Tuesday Tune-Up #397
Facebook adds ‘From Facebook’ name to app family
Facebook plans to update how their apps’ names appear, with major changes coming soon to Instagram and WhatsApp, which will be renamed ‘Instagram from Facebook’ and ‘WhatsApp from Facebook’ respectively. The move is a response to demands for great transparency when it comes to the apps we use every day, with Facebook stating, “We want to be clearer about the products and services that are part of Facebook.” The new branding will appear in Facebook’s official communications and roll into the Google Play and Apple app stores. The app names on a device’s home screen will stay the same for now, but it’s likely that the new one will feature when you open them.
TikTok and SuperDry come together for an Aussie activation
Fashion label SuperDry approached prominent Australian TikTokers for their latest brand campaign, looking to the app for its popularity among teens. The brand teamed up with three of Australia’s biggest stars: Caleb Finn (three million followers); Rory Eliza (one million followers) and Ricky Chainz (three million followers). The strategy is paying off, according to Brand Manager Matthew Iozzi, who remarked, “We had 300 people line up just to meet the TikTokers, which is definitely higher than we’ve had for store openings but in saying that we had no expectations.” SuperDry are set to build TikTok into their broader marketing strategy, making it seem like only a matter of time before more brands jump on board.
Snapchat releases new tool for easy vertical video ads
Snapchat is reducing the barrier to entry when it comes to ads on the platform by helping advertisers run campaigns with a new tool called Instant Create, which has designed to make the process of creating vertical content much easier. The tool, which will be available for all advertisers using Snapchat’s self-serve Ads Manager, uses a basic three-step process: set an objective, enter your website and fill in your audience. Users don’t even need to upload assets or fiddle with designs as the tool pulls content from advertisers’ websites. A huge step forward in making Snapchat ads more accessible to smaller advertisers and businesses.
TikTok partners with Giphy to add animated stickers
TikTok continues to muscle in on Instagram’s teenage audience base, with the brand partnering with GIF platform Giphy to give users the ability to add animated stickers into TikTok posts – a feature Instagram users are extremely familiar with. Users can find their sticker muse by hitting a Giphy button in-app where they’ll find new stickers featuring memes and hashtags. While there are currently no (public) plans to monetise this, it’s not a big leap to consider that in the future, brands may be able to get in on TikTok action via bespoke stickers.
Pinterest revenue continues growth in Q2 results
Pinterest has wooed Wall Street and exceeded expectations with its Q2 results. Last week, the platform announced revenue of $261 million, an increase of 64% year-over-year, on losses of $26 million for the second-quarter of 2019. Whilst it’s still a loss-making business, shares rose 15% during after-hours trading. The brand has said, “We also continued to grow and diversify our advertiser base and improve advertisers’ ability to measure the effectiveness of their ad spend.” The statement, combined with new products, tools and a focus on global expansion, is helping make the business appear more likely to turn a profit in the not too distant future.
Pinterest adds ecommerce-focused tools
Here’s a couple of those aforementioned new tools from Pinterest, focused on driving ecommerce on the platform. The new ‘Picked for You’ Pin collection will appear at the top of your home feed, acting as a suggestion and inspiration for making new purchases. The next update comes to the shopping section just under Pins, showcasing expanded brand catalogues that users have shown an interest in, though this isn’t available to everyone.
Facebook doubles down on home grown content for ‘Watch’
Facebook has announced partnerships with a selection of Australian news publishers to bring high quality content to Watch, test new formats and to help build new video businesses on Facebook. Facebook’s plan to bring premium news content to the platform is reminiscent of Snapchat’s ‘Originals’, but this time at a much larger scale. The partnerships with news groups are set to include support for creating exclusive news content for Facebook, with an overall goal of bolstering Facebook’s role as a place to discover news. The deal includes five broadcasters: Seven, Nine, Ten, Sky News and SBS, along with digital-only publishers Pedestrian.TV, owned by Nine, and Junkee Media, owned by Ooh!Media.
Facebook removes Area 51 raid event
The Facebook event that became an internet sensation, ‘Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us’, has, regrettably, been taken down.
For those unfamiliar with the planned September 20 event – which two million people pledged to attend despite warnings from the US Air Force and its location in the Nevada desert – it came with a brief description: “We will all meet up at the Area 51 Alien Center [sic] tourist attraction and coordinate our entry. If we Naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets. Let’s see them aliens.”
Facebook allegedly took the page down on August 3 for violating community standards, which is to say nothing of the community of memes it spawned in the process. Matthew Roberts, the event creator, told CNET he “never got any reason behind the event being removed” and that he “created a sister event which amassed about 15,000 people before being taken down for no reason.”
Area 51 is dead. Long live 30-50 feral hogs.
The edition of the Tune-Up was prepared by Zeb Smith, with additional reporting by Lauren Underwood