Tag Archives: meta

MONDAY MORNING LEARNING – 04 JULY 2022

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Facebook Launches New ‘Creator Collaborations’ Option to Help Boost Creator Exposure in the App

Creator Collaborations will enable multiple creators to be listed on a single Facebook post, providing both additional brand awareness, through the tag, and expanded reach to the combined audience of both collaborators.

It’s much like Facebook’s existing Branded Content Tags, which enable brands to tag collaborating businesses in a single post to boost their promotional efforts.

Link: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/facebook-launches-new-creator-collaborations-option-to-help-boost-creator/626344/

Coke Celebrated Summer With Ar Music Experience on Snapchat

Coca-Cola uses an augmented reality (AR) experience on Snapchat to advertise its Coke Summer Music events. The Kid Laroi performs a brand-new song titled “Thousand Miles” in the AR content.

The Lens Carousel on Snapchat is where American and Canadian users can access Coke’s augmented reality content. To display a live selfie surrounded by Coke’s red dots while Kid Laroi’s song is playing in the background, the front-facing camera is opened. After a countdown of five seconds, the camera switches to the rear-facing position and displays Kid Laroi performing in augmented reality against a digital backdrop. Fans can find hidden Easter eggs in the AR experience while viewing the video on their devices.

With their augmented reality (AR) experience promoting Coke Summer Music events, Coca-Cola is attempting to attract a target group of younger consumers. Coke has been active with ads geared at younger consumers, introducing its “pixel-flavoured” drink that capitalises on the adolescent and preteen population’s love of video games. This company’s limited-edition Coca-Cola Zero Sugar Byte was created to taste like pixels. Coke collaborated with gaming company PWR on a Pixel Point Island in Fortnite where visitors may search for buried riches, play minigames, and engage in other activities as part of its marketing for the soft drink.

Link: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/coke-ar-music-snapchat/626350/

Instagram Opens Reels API Access to Developers

This makes it simpler to manage all of your social media posts and schedules in one location and enables developers from third-party systems like Hootsuite to offer cross-platform publishing and analytics capability. Additionally, developers will be able to reply to comments, delete them, cover them up or make them visible, and enable or disable comments on Reels.

The whole deployment will be complete by July 6th, and it has been available since June 28th.

Link: https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2022/06/27/introducing-reels-apis-to-instagram-platform/

Meta introduces Instagram Reels APIs for developers

Twitter Rolls Out ‘Branded Likes’ to Advertisers in the US, UK, Saudi Arabia and Japan

Branded likes, which are personalised animations of the Like button for specific tweets, can increase engagement and exposure by adding a small interactive touch. Branded Likes, which guarantee a brand’s ad is the first ad to see when someone enters Twitter for the first time that day, are being incorporated into Twitter’s Timeline Takeover ad offering.

It’s a fun, responsive option right now to assist in maximising awareness and reach, but given the possible expense and size involved, it’s more suitable for promoting big launches and releases than future sales promotions.

Link: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/twitter-rolls-out-branded-likes-to-advertisers-in-the-us-uk-saudi-arabi/626434/

Twitter Provides Tips on How to Maximise Carousel Ads and Posts

This article claims that one of the more effective Twitter ad solutions has always been carousel advertising. Twitter improved its Carousel Ad offering last October by adding a number of features to provide the developer with more options for creating responsive posts for various audiences within a single campaign.

Twitter lists some of the main applications for carousel advertisements and says they’re perfect for:

  • Showcasing multiple features or products
  • Promoting multiple offers
  • Illustrating various benefits of an app, product, or service
  • Highlighting multiple reviews and customer quotes or testimonials
  • Breaking up a single image across multiple frames
  • Telling a multi-faceted story

Users are more inclined to scroll through your post’s carousels if you can make them aesthetically beautiful and interesting. This is one of the Twitter forms we haven’t looked into for clients like NUS Med. They can be routed to the homepage at whichever frame the audience stopped at, which can be helpful as we frequently have articles or large amounts of material that we need to break down into manageable chunks of information.

Link: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/twitter-provides-tips-on-how-to-maximize-carousel-ads-and-posts/626155/

Will NFTs Integrate Into Social Media or Will Social Media Integrate With NFT Marketplaces?

The context: We’ve long debated about how NFTs will integrate into more mainstream digital platforms, such as the social media ecosystems, and the integrations available thus far are few and far between (the most successful being PFPs/ NFT profile pictures)

The update: Coinbase NFT (a recently-launched marketplace) is trying to boost user engagement and interaction on the platform with a social commerce approach, combining the best of social media (eg: the following feed, adding a “liked” tab) with the best of a marketplace (rarity filters, time-delayed listings and the ability for users to connect up to 10 crypto wallets to a single Coinbase NFT account).

Current status: Coinbase NFT has seen about 8,202 unique buyers and sellers on its platform since it launched two months ago. There have been 20,765 transactions at the time of writing, which adds up to a total volume traded of roughly $2.9 million, or 1,468 ETH. This is rather poor, as for context – OpenSea traded $15.6 million on 30 June alone and has roughly 2 million registered users that have performed at least one transaction.

Evaluating success: The response to Coinbase’s new features thread on Twitter was mixed, and on-chain metrics are still poor (as above), however, Coinbase maintains that the focus is to engage the community with the new features reminiscent of social media. Watch this space!

Link: https://decrypt.co/104301/coinbase-nft-releases-new-features-as-it-struggles-to-attract-traders

Meta Launches New NFT Display Options on Facebook

Users may now make bespoke NFT posts with a “Digital Collectible” tag and have a separate NFT section to display their non-fungible artworks on Facebook, according to Meta’s product manager Navdeep Singh.

Users will be able to see who owns the artwork, who made it, and a brief description of the object when browsing NFT photographs, much like Instagram, which began the first stage of its NFT support campaign in May.

Facebook is planning to support Ethereum, Polygon, and all of the major exchanges, and NFT owners will be able to connect their Rainbow, Trust Wallet, and MetaMask accounts to authenticate NFT ownership. The information is sourced from the NFT details displayed on the public blockchain.

Link: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/meta-launches-new-nft-display-options-on-facebook/626428/

MONDAY MORNING LEARNING – 27 JUNE 2022

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Instagram Adds New Age Verification Features to Better Detect and Protect Younger Users

In order to deliver age-appropriate experiences, such as setting kids into private accounts, preventing unwelcome interaction from adults they don’t know, and limiting the options advertisers have to reach children with ads, Instagram is exploring additional ways for users to verify their age on Instagram.

They can verify their age using one of three options: upload their ID, record a video selfie or ask mutual friends to verify their age. The main enhancement is a new video selfie process, which can provide AI-based estimates of a person’s age.

Instagram and other social media platforms can be damaging to young users in a number of ways, and underage usage can expose children to predators and improper information.

Link: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/instagram-adds-new-age-verification-features-to-better-detect-and-protect-y/625994/

Twitter Launches ‘Notes’ Long-Form Blogging Option, Attached to Tweets

Users can now add lengthy content to their tweets thanks to this new functionality. The user interface (UI) is akin to a standard blog post composer, with header pictures and the ability to put images and links inside of lengthy tweets. Once posted, it will become a Twitter card that links users to the complete article.

With an updated label placed at the top, the author can still amend uploaded Notes, unlike tweets. Twitter, however, stated that this won’t receive a priority over standard tweets and won’t receive an algorithmic boost. To find out how Twitter would or is optimising this functionality for users when it officially launches, we likely need to see usage data from Twitter.

However, at the present, only a few users have access to this feature. However, companies like NUS Med who frequently tweet summaries of their articles with links to the complete articles on their page may find this functionality handy.

Link: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/twitter-launches-notes-long-form-blogging-option-attached-to-tweets/625917/

Gucci’s Experimental Concept Space – Vault

Gucci has launched a cryptoart exhibition and auction entitled “The Next 100 Years of Gucci”. Otherwise known as the Vault, is an experimental concept store that hosts both physical products that are exclusively available on the Vault and NFTs from 29 artists that depict what the next 100 years of Gucci could look like.

Gucci aims to push beyond luxury retail and into creating a community – through the metaverse and vault.

With the Vault, it seems that Gucci is building their brand towards connecting with the audience — building a community — catering to Gen Zs who look for in a hybrid shopping experience. This means making Gucci available physically and in the digital world through social media platforms, metaverse, NFTs, discord etc.

Link: https://vault.gucci.com/en/story/enter-vault

Meta is Developing a New ‘Basic Ads’ Product for Facebook to Counter Losses Due to Data Privacy Concerns

According to reports, Meta is working on a new, privacy-friendly Facebook ad product that would use much fewer user data for targeting.

The emphasis would be on increasing general brand awareness through exposure to a large audience, so if you’re not wanting to target any particular audience or group, you might run a simple ad that was more broadly targeted to Facebook users.

The solution was created in reaction to Apple’s ATT update, which saw a large number of Facebook users choose not to have their personal data tracked by the programme.

Link: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/meta-is-developing-a-new-basic-ads-product-for-facebook-to-counter-losses/624893/

Twitter Expands E-Commerce Features With Shopify Partnership

According to a press release, Twitter and Shopify this week launched a partnership to assist retailers in driving customers to their websites to complete transactions.

Users of Shopify’s e-commerce platform will be able to display up to 50 goods for sale on their Twitter profiles in automatically updated listings. A Twitter sales channel app is now available through Shopify’s administrator portal as well as its App Store. Businesses can link their Twitter accounts to the Shopping Manager on the social networking site, which offers a number of e-commerce software capabilities.

Due to the integration between Twitter and Shopify, retailers can now display their products on Twitter Shops or in the Shop Spotlight on their Twitter profile, both of which are now open to all retailers in the United States. The Shopify merchants’ catalogues and Twitter’s sales channel app are automatically synchronised, so there is no need for manual updates to the product information.

One way social networks may provide marketers with extra services and give users another incentive to visit more often is by supporting e-commerce. It offers the opportunity for social media sites to collect transaction fees and receive commissions on sales, but some of these costs have been temporarily waived by platforms like Facebook as they work to increase the number of merchants they work with.

As much as social media companies now compete with retailers for digital advertising dollars, they also are finding ways to collaborate in their e-commerce efforts.

Link: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/twitter-expands-e-commerce-features-with-shopify-partnership/625930/

Facebook Reportedly Plans a Major Overhaul to Compete With TikTok

The Verge published an internal memo sent by Tom Alison, head of FB explaining very clearly the social media platform’s plans to revamp its feed and other major changes to keep up with TikTok and it’s not just about promoting reels.

Some changes we can expect include:

  1. Facebook’s Feed is expected to “balance both connected content and unconnected content” in Feed. It means that Facebook is going to start recommending more content in your feed from sources you’re not connected with. You’ll still be able to see posts from your connections (friends and family), but you’ll also see more content from entities you’re not connected with.
  2. Reuniting FB and messenger apps to support what they refer to as the “message-based sharing” of content.
  3. Facebook is still prioritising Reels and is now planning on “integrating Reels in Home, Watch, IFR and Groups.”

Link: https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/leaked-memo-shows-facebook-plans-big-changes-to-compete-with-tiktok/

MONDAY MORNING LEARNING – 07 FEBRUARY 2022

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Shake Shack partnered with DoorDash for a chicken sandwich-themed dating site

DoorDash and Shake Shack are partnering on Eat Cute, a limited-edition dating site themed around the Shack Shacks spicy buffalo chicken sandwich. The site will operate from February 3rd-15th. Customers can visit LetsEatCute.com to create a dating profile, upload a selfie and share how spicy they like their food. Upon matching with a compatible person, the customer will receive a promo code for a free sandwich as part of a qualifying order via DoorDash.

The campaign also includes Twitter sweepstakes giving customers a chance to win a $5,000 DoorDash gift card and content from TikTok influencers Rahul Rai and Courtney Parchman. Along with generating interest in Shake Shack’s new menu item, this campaign could generate valuable first-party data for the marketers.

With the Eat Cute dating site, Shake Shack and DoorDash can engage consumers looking for a quirky dating experience themed around a love for spicy food and the new menu item.

Link: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/shake-shack-hooks-up-with-doordash-for-chicken-sandwich-themed-dating-site/618166/  

Twitter expands downvote test worldwide

Twitter tested this feature last year, and it is now available to all users worldwide. Unlike Reddit, which has a downvote option, Twitter’s total tallies for upvote and downvote aren’t visible to the public but are used behind the scenes to see what users find offensive or irrelevant. 

They discovered that the downvote tool is more frequently utilised to mark stuff that they don’t want to view. The goal is that these findings will aid Twitter in improving its algorithms so that the best answers are displayed beneath each tweet.

While this tool aids Twitter in determining what types of content are most likely to be flagged by users, it might be abused for hate campaigns or used to “shadowban” replies as a result of downvotes.

While the downvotes aren’t on general tweets, but rather replies, the overall impact is reduced. However, Twitter may decide to use what it learns from the test in its overall tweet ranking algorithm, which might have an influence on all tweets.

Link: https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/4/22917511/twitter-downvotes-test-experiment-feature-relevant-replies 

Meta Launches Improved 3D Avatars, Expands Avatar Use to Instagram

The method for creating 3D avatars on Facebook has been revised, and these avatars will gradually be available for usage on IG stories and DM as well. Things like 3D, virtual reality, and the opportunity to create and personalise according to your own taste and preferences have been more prominent since Facebook began moving its focus to Meta.

Link: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/meta-launches-improved-3d-avatars-expands-avatar-use-to-instagram/617987/ 

HDB, SCDF add a dash of humour to New York Times ‘Singaporean curry’ furore

Even government organisations are joining in on the debate over The New York Times’ recent video, which depicted the creation of a “Singaporean chicken curry” that viewers said looked nothing like it – or any form of curry for that matter.

Over the last week, social media users have voiced scorn and fury over an Instagram Reel posted on the New York Times’ Food page in which journalist Clarissa Wei prepares a curry that one user described as “drain water.”

Link: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/dining/new-york-times-singaporean-chicken-curry-brands-hdb-scdf-301091 

Understanding wash trading and how it affects NFT prices

Some people sell their own NFTs over and over again in an attempt to artificially raise their pricing. It has to be seen whether this is a good approach or not, as the gas fees required on each transaction reduce the profit margins from a sale.

According to research, wash trading generated roughly $9 million (which is a drop in the bucket considering $44.2 billion worth of bitcoin was sent to ERC-721 and ERC-1155 contracts in 2021), but it highlights the vulnerabilities of NFTs, which is a setback when it comes to garnering trust. Money laundering through art is not new, but because of the transparency of the blockchain, these trades are plain to see, and any legal/tax investigations conducted against individuals may prevent others in the future.

Link: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/nft-sales-show-evidence-wash-trading-researchers-say-rcna14535 

Snapchat Sees Recovery From Apple’s Ad Tracking Policy, Beating Out Meta In Q1 Profits

Snapchat’s revenue surpassed experts’ estimates, and its stock price soared, demonstrating that, unlike Meta, it has weathered Apple’s Transparency Tracking system, which was adopted last year.

Snapchat was able to weather this storm by leveraging AR, which is appealing to marketers, and shifting advertisers’ attention to mid-funnel goals like instals and link clicks rather than end-funnel goals like conversions.

Link: https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/370907/snap-sees-first-quarterly-profit-ad-biz-rebounds.html 

TikTok tests Twitter-like Repost feature for sharing content

Tiktok is now testing a repost functionality with a restricted group of users, similar to Twitter’s retweet service. The report option can be found on TikTok’s share page, where you can share your favourite videos via messaging apps, emails, and social media, and content can be posted directly to your Tiktok followers’ ‘For you’ feed.

There are, however, some limitations. You won’t be able to find the repost function in ‘Discover’ or via a friend’s share in your Tiktok inbox; it only appears in your ‘For You’ feed. Basically, Tiktok’s algorithm decides what you can boost based on your previous content interactions.

The reason for reposting the article must also be typed out. The message will not appear in the usual comments section, but will instead be hidden behind a “reposted” label that friends can press to learn more about what you wrote.

Link: https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/tiktok-tests-twitter-like-retweet-feature-for-sharing-videos/