Social Media

Instagram’s Working on a New ‘Stop-Motion’ Tool for Stories

According to reverse engineering maverick Jane Manchun Wong, Instagram is developing a new ‘Stop-Motion’ camera option for Instagram Stories, which would provide another way to create interesting video updates, without having to record any actual video at all. The new tool would assist your creation process by ghosting the frame you’re capturing with the previous, so you can ensure that your placement and movement is correct. This, ideally, is intended for a phone camera on a tripod or similar stable device, as the image would then remain exactly in-set, enabling you place the object how you want it in the next movement. As noted, by shooting in stop-motion, you can create video Stories without having to actually create any video. That not only opens up your creative options, but it will also make it easier for more businesses to add engaging movement to their posts. Instagram is yet to announce the feature, but it looks to be developing fast.

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YouTube’s Running a New Test Which Hides Comments on All Videos

The video platform is now testing a new option which would see all video comments hidden by default, with users needing to tap a button to view any comments on a video. All comments on all videos, in this iteration of the app, would be hidden behind a specific ‘Comments’ button. That would mean that if users chose to view them, they would need to make specific effort to do so, which could help reduce issues with spam, abuse, and the spread of concerning content. YouTube comments have always been concerning, the comments section has long been known as a questionable area of the app, which is why YouTube has essentially de-emphasized it by moving it further down from the actual content, and out of view without scrolling. It shows that the platform is looking at more options to protect users, and that it is experimenting with advanced options, which could have a significant impact on the platform’s overall functionality.

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Marketing

Millions of fake Google Maps listings hurt real business and consumers

Google Maps carries approximately 11 million illegitimate local listings, with hundreds of thousands more getting created each month, the Wall Street Journal reported. These fake listings push real businesses further down the local search results, impacting their ability to reach customers and make unsuspecting users easy targets for scammers. Google says it is aware of the problem and that it has plans to do more to combat spammers and scammers taking advantage of local listings. It’s not in the company’s interest to jeopardize user trust, yet as many marketers point out, it stands to profit as local businesses turn to paid ads to regain search visibility. Google’s failure to take down fake business listings and verify real ones is a frustration for many business owners and marketers. The company added that it’s developing new ways — both manual and automated — to fight scammers, but kept specifics under wraps.

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Advertising

Google testing carousel of text ads on mobile

It’s already hard to tell how your text ads will render these days — two headlines or three, how many extensions, etc. Now, Google is testing a carousel of text ads on mobile. Spotted by SEMrush, the ads carousel appears under a “People also considered” heading below the first ad. The ads in the carousel appear with two headlines a truncated description line and no ad extensions. This likely looks pretty scary to a lot of advertisers thinking this could tank performance for ads that aren’t in the absolute top position — particularly with the carousel ads getting served in this truncated format. Google will be watching the impact on click volume and click-through rates with this treatment. And it’s not clear if this is also being tested on non-brand terms. The removal of average position metric makes even more sense now. Shopping ads have appeared in a carousel format for some time now — as have various text ad extensions. All of the Shopping ads are in the carousel, though, and you’ve likely noticed they’ve gotten much, much bigger over the years.

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Social Media

Facebook’s digital wallet Calibra: What it could mean for marketers

Facebook announced it is launching a financial subsidiary in 2020 called Calibra that will include a digital wallet offered as a standalone app and built into Messenger and WhatsApp. The digital wallet will enable global users to make financial transactions using Libra, the newly formed currency powered by blockchain technology backed by Facebook and a number of leading financial, technology and venture capital organizations, including Mastercard, Uber, PayPal and Andreessen Horowitz. Marketers are paying attention to the cross-border payment capabilities Facebook’s Calibra will offer. “It’s a way for Facebook to bring e-commerce into developing countries, where they don’t have stable currencies or means to pay,” said Steve Weiss, president of the digital marketing agency MuteSix. Whether or not Facebook will be able to drive global e-commerce within its apps via Calibra depends entirely on the success of the Libra cryptocurrency it is helping develop. Creating a way for worldwide users to engage with brands — and purchase from them regardless of their geographic location — could dramatically impact Facebook’s business model and further cement its dominance as a social platform. Much is riding on the success of the Libra cryptocurrency for Facebook. But, should it succeed, marketers are ready for the added e-commerce and customer experience possibilities it could provide.

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Facebook Adds 22 New, Free Training Modules to Facebook Blueprint

The Social Network has announced the addition of twenty-two new digital marketing training courses as part of its free Facebook Blueprint education platform. This new update, as noted by Facebook, will include additional Instagram insight, which will no doubt be of interest to the many marketers looking to build their presence on the rising platform. In addition, Blueprint also offers official, Facebook ads certification courses to help prove your skills and expertise. The new Blueprint courses will be available at facebook.com/blueprint at the end of the month. Facebook says the new courses will initially only be available in English, but it’s looking to add support for more than 30 additional languages by the end of the year.

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Twitter is Removing the Option to Tag Your Precise Location in Tweets

Twitter has announced a small, but interesting, update, with the removal of the capacity to tag your precise location within your tweets. It likely won’t have any significant impact – as Twitter notes, most people don’t use the option anyway. But it is still worthy of note, particularly as a data tracking tool, as it could lessen the platform’s capacity to track location data. At least, it could in theory. Given that the option is built into Twitter’s back-end code, the app will still be able to track your exact location anyway, if you have the capacity switched on. Location tracking isn’t on by default, but even if it’s no longer an option for your tweets, if you’ve chosen to switch it on in the past, Twitter can still use it. With users increasingly concerned about the information they share, the platforms themselves are now taking more steps to reassure people that they are not being monitored, and their data is not being logged every moment.

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Advertising

Price extensions now supported in Microsoft Advertising Editor

Price extensions launched in Microsoft Advertising a little over a year ago, allowing advertisers to show products and pricing in-text ads in mobile and desktop search results. Now you can manage those extensions in Microsoft Advertising Editor. That means you can manage them in bulk and much more quickly. From the Shared LIbrary in Editor, you will be able to add headers, descriptions and prices, including currency.

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Social Media

Facebook reveals Libra cryptocurrency, with lofty goals

Facebook Inc revealed plans on Tuesday to launch a cryptocurrency called Libra, the latest development in its effort to expand beyond social networking and move into e-commerce and global payments. Facebook has linked with 28 partners in a Geneva-based entity called the Libra Association, which will govern its new digital coin set to launch in the first half of 2020, according to marketing materials and interviews with executives. Facebook has also created a subsidiary called Calibra, which will offer digital wallets to save, send and spend Libras. Calibra will be connected to Facebook’s messaging platforms Messenger and WhatsApp, which already boast more than a billion users. In recent years, cryptocurrency investors have lost hundreds of millions of dollars through hacks, and the market has been plagued by accusations of money-laundering, illegal drug sales and terrorist financing. Markus Feber, a senior German lawmaker in the European Parliament, called for the European Union to begin work on regulating cryptocurrencies. Facebook hopes it can bring global regulators to the table by publicizing Libra, said Kevin Weil, who runs product for the initiative. The Libra Association plans to raise money through a private placement in the coming months, according to a statement from the association. Partners in the project include household names like Mastercard Inc, Visa Inc, Spotify Technology SA, PayPal Holdings Inc, eBay Inc, Uber Technologies Inc and Vodafone Group Plc, as well as venture capital firms like Andreessen Horow.

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Facebook to remove ‘Company Overview’ and ‘Biography’ fields from Pages

Facebook is alerting Page owners that it is removing a number of fields from Page info starting August 1, 2019. The fields to be removed include Company Overview, Biography, Affiliation, Personal Interests and maybe more, according to a tweet from Matt Navarra. Anyone managing a Facebook Page will need to revisit information listed in the fields scheduled to be removed, and add the information they want to remain visible to the Page’s description. The fields being removed are listed under a Page’s “About” section and, most likely, will not impact a Page’s performance. SMBs and public figures whose primary online existence are their Facebook Pages may have important information in those fields. Editing the Page description to include the soon-to-be deleted information will make sure those details remain intact.

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Pinterest Announces New Third-Party Partnerships to Expand its On-Platform Shopping Options

Pinterest’s aim is to become a key hub for online shopping, with advanced product discovery and matching features that align with user needs, and help to guide them to relevant products. Pinterest has this week renamed its third-party partner program, and added new technology partners to facilitate expanded product listing capacity.  The new focus for Pinterest Partners is shopping, with a range of tools that will be able to help connect businesses direct to the platform, streamlining their product listing and promotion processes. This aligns with Pinterest’s broader push to integrate direct shopping options, including product catalogs, automated ‘Shop the Look’ Pins and the coming addition of ‘Complete the Look’ listings, which will recommend complementary products based on automated matching. These new partnerships will help Pinterest build upon this, and continue its ongoing growth strategy.  

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Facebook’s Working on a New ‘Preview’ Option for Page Posts

Facebook is currently testing a new ‘Preview’ option for Page posts which would enable you to see what your update is going to look like before you hit ‘Share’. The option could help Facebook Page admins to better manage their posts and output, ensuring that what they aim to publish, and what actually appears, match up. It would also help highlight errors and mistakes before they happen – if you get into the habit of checking the preview, you’ll be able to catch errors and/or formatting problems before you go live, which could help reduce clumsy looking slip-ups. Of course, you can already do this, in large part, via the existing Page publishing tools – if you schedule a post, you can view it from your scheduled list and see what it’s going to look like to your Page fans. But if you’re publishing live, you’ll often skip that step. This would enable you to maintain awareness of how your posts are going to look in all instances.

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Social Media

Facebook Acquires Indian eCommerce Marketplace Meesho to Increase Operations in Indian Market

The Social Network has this week announced that it has acquired Indian social commerce market Meesho in order to further expand its presence in the rising Indian market. The acquisition will enable Facebook to better connect with eCommerce opportunities in the region – which could become increasingly important as Facebook also seeks to roll out its GlobalCoin cryptocurrency – initially focused on funds transfers in the Indian market – in the coming months. If Facebook’s on-platform payment process works, the company could quickly build its own, on-platform marketplace, and become an essential utility for connecting Indian users with quick and easy payments in varying forms. If Facebook can make it a key element within the Indian marketplace, that will be a huge win, and will provide a huge boost for the currency and Facebook’s on-platform network moving forward. 

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Marketing

Google launches new search menu with icons

After a few months of testing it now appears Google has started rolling out the new search bar with icons. Instead of just using text to show the various search categories or verticals for news, video, images, maps, shopping and so on – Google is showing icons that represent those categories as well. Google has confirmed with Search Engine Land that this is now rolling out to searchers today. Throughout the day we have seen numerous reports from readers that they are seeing the new Google search bar. Now we are able to see this consistently on all browsers we are testing it on. Any change to the user interface of one of the most used web sites in the world will be noticed. Will it impact search marketers or SEOs? As we said before, this change will probably not impact us much but it does give a new fresh look to the Google search results page.

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Google tests showing weekly site visits in automated ad extension

Google has several types of automated extensions that can display in search ads — seller ratings, call extensions, dynamic sitelinks, etc. It’s currently testing a new version that highlights a site’s popularity. Spotted by Kristie TC Liu, digital marketing strategist at KoMarketing in Boston, the automated extension on a WeWork ad says, “10K+ visits this week” and is preceded by a people icon. “We’re always testing new ways to improve our experience for our advertisers and users, but don’t have anything specific to announce right now,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land. Google is always running tests. If this one proves successful — presumably the success metric here is click-through rate — and rolls out, it could mean a boost for more popular sites.

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Google Maps displaying redirect notice alerts when users click on business website URLs

For approximately five days now, if a searcher tries to click your website URL within your Google Maps listing, they will receive a “redirect notice” from Google. The notice reads: “The previous page is sending you to [the URL you clicked on],” and then adds, “If you do not want to visit that page, you can return to the previous page.” This is likely causing a drop in traffic from Google Maps and may be impacting local businesses in terms of foot traffic and website traffic. Is this a feature or a bug? Did Google intentionally make this change or was this change made by mistake? Since Google has not responded yet, we don’t know how long it will take for the issue to be resolved. If people are getting these notices when trying to click over to your website, it might surprise them, concern them, or possibly scare them not to click through to your website. This may result in less traffic to your web site, potentially less visits from customers to your physical location, and ultimately less revenue for your company.

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Social Media

Twitter is Now Testing its ‘Hide Replies’ Option Among Users in Canada

Back in March, Twitter confirmed that it was testing a new option which would enable users to hide selected replies from their tweets, offering a new way for people to control their on-platform experience. Canadian users can now try out the functionality, which some will see as a means to remove dissenting opinions from the stream, and others will see as a welcome update to maintain a level of civility on the platform. Being able to hide selected tweet replies will enable users to have more control over their Twitter experience. There are risks of misuse, which is why Twitter is testing it on a relatively small scale to begin with, but it could end up being a valuable, helpful option, removing trend-jackers and spammers, and facilitating a more engaging tweet stream.

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Facebook launches new market research app after pulling similar app in January

Facebook has rolled out a new Study from Facebook marketing research program that involves users downloading an app to collect data from their phone. The company said the the information it collects will go toward product development initiatives. Facebook is promoting the program by running ads asking people to participate. If someone clicks on an ad, they’ll will be asked to register — and if they qualify — will be asked to download the Study with Facebook app from the Google Play Store. Facebook is compensating users for participating in the market research program, but did not give details on how much money users would earn. (Facebook’s previous research program paid users $20 a month to have the app installed on their phone.) Facebook said it is not collecting user IDs, passwords or any content like photos, videos or messaging. Facebook’s mismanagement of user data has been a thorny issue for marketers. Advertisers have reaped the benefits of the company’s ad targeting capabilities, but marketers want safe platforms — and channels — where their messaging can be heard without the risk of people’s data being misused, or worse, stolen.

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Marketing

Google June 2019 core update finished rolling out on June 8

Danny Sullivan from Google confirmed that the June 2019 core update that began rolling out on June 3rd finished rolling out on June 8th. It takes time for these updates to roll out because Google has many servers and data centers around the world, and it takes time for them all to get this update. We saw some early data around this, while it was still rolling out. Heck, even large publications like the Daily Mail and now CCN, among others are publicly saying how badly this update hit them. Google has not given us data on how large of an impact these updates are, like it used to with some Panda and Penguin updates, but did say it announces these core updates because they are “noticeable.” When Google releases larger updates, knowing when the update began and ended is useful for tracking traffic increases and decreases in our analytics. The timestamps help us understand if a site got hit by a specific algorithm update, technical issue, or other issue that might be unrelated.

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Google Trends gets integrated into Data Studio via free third-party app

UK-based marketing firm StrategiQ has released a Google Trends connector for Data Studio. Initially developed for its own clients in July 2018, the now-free tool allows users to extract search trend information directly into their Data Studio reports. Google Trends data has long been a resource for gauging keyword traffic, content planning and assessing daily as well as long term search trends. This solution helps to consolidate that valuable information onto Data Studio, where you can create custom reports to share with clients and colleagues. Google has yet to release an official integration for Trends and Data Studio. Since this is a free, third-party offering, StrategiQ does not provide a service-level agreement or guarantee a minimum uptime.

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