The Week in Social: social news, stock blues, & 6 second views

Google “Trips” seeded to Android

It began with Google launching “Local Guides” a year ago – an effort designed to keep Google in the competitive arena with Yelp. This week, Android users that were part of that program were served an early version of Google “Trips”. The app in its infancy appears to be a combination of high-quality business reviews, along with trip-information, and local activity/exploration recommendations.

Facebook as your News Source

It’s a known fact that one of Facebook’s goals is to become everyone’s personally curated news source. That goal has seen significant progress in the last few months. With the advancement of Facebook Live and Instant Articles, publishers and marketers are turning less frequently to stand-alone websites and going straight to Facebook for content distribution. This week, Vox Media made a serious step forward with a new blog called Circuit Breaker, which will publish primarily through Facebook.

No, Twitter as your News Source!

A subtle categorical shift moved Twitter’s app in the App Store from “Social” to “News”. As we have covered previously, Twitter’s strongest role is acting as the leader in real-time breaking news. The shift into the realm of BBC News, along with securing Thursday Night NFL rights shows that Twitter is aggressively playing to their strengths while trying to separate themselves from their social channel competitors.

Facebook stock woes

A story published late Friday tips Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of Facebook’s future. Namely: he will stay in firmly charge. In a move that has caused a class action lawsuit against the social giant, Zuckerberg is trading 2 shares of a Class C Stock for every 1 share of Class A/B stock that shareholders turn in. The critical difference: the Class C stock will trade under a different name as Facebook, and Class C stockholders will have no voting rights for the future of the company.

Influencer Automation

Anyone selling you an automated influencer-gathering software package is selling you half a solution. A Social Times op-ed this week points out that 75% of brands struggle with finding the right influencers. Though the technology and systems for finding those with social channel influence has grown increasingly over the last few years, finding the right influencer is still very much a human task. Looking critically at the raw numbers, evaluating the influencer tone-of-voice, and managing the relationship over the long term effectively in a way that sets the brand apart will remain a challenge for some time to come.

MTV brings Cribs back to Snapchat

Remember the 2000’s? In a move that brings old formulas to new platforms, MTV has announced they will be restoring MTV Cribs back to life. Now in Snapchat form, viewers can expect to see the content in MTV’s Discover channel some time in June. With the old format being pushed to a new platform and a super-low-overhead, Snapchat will most certainly be looking at how a small show attached to a big name will serve their goals in the video content marketplace.

Twitter kills MagicRecs

In a time when most social platforms are force-feeding algorithmic content exclusively, Twitter just killed off their service that allowed you to use an algorithm on your terms. MagicRecs worked to send alerts and suggested content based on the activity of 10 of the profiles you follow (selected by you). This service that was controlled by the Twitter user, and easily disabled voluntarily has been removed from the platform. Twitter says it will be rotating the functionality into their algorithmic news feed, and likely without the same control features previously enjoyed by many.

6 unstoppable seconds

The average attention span of a millennial has been clocked at 8 seconds or less. That’s the time it takes most of us to blink 3 times, and the boundary of earning the extended focus of the majority of internet users before they begin wailing on the “skip” button, or abandon your media completely. YouTube has responded to this scenario with a unique offering for marketers: 6-second, un-skippable bumper ads. As the ad type is increasingly adopted, we’ll be watching to see who can be brief, be brilliant, and be gone.

App de Jour: Talkshow

Take two parts Reddit AMA, one part Viber, a dash of IRC and a generous pour of high-proof whiskey: and you’ve got Talkshow. The new app acts as a live broadcast channel for text-based exchanges from a person or between members of a group. Working from Facebook or Twitter friends & followers, you can host a chat on any subject with any of your contacts. An audience made up of your followers can then log in and watch as you discuss politics, entertainment, or favorite adult beverages.

Instagram’s micro-influencer

When one statistic is on the rise, it hardly ever means that its corollary metric sees the same performance. For instance, we know that the rate of cadence does not scale with total views. We know that clicks don’t scale with the number of hashtags. Likewise, the average number of engagements doesn’t scale with the number of followers on Instagram. A new report this week shows that the sweet-spot for engagements with influencers is between 10K and 100K followers. These “micro influencers” receive between 2 and 5 times more engagement than those influencers with more than 100K followers.