Social media changes so much in a week that it’s hard to keep up. Check back with us every week for our roundup of what we think you should know about.
The government may have shut down, but the Social Media Snap certainly hasn’t! Take a look at what’s been going on in the social media world this week.
Twitter filed its IPO on Thursday to the tune of $1 million. Shortly after, the Washington Post published an article detailing the 5 most interesting things from the Twitter IPO. This filing shed quite a bit of light on operations within the company and its plans for the future including new methods of advertising, which hasn’t exactly been a welcomed announcement among users.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania announced this week that they’ve discovered how to predict a Facebook user’s age, gender and personality traits by analyzing linguistic patterns used in the person’s status updates. This new information could potentially help marketers, advertisers and brands in the future as they strive to be seen by the correct demographics on social media and other online platforms.
This week, Google announced a new AdWords feature that will allow advertisers to track their reach across multiple platforms. For example, if you click on an ad on your computer, do some research on the product on your Smartphone and then purchase it on your tablet, Google can now track that.. Industry experts see this new feature as Google’s attempt to one-up Facebook as the two compete to “provide better data to clients about how many people actually make purchases after seeing ads in Google search or Facebook’s newsfeed.”
Everyone hates spam. Unfortunately, it’s not going away anytime soon. In fact, it’s getting worse. Social media spam increased 355 percent during the first half of 2013. According to a recent study, “Spam is spreading on social networks so much that 1 in 200 social media posts is spam and 5 percent of all social media apps are spammy (meaning they promise a potentially useful service and then send spam updates instead).” This could have a negative impact on legitimate companies using social media to reach consumers as spammers have created a feeling of distrust among users.
This week, after years of preparation and a Supreme Court ruling, the state health care exchanges established through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) finally opened for business. Many of the exchange websites were overwhelmed by user demand and experienced a number of technical glitches, making it difficult for people to find the information they needed. Luckily, Twitter came to the rescue with the hashtag #GetCovered. The hashtag was used to direct people “toward Obamacare exchange resources, including tables that lay out the levels of coverage under the ACA available in each state, along with price points.”
A new study released this week revealed that the link imaged format introduced by Facebook in September, which displays links with much larger pictures, has generated 69 percent more clicks than the previous format that showed the pictures as thumbnails. Thus, this change has led to increased content sharing and engagement between brands and consumers as well as between individual users.
YouTube announced that they’re working on a better format for commenting on videos. According to YouTube’s blog, “Starting this week, you’ll see the new YouTube comments powered by Google+ on your channel discussion tab.” This change will impact the way video marketers use YouTube and allow them to engage with consumers across multiple platforms. Plus, it’s finally making Google+ more relevant, so I’m sure Google’s excited about that.
Happy Weekend,
@RichelleM09