We Are Social’s Monday Mashup #349

Mashup
laura.muldoon
Facebook Messenger ramps up ‘M’ suggestions for users
Facebook Messenger’s ‘M’, an AI powered assistant, is going to start making more suggestions from now on in Facebook Messenger. That’s right people, Judi Dench is going to intermittently interrupt your conversations to tick you off for detonating all the explodey pens for your mates at a house party. Not really! But that would be freakin’ awesome. This M will suggest, stickers, payment methods, polls and other such things as and when you mention that kind of thing with friends in Facebook Messenger. Creepy or cool?


What does the new rocket icon on Facebook do?
If you can see the rocket icon in your Facebook app, you and are friend have qualified for a one-way trip to Mars with Lance Bass, formerly of NSYNC. Not rly! Although that would be … quite awesome. The new rocket icon some people are seeing (as Facebook are just testing it for now) will display a different newsfeed with the most popular pages of people and/or pages that you don’t already like.

New CTA units for Instant Articles on Facebook shake things up
Publishers will now be able to embed call-to-actions (CTAs) within Instant Articles of their choosing, encouraging readers to either sign-up to a newsletter from the publisher or like their page on the platform. Facebook says this is to drive more direct lines of communication between publishers and readers (hmm ok). Next in the pipeline are CTAs for people to sign to free trial subscriptions or download the publisher’s mobile app.


Facebook tests linking Groups to brand Pages
In order to encourage large online communities to flourish on Facebook as opposed to people just interacting with friends and family, Facebook has started testing the capability for brands to call attention to specific groups which might be associated with them. An example of this in action is HBO, who have a groups tab where you can find the official fan group for Big Little Lies instead of finding yourself in some second rate unofficial group.

 

Facebook has redesigned its Delivery Insight Dashboard
Guys, don’t get too excited but Facebook has redesigned its Delivery Insight Dashboard – Doesn’t it look sexy? I for one, would not want my insights delivered in any other way. The new dashboard is designed to increase transparency for advertisers using Facebook and provides detailed metrics to help understand auction activity and performance. You will also be able to use a tool to get daily estimated results.

Facebook plans free version of Workplace
Facebook is introducing a new free version of its Slack-style networking tool for colleagues in the workplace called… Workplace. A premium, paid for version is already available but this will obviously increase its uptake among smaller businesses. The free version will be the same as its premium service but will be self-serve and not offer companies such extensive admin and analytics tools.

Whatsapp rumoured to start supporting payments in India
It is suspected that Whatsapp is about to roll out payments within the app in India. This would a big boon for Whatsapp who have more than 200 million users in the country. Various clues point to this happening but one of the main ones is that the company is said to be in talks with the Indian government to enable support for the federally regulated Unified Payments Interface (UPI). This enables quick money transfers between users’ accounts.

YouTube begins $35 internet TV service
YouTube TV is here! Available in just five cities to start with including New York and Los Angeles, you can get 40 channels of live TV on the platform, including all of the major broadcast networks. It is said that the main aim of the TV service is to keep their core users (18-34 year olds) to stay on the platform longer.

LinkedIn streamlines lead generation collection process
LinkedIn has worked on simplifying the way businesses can collect valuable leads on the platform by introducing LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms. This is an in-app, auto-populating form which eliminates the faff of having to fill out long contact forms on a mobile for users.