We Are Social’s Monday Mashup #260
Facebook launches Instant Articles
Last week, Facebook introduced a new product to its arsenal called ‘Instant Articles’, which lets major news companies publish stories directly to the platform. The feature means users don’t have to click out and wait for websites to load, instead third-party content is natively hosted in the app’s news feed and articles can load up to ten times faster than before. So far, nine publishers have signed up, including NBC News, The New York Times and Buzzfeed. Instant articles are a way for these publishers to tap into Facebook’s huge audience, but there are concerns about who will keep the ad revenue.
Facebook introduces ‘call’ button
More than 40 million companies worldwide have Facebook pages. Now, the social network has made it easier for people to get in touch with them on their mobiles by introducing a new ‘call’ button, allowing users to tap to call businesses directly from an ad. Facebook has called the offering ‘local awareness ads’, created explicitly to benefit local businesses.
Facebook takes on the second-hand goods market
In a potential bid to rival the likes of eBay, Gumtree and Craigslist, Facebook is testing tools to make buying and selling goods within the platform much easier. The ‘all sales groups’ option shows items available for purchase across all groups a user belongs to. The platform has also begun to improve search tools to make it easier to find potential purchases within the app.
Snapchat launches Discover messages
Back in January, Snapchat launched the Discover feature which houses content from media companies such as CNN, Comedy Central and Vice. But since its launch, the feature has seen a decline in viewership. So, in an attempt to revive it, Snapchat has introduced Discover messages. The update lets you send clips taken straight from Discover to friends via a private message, users can also overlay their own drawings and text to the videos.
Starbucks creates branded GIF content
Starbucks has jumped on the mobile messaging trend, by creating 21 ‘subtly’-branded GIFs for users to share with friends. They launched the content on mobile app Popkey, which accesses a smartphone’s built-in keyboard allowing users to find and send the GIFs.
Brand lets you literally watch paint dry
Proving that you can watch pretty much anything online, paint brand Glidden recently set-up its Periscope account with a live stream of a wall of wet paint drying. The promotion dubbed #WatchingPaintDry on Twitter responded to people using the hashtag with random free gallons of paint. If, like us, you’re thinking ‘surely not?!’ at one point 85 people were all tuned into the live stream.
WWF lets you tweet emojis to donate
WWF has created the #EndangeredEmojis campaign, which lets users donate money every time they use one of 17 animal emojis. WWF launched the campaign via a tweet last week asking users to ‘opt-in’ to the service by agreeing to donate 10p every time they use any of the featured emojis in a future tweet.
We’re using #EndangeredEmoji to save real animals from extinction. Please retweet to sign up and help. pic.twitter.com/hX1p1GEDZ9
— WWF (@WWF) May 12, 2015
Just tweet for a pizza with Domino’s Also following the emoji trend is Domino’s, who have made ordering your favourite takeaway as simple as sending a tweet. All US consumers need to do to take advantage of the ‘tweet-to-order’ service is send out a pizza emoji and tag @Dominos. It’s a first for the restaurant industry and definitely the sign of things to come for consumer convenience. At the very least, its going to make my drunk pizza orders a lot easier.