We Are Social’s Tuesday Tune-Up #218

News
beth.wallach
Marketers flock to Instagram
Facebook and Twitter are the top social networks currently used by marketers (84.7% and 65.8% of companies respectively) but Instagram will replace Twitter in the next two years according to a new report.

Already used by 32.3% of marketers, it is projected to increase to 48.8% in 2016 before overtaking Twitter in 2017, by when 70.7% of companies will be using it for marketing purposes. Very impressive considering how recently Instagram opened their platform for advertising. And as early reports suggest that Instagram’s product performs on par or better than Facebook, the future is looking very bright for Facebook’s attractive sister platform.

Facebook tests live video streaming
With Periscope being very much the poster child of the live social video trend, Facebook has predictably swooped in to claim its own piece of the action by beginning to test Live Video with a small percentage of iPhone users in the US. They will be able to share live streamed video content with their friends, during which users will see the number of live viewers, the names of friends who are tuning in as well as real-time comments (aka Periscope).

No sleep for brand customer services as Facebook add new tools
Facebook has introduced even more tools to assist marketers with customer service. According to Facebook, messages to pages run by businesses have doubled in the past year. Pages will be able to set their own responsiveness times to manage customer expectations but also set themselves to ‘away’ outside of business hours or when they need a big toilet for instance. Customer service personnel will also be able to leave notes on users’ messages, like: “a-hole alert!” but probably more professional.

Twitter is testing non-chronological timelines
Twitter has begun testing non-chronological timelines to an initial reaction of confusion. A Twitter spokesperson has said: “This is an experiment. We’re continuing to explore ways to surface the best content for people using Twitter.”

Twitter extends ads to logged-out users
Although 307 million people log in to Twitter monthly to check their updates, 500 million people visit who aren’t logged in. Until now, Twitter hasn’t been able to make any money from these logged-out users – that is until now. The platform has just started testing ads on people who aren’t logged in, who mainly come to the site through Google searches, e-mail links or tweets embedded on third-party sites.

Twitter changes image format
Twitter has made an update that means the end of unfortunate image crops when uploading your photo updates. Now photos will be uploaded in the size they were intended and this comes as part of its mission to move away from being a text-based service.

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Pinterest acquisitions boost e-commerce and image recognition
Pinterest’s acquisitions rise to nine following an announcement that they’ve bought Pext and The Hunt. The former is a a meme generator, the latter helps users find fashion items by posting an image of it for The Hunt’s community to locate faster than a bunch of Beliebers can find Justin’s latest Instagram crush.

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Whisper doubles its audience in six months
Anonymous social platform Whisper has reported that it now has 20 million monthly users, which is twice as many as it had in May. It cannot be denied that the closure of rival app Secret may have something to do with this; where else is one meant to air their filthy Gandalf fantasies? It has also been pulling in some top advertisers with Coca-Cola and Disney/Pixar using the platform.