In India, Facebook and Reliance Industries Limited, the latter headed by India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, have teamed to encourage citizens to go online and join messaging service WhatsApp. India is already the world’s fastest growing Internet market, and the two companies have sent out marketing teams that use entertainment to educate and entice people to upgrade or sign up for the first time, offering cheap phones and rates with the Reliance Jio network as well as Facebook’s popular messaging service. Continue reading Reliance and Facebook Join Forces to Find New Indian Users

YouTube expanded its Stories to more than 100,000 subscribers in its Partner Program, meaning they will appear more often in mobile users’ homepages. The trial for Stories began earlier this year with only a few channels. YouTube Stories last for seven days, appear for subscribers and non-subscribers, and allow creators to interact with fans that can leave comments or ask questions. First announced in November 2017, YouTube Stories appears to target channel promotion and community engagement rather than day-to-day updates. Continue reading YouTube Expands its 7-Day Stories Feature to More Creators

Instagram stars excel at making their beautiful lives seem effortless, but according to one such professional, Meghan Young, it’s harder than it looks. Social media influencers who go pro receive money from companies whose products they endorse. That such a career even exists is due to billions of users eager to consume aspirational content and advertisers eager to reach a young demographic. Marketing agency Mediakix estimates that companies will spend $1.6 billion this year on Instagram influencers alone. Continue reading Instagram Star: What It Takes to Build and Maintain a Career

Online influencers have become an important feature of social media, and marketers have learned to take full advantage of them, analyzing follower engagement and applying analytics to understand ROI. Over time, influencer-focused marketing has revealed that even the biggest influencers don’t necessarily translate to sales. However, a number of compelling trends are emerging: brands are finding that the followers of nano-influencers are often more engaged, numerous influencers are discovering success with their own product lines, and residential spaces ideal for an Instagram aesthetic have proven effective for marketing. Continue reading The Rise of Nano-Influencers and Other Social Media Trends

Facebook is expanding its Watch Party feature globally, to all Pages and all users. The company debuted the feature to all Groups in July 2018; in the following months, users streamed more than 12 million Watch Parties, which allow remote viewers to watch and comment together in real time. According to Facebook, these Watch Parties have resulted in eight times as many comments as the number generated by non-live videos in Groups, which the company regards as a “key metric” that the feature does indeed encourage engagement. Meanwhile, a new app named Playlist is bringing similar social interaction to music. Continue reading Facebook Expands Watch Party, Playlist Makes Music Social

Snapchat’s Discover section now features a new channel called “Shop & Cop” that offers an e-commerce experience powered by Shopify. The new channel allows consumers to shop without having to leave the app. It is curated by Snapchat, but features Shopify merchants selling their products. Black Friday and Cyber Monday served as the launching pad for rolling out the feature while offering special bargains. Coco and Breezy, Gymshark, Kylie Cosmetics and Drake’s merchandise shop TourLife are among the 20 brands that have already signed on. Continue reading Snapchat Intros Native Shopping with E-Commerce Channel

In a conference call with reporters, Facebook chief executive/chair Mark Zuckerberg defended his company against charges that he and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg hid problems regarding Russian interference and other issues. Politicians have discussed opening a federal investigation into possible campaign finance violations and creating competition laws to curb the company, while shareholders have called for Zuckerberg’s ouster and activists have complained to the Federal Trade Commission. Continue reading Facebook Deals with Criticism, Marketers Mull Over Options

Last month, Facebook admitted that it failed to properly oversee the seven device manufacturers that the company allowed to access personal data of hundreds of million of people in order to build a so-called Facebook Experience. The Silicon Valley company detailed its errors, which was detected by its own government-approved privacy monitor in 2013, in a letter to Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), a privacy advocate and frequent Facebook critic. Meanwhile, Facebook users whose data was compromised have not been alerted. Continue reading Facebook Fails to Police Device Makers’ Use of Personal Data

Netflix revealed its plan to test a lower-priced tier of its subscription streaming service in certain areas as part of a strategy to boost sales, especially in emerging markets such as Asia. While the company has not committed to specific regions or a time frame, CEO Reed Hastings explained that Netflix is looking to experiment. The move would represent a shift for the company, which has consistently maintained or raised its prices while spending more on new content and local productions to attract new customers. Netflix is not expected to reduce the cost of its lowest tier, but rather introduce an alternate fourth tier with different features. Continue reading Netflix Plans to Experiment with Lower Price in Asian Markets

On the Internet, influencers reach more than one million social media followers, and micro-influencers have the attention of their smaller groups, from tens to low hundreds of thousands. Now we have the so-called nano-influencer (dubbed “nanos”) whose reach can be as small as 1,000 followers. Advertisers are going after those who are willing to advertise products on social media, since their lack of fame makes their product advice seem authentic and they accept free products or a small commission in payment. Continue reading Advertisers Turn to Nano-Influencers for Authentic Promotion

Rabbit, which lets users watch online videos with friends, is updating its features, adding real-time and delayed viewing among others to the mobile/web platform. Company chief executive Amanda Richardson noted that Rabbit’s ability to “let you watch any video content with anyone, anywhere in the world, at the same time, is unmatched.” The 30-employer Rabbit, launched in 2015, now has 3.6 million monthly active viewers and has experienced a two-time to three-time growth year over year. Continue reading Rabbit Updates Features for More Versatile Social TV Viewing

Facebook’s video clips get over 8 billion views a day on average, but people with bad Internet connections or disabilities often don’t have access to them. That led Facebook to create VideoStory, which the company described in a research paper as “A Dataset for Telling the Stories of Social Media Videos.” The paper, to be delivered at the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, noted that, “automatically telling the stories using multi-sentence descriptions of videos would allow bridging this gap.” Continue reading Facebook’s VideoStory Relies on AI to Automate Storytelling

Snapchat currently touts 5 million users in the United Kingdom who watch Shows on the social platform that are produced by its U.S. publishing partners. As part of its efforts to better compete with popular services such as Google’s YouTube and Instagram’s IGTV for the growing number of online and mobile video fans, Snap Inc. is adding 25 new series from 17 U.K. content producers. The content will largely target millennials. The move highlights Snap’s strategy of leveraging more TV-style content to grow engagement in specific markets and increase revenue. Continue reading Snapchat Shows to Introduce 25 New Series From the U.K.

Facebook recorded lower Q3 revenue than expected, the result said chief executive Mark Zuckerberg of “an unsteady transition” from News to more popular but less profitable Stories, which allows users to build photo/video montages that disappear after 24 hours. The company relayed that the transition’s early stage will be marked by higher costs, including more investment in 2019, and continued slow growth. Investors took the news in stride, unlike the July earnings report that resulted in a stock price plummet. Continue reading Facebook Growth Slows in Early Stage of its Shift to Video

Although its first experiences with HTML5 were just short of disastrous, Facebook is now using it again to expand Instant Games to developing countries via Facebook Lite and to interest communities via Facebook Groups. Because smartphone processing power and mobile browser app technology have improved, HTML5 is now able to support more complicated games, and Instant Games can launch in a mobile browser or directly into Groups. Currently, 90 million people take part in 270,000 Facebook Groups about gaming each month. Continue reading Facebook Gives HTML5 Another Shot for its Instant Games