Social marketing tops list of tech investment priorities for marketers According to a survey by Gartner on the 2015 budgets and 2016 expectations of over 330 organisations, almost two-thirds said that social marketing and digital commerce were leading priorities. Furthermore, 61% of marketers named marketing analytics as a priority, to align with the growing expectation from consumers for heightened personalisation when being marketed to.
Facebook tests interest-specific news feeds on mobile As part of Zuckerberg’s goal of making Facebook “the best personalised newspaper”, some people are now seeing their News Feed being separated into different categories, such as travel, style and headlines. Now if only you could create a sub section called “smug couples and their cats” which you could then delete forever, from Facebook… and the real world.
Facebook is adding customizable interest-based feeds. A newspaper made up of all the world’s newspapers. pic.twitter.com/Ll7pib6Mb5
Facebook begins rolling out support for Apple’s Live Photos
For those of you that don’t know what a Live Photo is, it’s basically a very short video, but don’t start calling these things ‘short videos’ – you’ll sound like a mum. Only produced on iPhone 6s and 6s plus, Facebook has updated its app to support them and you’ll recognise them by the concentric circles in their right hand corner.
Google plans to bring a new contender to the messaging apps market According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is planning to take on Facebook Messenger with a new messaging service involving AI and chatbots. A name for the new service is currently unknown, so all guesses welcome. I’m going for: Gchat Messenger OR Googlebert Humperzing, one of those. Facebook is currently the number one messaging app in the U.S. followed by Google Hangouts.
Google brings its interactive, 360 “Spotlight Stories” to YouTube Google’s first Spotlight Story is now available on YouTube. Called Special Delivery and created by the people behind Wallace and Gromit, users can explore the story from every angle and unlock other mini-stories with up to 60 moments where you can choose to follow the story in different ways. The format takes advantage of your smartphone’s sensors, like gyroscope and accelerometer, to create an immersive viewing experience and will surely one day be used for some truly mind-blowing porn.
Snapchat ramps up in-house Discover content again
After killing its own Discover channel a few months after starting it and laying off the team members behind it, Snapchat has brought out a new music-themed channel sponsored by Spotify. Each day saw a different musical genre being featured, for instance R&B one day, hip hop the next, then *shudders* EDM.
National Peanut Board spaffs a year’s worth of tweets in one day
This story is frankly, nuts (sorry). The National Peanut Board has decided to predict what the big moments of 2016 will be by tweeting 366 pieces of content in one day in something which they’re describing as “sort of like the Farmer’s Almanac of social media”. The new Twitter account centres around a fictional peanut vendor who used to sell salty snacks at ballparks. If any of the tweet predictions come true this year, they’ll be re-posted.
Brand wars for Star Wars According to Twitter, Star Wars was mentioned 6.5 million times on the platform leading up to the theatrical release of the newest film. Disney led the way by owning the Promoted Trend on Twitter and changing it on the hour, every hour with one of the hashtag emoji related to the film.
The social world celebrates 2016
As 2015 drew to a close, Twitter ramped up the social celebration by introducing a new fireworks emoji which was unlocked when people used the hashtag #HappyNewYear in English or over 35 other languages. For the first time ever, people’s tweets and videos were also show on the big screens underneath the Times Square Ball as well.
Sprinklr has also produced a nifty infographic which collects data in real-time from people talking about resolutions on Twitter and Instagram, showing the most mentioned resolution topic is happiness, with working out, weight and smoking also featuring frequently. Happy new year!
