We Are Social’s Monday Mashup #267

Mashup
nick.mulligan

Google indexing nearly five times more tweets than it was
After Google gained access to Twitter data earlier this year, some were surprised by how few tweets were being indexed. The figure has since shot up; Google is now indexing 466% more tweets than four months ago, though 96% still go unindexed. I’m yet to see anything from @nickmulligan in search results. Disgraceful.

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Facebook adds ‘See First’ News Feed feature
Facebook has added a new set of News Feed preferences, initially for iPhone and iPad users in the USA, including a feature named ‘See First’. Users can now choose friends or pages that they consider particularly important and add them to a list, meaning that their content will always show up, sort of like the opposite of ‘unfollow’. It’s likely to have an impact for brands, who have seen reach drop hugely over the past year or so among those who like their pages; if a brand isn’t added to ‘See First’, its posts may appear even lower in users’ News Feeds.

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Facebook changes its CPC ads
Facebook has made what could be a very significant change to its cost-per-click ads and will now only register ‘link clicks’, meaning clicks that do one of the following: link to another site, contain a call-to-action (e.g. shop now), install an app, link to Facebook canvas apps or watch a video on another site. The move is expected to have a big impact on advertisers. CPC ads will be more expensive (say 16 cents vs. 5 cents) but more valuable and directly linked to commerce. We might well expect to see Facebook ad spend increase, as advertisers can measure their ads more directly with the likes of Google.

Twitter wants to know your birthday
Birthday coming up? Mine’s on Thursday, thanks for asking*. Twitter’s now offering you VIRTUAL BALLOONS if you’re willing to share your date of birth. That’s nice, isn’t it? Yes, but it’s also a move to gain more data for ad purposes. Up to you. Here’s what the balloons look like.

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*it really is. Please send me a card.

Vine adds ‘Suggested Viners’ and 720p posts
The latest version of the Vine app comes with two updates: ‘Suggested Viners’ and the ability to post in HD. The former lets users find high-quality content publishers, chosen by the network. The latter… well, it lets people post in HD.

Meerkat unveils Cameo
Meerkat has added a new feature called Cameo, which allows one broadcaster to invite another to take over a stream for up to 60 seconds. Expect to see celeb cameos in branded content.

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Get verified on Tinder
Tinder has added verified profiles, in case you want to date a celebrity. For some reason, it won’t verify me. But then it won’t give me any matches either, so we can only assume the app is broken.

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Google removes G+ posts from Knowledge Card Graphs
Google is removing Google+ posts from Knowledge Card Graphs in search results. The photo below shows what the cards used to look like; now it’s the same, just without the stuff in the red square.

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Amazon blocks certain reviewers due to social interactions
Amazon has been monitoring social media and subsequently banning users who have been interacting with authors from leaving book reviews on the Amazon site, in case they are ‘friends’ rather than impartial reviewers. It has since been accused of ‘Big Brother’ style tactics in a change.org petition.

MoveOn wants supporters to donate their social profiles
Progessive political giant, MoveOn, is asking its followers to donate their social profiles to allow the company to post messages from them. Benjamin O’Keefe, social and cultural producer for MoveOn said that the move was an opportunity for donation in an non-financial sense:

This is a different way for people to donate in a way that really matters. It’s great when people can chip in and donate money, but not everyone can.

Coca-Cola teaches Twitter users about their names
Coca-Cola has created a tweet-powered billboard in Times Square, asking users to tweet their name with the hashtag #CokeMyName for the chance to learn facts about it. Sorry to any Laurens reading, we’ve kind of ruined the surprise.

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first direct and We Are Social launch ‘no, thank YOU’
first direct and We Are Social created a campaign to show the bank’s customers just how much it cares. Rather than just replying to messages saying ‘thank you’, the bank went one step further. Here’s an example:

Discovery uses Meerkat during Shark Week
Are you ready for a tenuous attempt to shoehorn a link between meerkats the animals and Meerkat the live streaming service? Good, here goes.

Sharks and meerkats aren’t natural allies. However, Discovery has been using the live streaming service, Meerkat, to post live camera streams of the aquatic creatures during Shark Week.

See? Tenuous. Here’s a picture.

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Brands get their teeth into shark week
Discovery wasn’t the only brand posting about Shark Week. A load of them were at it.

Brands heart emojis
Last week saw #NewMeaningsForEmojis trending on Twitter. Did brands get involved? You bet. You ruddy bet.