We Are Social’s Monday Mashup #312

Mashup
laura.muldoon
Facebook rolls out Canvas for non-sponsored posts
For those of you with lives who are not up to date on all the latest Facebook ad formats (unlike me), Facebook Canvas is a mobile ad which, once clicked, opens into an interactive, full-screen page. UNTIL NOW. Now the format can also be used on regular posts without advertising spend. Facebook says Canvas, which launched in February, is already a big success, with users spending an average of 31 seconds on it.

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Facebook Live adds new features
Three new features have been announced for Facebook Live. The first is that soon two people will be able to livestream together, which is great for remote interviews. Secondly, a new ‘waiting room’ is being created, where users can gather in before a livestream begins and thirdly, Facebook is allowing users to livestream from the MSQRD app (which adds a Snapchat style lens) if they’d like to appear a little more… incognito.

Hashtag #INSTAUPDATE!
Instagram will almost certainly be seeing life through a sunny filter this week as it announced that it’s surpassed the 500 million monthly user mark after gaining 100 million users in the last nine months alone. The platform claims that video views have jumped 150% in the last six months and after revamping its Explore tab two months ago to highlight more video, Instagram has also made further changes by adding a ‘Picked For You’ section.

And finally, news has come in that users will now be able to see translations of captions, bios and comments if they’re not in their native tongue, so you never have to miss out on that XXX foreign #FoodPorn ever again.

Twitter introduces new video features
According to Twitter, video tweets have increased by over 50% since the beginning of 2016. To encourage further video tweeting, Twitter increased the maximum video length from from 30 seconds to 140 seconds. Now you can also tap on a Vine or video on your timeline for a full-screen experience which will also suggest other videos you might like to watch. For creators, they’ve also released a new app to help inform video-making with real-time data.

Twitter does a sneaky specific location tag launch
Twitter is allowing you to see when tweets are from a specific place, like a fancy bistro or … a kebab shop, following a partnership with Foursquare who are helping them with the tagging. Clicking through on these tags will take you to all the tweets made from that place, great for sports games (and kebab recommendations).

Twitter launches Engage, a safe space for celebrities
Twitter has created an app called Engage, for the Twitter super-elite. The app consists of three main tabs: ‘Engage’ highlights only the most important interactions you’ve had on Twitter, like tweets from fellow celebs, or people followed by a lot of your followers. ‘Understand’ gives high-level analytics, and ‘Posts’ offers more in-depth performance data on individual posts. Great news for influencers who are hounded by low-level trolls, but how will @Cher ever see my daily tweets now? ?

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YouTube reassures world of its live streaming expertise
YouTube’s Kurt Wilms, Product Lead For Immersive Experiences, used his Keynote speech at last week’s VidCon to reassert the platform’s dominance in the field of live streaming. He claimed the platform has “been offering livestreaming since before it was cool”. In regards to future developments, he also added that YouTube will be adding a livestream component to their mobile app in order to catch up with the likes of Facebook and Periscope.

Tumblr joins live streaming frenzy, with a slight twist.
Like everyone else, Tumblr know that live streaming is the new big *thing*. It doesn’t have its own video player, so in order to get in on the act, it’s launched a live video feature which lets creators and brands push their clips to Tumblr instead. It’s simple to share a livestream; users just click a button from the video app which will then notify their followers, similar to how Facebook Live works.

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American Express launches Facebook chat bot
Amex has become the first financial company to launch a Facebook bot, which will roll out in the next few months. The bot will send you receipts, remind you about flight bookings and share restaurant recommendations. The company has said it wants to serve the customer in a more ‘conversational way’.

Toyota’s Reddit gamble paid off
As Fraser pointed out earlier this month, brands can struggle to get the most out of Reddit. But the enterprising folks at Toyota took a gamble this month by running a promoted thread asking users which three people they would want to live in a Mars simulation colony with them for a year. Perhaps because the question was not closely tied to a brand, Redditors responded enthusiastically, with more than 300 comments. Top nominees included Matt Damon, because he seemed to know what he was doing in The Martian, along with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton – just to get them safely out of the US election. If only all political problems could be resolved so easily…