Snapchat’s meteoric growth continues Just one week after the news was leaked that Snapchat had acquired more users than Twitter, an official report has predicted it will grow by a further 27% this year in the US. Snapchat’s predicted growth rate far exceeds that of mobile messaging in general—the category as a whole, by comparison, is expected to grow by 16% in the US this year.
82 per cent of mobile sharing happens ‘in the dark’ The vast majority of mobile sharing happens on ‘dark social’, which is the ever so slightly sinister term for sharing via private messages or emails, rather than visible social networks. That’s according RadiumOne’s new report ‘the dark side of mobile sharing’. The report found just 13% of shares happen on Facebook, with the remaining 10% on other public social networks. The amount being shared on the so-called dark side has increased since 2014, when it was below 50%.
UK, Italy, Netherlands and Norway top European social media chart More than half the population of Western Europe will be using social networks by 2019, according to new eMarketer research. The Netherlands, Italy, Norway and the UK already have some of the highest rates of social network usage in Western Europe, with at least 69% of internet users. By contrast, France and Germany have just 55.7% and 57.1% of internet users on social, respectively. Researchers blame the difference on factors including privacy concerns and language barriers.
Facebook turns panoramas into 3D tiltable images Got a few beach, mountaintop or cityscape panoramas floating around on your phone? Well from this week, if you upload them to Facebook, it will convert them into 3D tiltable images. The images can be explored by moving your phone or, if you’ve got a Samsung Gear VR headset, in 3D. Brands including NASA and the New York Times have already announced plans to use the feature, so make sure you share your ‘amazing’ pictures soon before anyone can compare them to professional ones.
Facebook allows you to comment in video format So impressed with NASA’s panorama that you want to make a video thanking them personally? Well now you can. From this week you can now upload videos directly into the comment feed about other posts. If you really wanted to, you could have a slow, recorded video chat with other posters, all in the comment feed. Or you could just skype them.
Snapchat launches ‘subscribe’ button and enables previews in Stories Snapchat users can now subscribe to Discover publishers including Vice and Cosmopolitan, which will help them grow their audiences and enable users to prioritise their favourite publishers. The move comes as Snapchat has refreshed its Stories page, which now combines a rolling selection of Live Stories from friends, with Discover content, which now have story images and headlines.
Snapchat pumps up the volume Just a few weeks after Facebook claimed the majority of videos viewed on the site had the sound off, Snapchat has decided to prove the value of sound in ads. The platform has teamed up with ad measurement company Moat to help marketers better understand their campaigns’ effectiveness, particularly audio. Clement Xue, head of revenue operations said the combination of visual attention, audio and user choice enabled users to ‘lean in when they are consuming or engaging with ads’.
Pinterest to measure success of promoted pins for brands Pinterest is catching up with rivals at Snapchat and Instagram by launching a partnership with Oracle to measure the impact of its Promoted Pins. The move comes after the launch of a report which found Promoted Pins created a five fold incremental increase in in-store sales.
New tools from LinkedIn LinkedIn is launching premium insights to help users ‘make smarter, more informed business decisions.’ Premium insights include data around hiring, job openings and employee roles, as well as where senior employees go after they leave a company. Beginning today, premium users of the service can access this information for any company that has 30 or more employees with LinkedIn profiles.
