The week in social: Facebook Q4 earnings, UberRush, and Snapchat Live Score

FACEBOOK’S 2015 Q4 EARNINGS CALL

Facebook had its 2015 Q4 year-end earnings call this past Wednesday. The company has shown to evolve into a mobile platform with 80 percent of its ad revenue in Q4 coming from mobile. Facebook also saw strong growth among it user base with:

1.04 billion daily active users

934 million mobile daily active users

1.59 billion monthly active users

1.44 billion mobile monthly active users

FACEBOOK VIDEO HITS 100 MILLION HOURS PER DAY

On Facebook’s earning call the company shared that users watch 100 million hours of video per day on Facebook and 500 million people watch Facebook video every day – two very huge stats for the company. A focus on video has always been on Facebook’s mind because more views equal more ad dollars spent on the channel, and result into more revenue. During the call COO Sheryl Sandberg shared that although Facebook won’t replace TV ads, Facebook video works well as a second screen complement to TV campaigns.

SNAPCHAT MAKES IT EASIER TO FIND FRIENDS WITH PROFILE URLS

In the past users have complained about the process of adding friends on Snapchat because it hasn’t been an intuitive as hoped. With this new feature, Profile URLs, Snapchat hopes to combat that challenge. Profile URLs allow users to share their profile within Snapchat via Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and email. It also allows users to copy the URL to their clipboard and share it online.

SNAPCHAT TO TAKE ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER FOR SPORTS CONTENT

Snapchat has created Live Score geo-filters for every NBA arena, allowing users to overlay real-time scores on their snaps. In comparison to Facebook and Twitter, which hope to become a ‘second screen’ for sports, Snapchat’s Live Score allows people to feel as if they are at the actual game. It also appeals to people who love experiences rather than the specific details of the game.

UBERRUSH OFFERS SAME DAY DELIVERY FROM YOUR FAVORITE BRANDS

This past Thursday Uber announced that UberRush will be making same day deliveries for Nordstrom, Rent the Runway, 1800Flowers, Cole Haan and Google Express in select U.S. cities.

To utilize the service, the initial brands added the option for UberRush’s same day delivery within their apps, thus offering more value to their customers. However, the challenge Uber faces is that same-day delivery isn’t as simple as you’d think. As Sacharita Mulpuru, retail analyst at Forrest Research said, “Same day delivery is a solution looking for a problem.” Plus, this announcement means Uber will now be competing against companies like Amazon, Postmark and DoorDash.

FACEBOOK LIVE VIDEO

Facebook launched its new feature “Live”, allowing users to live-stream videos. Similar to Periscope users are able to write a brief description and once the video is live, viewers are able to comment in real-time.

However, unlike Periscope, Facebook users are able to save their video to their camera for later use. Plus, based on a user’s privacy settings, Live may not be view-able to a larger audience like Periscope is able to reach.

Currently Live is available to iOS users in the US and will soon be available for Android users.

GOOGLE CARDBOARD HITS +25 MILLION APP INSTALLS ON GOOGLE PLAY

Google recently released initial stats from Google Cardboard’s first 19 months. According to Google there have been +25 million app installs on Google Play, with 40% of these installs taking place between October 2015 and December 2015. Also, since releasing its Cardboard Camera app, users have taken more than 750,000 virtual reality photos.

Google Cardboard’s headset allows users to experience virtual reality content on supporting apps and videos.

FACEBOOK REACTIONS

The long awaited Facebook Reactions is soon to be rolled out to the US. Working closely with sociologists, Facebook Reactions is seen as an alternative to the Like button, allowing users to express their actual emotion about a photo, video or status. The new reactions include: angry, sad, wow, haha, yay and love. Although, people were eager to see a dislike button, Facebook believed that would generate too much negativity on the channel.

HOW IS SNAPCHAT ACTUALLY USED?

Snapchat, the ephemeral social / messaging app, has over 100 million daily active users, 8,796 photos shared every second, and 6 million videos watched daily. To understand how marketers can create value on Snapchat, NewsCred surveyed 100 Snapchat users and created an infographic to find out how the app was actually being used.

The survey showed that although 54% of Snapchat’s user base is on the app every day, 54% never look at stories on Discover, 42% never use branded filters, and 23% never watch Snap Live Videos. Also unfortunately for brands, 87% of these users never buy products they’ve seen on Snapchat.

INSTAGRAM ADVERTISING RESEARCH REPORT

Brand Networks released a study on its Instagram ad data from July 2015 – December 2015. Highlights include:

Increase in cost benchmarks, since more advertisers have access to Instagram ads

Increase in time spent interacting with a brand once shown a video ad

$5.94 average CPM in December

CPG and QSR brands resulting with lowest CPMs, while fashion brands and non-profits saw greater competitive bidding and higher CPMs

It should be noted that the report is solely based off Brand Networks’ results.