Pinterest brings Shoppable Pins to visual searches for fashion, home products – Weekly Social Media Update Wk39 2019

Pinterest announced this week that it has advanced its Lens capabilities, making it possible for the visual search tool to now identify more than 2.5 billion fashion and home products. With this latest advancement, the company is adding fashion and home related Shoppable Pins to visual search results. [Read more] Facebook’s Testing a New ‘Chat’… View Article

Facebook Tests New In-App Shopping Ads for Both Facebook and Instagram – Weekly Social Media Update Wk38 2019

Facebook is testing out two new shopping ad options, both of which are aimed at streamlining the path to purchase, and keeping users in-app, as opposed to filtering them off to other websites. Firstly, a Dynamic Ad option would enable users to order an advertised item direct from the News Feed ad itself. Facebook is… View Article

Facebook May Soon Hide Total Like Counts on Posts, Mirroring Instagram’s Test – Weekly Social Media Update Wk37 2019

Facebook is testing hiding like counts, similar to Instagram on its platform. The removal of public like counts, is said to reduce social comparison, and its associated negative impacts. This move may not have measurable impact for branded posts on Facebook, but it could affect the brand-influencer relationship, especially in terms of how brands and… View Article

Instagram confirms it is testing increased ad loads in Stories – Weekly Social Media Update Wk36 2019

Instagram reports it is experimenting with running back-to-back Story ads from different advertisers. The experiment is only being performed on a small group of users, and all advertisers are eligible to be part of the test. This will make it more important for brands to focus on the creative aspect of their campaigns to differentiate… View Article

Facebook Will Open Several Pop-Up Cafes in London to Assist Users with Privacy Settings – Weekly Social Media Update Wk35 2019

In its latest attempt to prove to the world that it’s not actually an evil corporation, hell-bent on gathering as much personal data as possible in order to use it against us, Facebook will open up five temporary cafes in the UK, where users will be able to get assistance and advice on their privacy… View Article

Instagram Opens AR Filter Creation Tools to All Users – Weekly Social Media Update Wk34 2019

As of this week, anyone on Instagram can now create and publish their own Spark AR effects. Instagram is also introducing the new Effect Gallery, which will include niche AR effects from up-and-coming artists, making it easier for people to discover unique effects from the creator community. [Read more] Spotify for Podcasters provides data on… View Article

New Tool Provides Email Alerts Whenever Your Competitors Launch a Facebook Ad Campaign – Weekly Social Media Update Wk33 2019

Utilising Facebook’s Ad Library, which was rolled out to all Pages earlier this year, PixelMe’s new ‘AdInboxMe’ tool will send you an alert whenever your competitors launch a new Facebook ad campaign. [Read more] Pinterest adds new e-commerce layer with personalized ‘shopping hub’ atop user feed Pinterest continues to push e-commerce initiatives, introducing a personalised… View Article

Instagram is Testing a New Listing to Stories – Weekly Social Media Update Wk32 2019

Instagram is now looking to add new notification tools and options to help boost user engagement and to ensure that people are aware of relevant mentions. The new section would list all the Stories in which a user has been @mentioned or tagged by the Story creator, separating these notifications from your general notifications stream…. View Article

Facebook Shrinking Ads – Weekly Social Media Update Wk31 2019

Posts and ads in the mobile News Feed will display at a 4:5 aspect ratio, which means they’ll be shorter than at the current 2:3 aspect ratio. The new ad layout will only allow for three lines of text, after which users will see a prompt to display more of the text. That’s quite a… View Article

Instagram hides number of ‘likes’ from users in Australian trial – Weekly Social Media Update Wk30 2019

Instagram users in Australia will no longer be able to see how many likes a post has a received under trial changes to “remove pressure” on the digital platform’s users. Users will still be able to see a list of likes on their posts, just not the overall number. The change won’t affect measurement tools,… View Article