The week in social: Twitter Rules, the New Year, and The Beatles

Social media users share their New Year’s resolutions

Based on data from an interactive website that social management company Sprinklr has built, over 3.2 million social media users have shared their New Year’s resolution for 2016 in the United States. Interesting breakdowns of the data show that 63% of the users who shared a resolution so far are male. The majority of the posts took place on December 31st and January 1st, with approximately 880k posts on each day. Geographically, the highest density of posts have taken place in California, Texas, Florida, and New York state. The vast majority of posts came measured came from Twitter, with only 4% being drawn from Instagram.

The Beatles music comes to Spotify with massive social conversation

One of the few large music acts that previously didn’t have a presence on Spotify, The Beatles debuted on the service earlier this week, with massive social conversation generating over 440 million impressions primarily driven through the hasthag #BeatlesonSpotify. Music from the band also became available on Google Play, but this generated considerably less social conversation with about 7.8 million impressions.

Facebook is testing multiple news feeds for mobile apps

Facebook is currently testing subject-based feeds for mobile app users, similar to how the company’s standalone Paper app organizes content into separate categories. A Facebook representative made a statement to the Verage saying, “People have told us they’d like new options to see and have conversations about more stories on Facebook around specific topics they’re interested in,” which is likely part of the impetus for the new test. Facebook is also concurrently rolling out “Marketplace” to a wider number of mobile users, which is simply an evolved form of social commerce where products can be purchased straight from the social network.

Pinterest updates its privacy policy coming into the New Year

Pinterest introduces some changes to its privacy policy in a blog post that links to the full page, and highlights that the changes are done based on work the company has done with partners and advertisers to improve the experience for all users. Pinterest cited that now users are able to link their accounts to other applications that would allow them to take Pinterest actions directly from those apps, such as to pin an item they see. In addition, Pinterest is working with advertisers to show ads based on sites that a user visits.

More information on Pinterest Blog.

Twitter activates custom emoji for New Year’s

Twitter over the past several years has introduced custom hashtag-triggered emoji for different purposes, whether the Olympics, the World Cup, or major Holidays, but for ringing in 2016 it has released a fireworks emoji that works when a user types #HappyNewYear in one of 35 supported languages. The languages are listed on a blog post from the company, and in addition, Twitter partnered with Times Square Alliance and Countdown Entertainment, the managers of the Times Square Ball, to show photos and videos from tweets right underneath the ball itself during the countdown to 2016.

Twitter app for Mac computers updated

The Mac application for Twitter is one that hasn’t been updated as frequently or robustly as the web and mobile experiences, but a host of new updates are bringing it more on par with other current offerings as of last week. The new application supports in-feed video play, GIF support, quote tweets, group direct messages, and more. The last major change shifts “favorites” into “likes”, replacing the star icon with a heart, one of Twitter’s more controversial recent changes. The changes are accompanied by an overhauled design, and the version is referred to as 4.0.

More information on TechCrunch.

New data shows the impact of social influencers at retail

The retail industry in the United States is one of many that has started to embrace the use of social media influencers to spread word of mouth about product offerings to great effect. According to a report from eMarketer, brands in retail are using influencers increasingly, but still trailing behind in comparison to CPG, Food and Beauty. The report goes on to show that the majority of markets find social influencers to be both effective and generating awareness, as well as leads and sales for products.

Twitter updates rules to help curtail abuse

According to a blog post from the company earlier this week, Twitter has updated its Twitter Rules to be more clear about what it considers abuse and harassment, and what steps the company will take against specific accounts that deemed to be abusing others. The blog post references prior steps that have taken to protect users such as enabling blocking, but new features include an increased ability to enforce policies, and the creation of a Twitter Safety Centre. Enforcement of Twitter Rules includes users having to potentially self-delete offensive tweets, and verifying their account with an email or mobile phone number.

More information on Twitter Blog.