Instagram launches Stories for imperfect sharing You’ve probably heard by now that Instagram has launched ‘stories’ which allows users to post snaps that disappear after a certain period of time.
“This isn’t about who invented something. This is about a format, and how you take it to a network and put your own spin on it.”
If you say so, Kevin. Such blatant plagiarism hasn’t deterred brands, who have already reported great success with the new format. Nike generated 800,000 views in 24 hours for an Instagram Story, compared to just 66,000 views on Snapchat for its ‘best’ story.
Facebook to stick ads in the middle of your Live feeds Long ago, Facebook vowed never to put ads at the beginning of videos, because it would be too annoying for users. Now, they’ve decided it would not be at all annoying to whack them right in the middle of your Live video feeds. The 15 second ads are being trialled after broadcasts have run for five minutes or more, and the platform already has some ‘top publishing partners’ who are equally keen to interrupt your favourite streams.
Facebook declares ‘war’ on Clickbait Fed up of seeing random stories about people being SHOCKED on your newsfeed? So is Facebook. The platform has declared ‘war’ on these annoying clickbait storiesand will be hiding them in a similar way to how Gmail filters and hides spam.
Snapchat launches Geostickers Is Snapchat annoyed that Instagram and Facebook are copying everything it does? Nah. It’s too busy launching a new feature called Geostickers. Geostickers can only be found in specific locations and users have to have location services enabled. So far they are available in Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Washington DC, Honolulu, London, Sydney, São Paulo, Paris and Riyadh.
Snapchat announces seven Olympics brand partners Snapchat revealed the seven official brand partners that will run ads in the platform’s Olympics content via dedicated Live Story and Discover channels. The sacred seven are Sony Pictures, Walmart, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Hershey’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Finish Line and Ford. Other brands will advertise in the platform, but only the special seven will be official partners. Snapchat is doing an extremely good job of monetising the platform of late, with figures as high as $7m being floated to cover the cost of season-long NFL deals.