Daily Minute Master Series – September 12, 2019

Social Media

Instagram’s Reportedly Working on a New Tool Which Replicates TikTok’s Key Features

This week, reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong has found that Instagram is once again replicating a competitors’ features, this time with TikTok in the firing line. As explained by Wong, Instagram is working on a new, TikTok like tool called ‘Clips’: “Just like TikTok, “Clips” allows users to record segments of videos into a single video Story. Just like TikTok, users can overlay music on clips. Just like TikTok, users can adjust the speed and timer of each video clips.” So, just as it’s done with Snapchat’s Stories, AR masks, YouTube, Houseparty, Squad and a range of other apps and functions, Facebook, through Instagram, is looking to add in yet another similar function in order to fend off competition, and keep its 2.7 billion active users (across its “family of apps”) from straying to these shiny new offerings. As such, it’s no surprise to see Instagram looking to copy TikTok, or any new app and tool. It may seem a little cheap, a little tacky even to be so blatantly copying your competition. But it clearly works. Snapchat’s growth has stagnated since Instagram stole Stories, while Houseparty was sold to Epic. You may not like how Facebook goes about squeezing out smaller challengers. But it works.

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Facebook to sunset ability to register, login to apps using only a phone number or email

Facebook is ending its Account Kit function next year, a feature developers could integrate into their apps to allow users to register and log into an app using either their phone number or email address without having to enter a password. Access to the Account Kit ended for new apps on September 9. For developers who already have the Account Kit integrated into their existing apps, the function will cease to exist on March 9, 2020. Any app developers using the Account Kit will have until June 9, 2020 to retrieve user data collected via the Account Kit function. By removing this feature, Facebook is taking more responsibility for how user information is being managed and boosting its user privacy and security measures. App marketers who relied on the easy access it offered users will now have to implement new methods for registrations and logins. They will also have to find new ways to collect the user information they had access to via the Account Kit function.

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More Details Emerge Around Facebook’s Coming News Section

As we move closer to an official release, more details are slowly emerging about Facebook’s new dedicated news section, which will showcase content from a selection of ‘trusted’ publishing partners, in an effort to boost engagement and discussion across The Social Network. This week, The Information got hold of an internal memo which provides some insight into how the new section will operate, including notes on how Facebook will choose what content to display, and the role that human editors will be playing in that chain. If The Social Network can establish a new, trusted panel of news providers, and then promote them to its billions of users, that could have a significant impact on the broader news cycle. Previous research has shown that some 43% of Americans get at least some of their news content from The Social Network. If Facebook can use its news push to promote more accurate sources, and force out some of the junk, that could go a long way to re-establishing trust in media organizations more broadly. 

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Marketing

Adobe adds Customer Journey Analytics, designed to be accessible to all marketers

Adobe has released Customer Journey Analytics as part of its Adobe Analytics platform. The new analytics offering is powered by Adobe Experience Platform and is touted as an easy-to-use, interactive analytics interface that enables “anyone in an organization” to work with data, not just data scientists. According to Adobe Analytics Product Marketing Manager, brands can pull together metrics around orders, conversions, visits and more across different channels using a drag-and-drop model. With Customer Journey Analytics, teams can bring in data sets from point-of-sale systems and call centers, for example, to gain product insights that are better aligned with how consumers interact. Getting as comprehensive view of the customer journey across online and offline campaigns and channels as possible is a key challenge for marketers. With more avenues for customers to engage with companies than ever and data sets in far-flung systems, the amount of data to wrangle and make sense of is overwhelming. Adobe is attempting to make both the stitching together of disparate data and the analysis much more user-friendly for the average marketer.

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