Social You Should Know—April Social Media Updates

A lot happened this month in social media with most of the news centered around the Facebook privacy scandal. If you are just catching up, here are some highlights for April.

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Facebook Faced Congress

During the middle of the month, Zuckerberg spent a few intense days testifying in front of Congress. What we learned from that experience is that many people in Congress do not understand how social networks work and that Facebook has a lot of action items to follow up on. One update that community managers should be aware of is Facebook will soon require ‘large’ Pages to verify the identities and locations of the people managing their accounts for Facebook and Instagram. Verification will be needed in the form of a government-issued ID and a valid address for Facebook to send a follow up confirmation.

Snap Is Losing Influencers, While Instagram Gains Them

This probably doesn’t come as a surprise, but over the past year 86% of marketers and 89% of influencers reported using Snapchat less for influencer-marketing campaigns, according Activate. On the flip side, 92% of marketers and 88% of influencers report using Instagram more often for campaigns. 43% of marketers are using Instagram’s Swipe Up features for campaigns, while about 21% are using Story Highlights. YouTube and Twitter also seem to be losing ground with influencers. Influencers and marketers are entering longer term relationships with about half of marketers working with influencers for 6+ months.

Snapchat Makes Updates

With recent app updates, Snapchat has started positioning themselves as a camera versus a social media network. They are also working on redesign to the new layout that got poor reviews from just about everyone. The new design would move users’ friends’ stories to the Discover section, putting them next to celebrity and publisher content, again. This past week, Snapchat launched Snappables. Snappables are augmented reality games and experiences played inside the Snapchat camera where your face is the controller.

YouTube Under Fire for Children’s Privacy

Facebook isn’t the only channel under scrutiny for collecting user’s data. Twenty-three child advocacy and privacy groups have filed a complaint with the FTC that Google is violating Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and collecting personal data on those under age 13. YouTube is accused of collecting location data, device IDs and phone numbers and then tracking children across websites and services, without first getting parental consent. A YouTube spokesperson said they will thoroughly evaluate the complaint and stressed that YouTube is not for children which is why they created the YouTube Kids app. We will be closely watching as this story unfolds.

Twitter Can’t Escape Bots

New data came out this month from Pew Research Center about how many links are being shared by humans versus bots. Pew Research looked at over 2K of the most popular websites and over 1.2M tweets over a six-week period during the summer of 2017. Of the links tweeted, 66% came from automated accounts. Additionally, bots tweeted 89% of links to popular news and story aggregation sites. These percentages are pretty high and it will be interesting to see if this new research will resurface the bot conversation. 

That should catch you up on all of the latest platform news. To get the latest social news straight to your inbox, sign up for Social You Should Know.



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