chandaulis. This is the one that’s not on Google Maps. It’s a dusty town, and the roads are narrow and unpaved. A third of the people here live below the poverty line, and the homes are mostly concrete blockhouses. Afternoons are hot and silent. There are goats. It is not ordinarily the focus of global media attention, but it is today, because today the 14th wealthiest man in the world, Mark Zuckerberg, has come to Chandauli.
Full story on Time
What We’re Watching
The holidays are here and nothing gets me more warm and fuzzy than 70’s vintage Christmas commercials. I’m obsessed. Enjoy.
~Melonie Gallegos
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