The Week in Social: Business, Encryption, and Moderation

Instagram Business Tools

For months, we’ve been waiting for the arrival of Instagram’s inescapable changeover to an algorithmic news feed. This week, Instagram officially announced Business Tools to accompany the new feed, and continually evolving revenue model. If you connect your Instagram account to a Facebook Business page, you will have the ability to upgrade to an Instagram Business page. The upgrade provides more features such as mobile ad creation, access to better metrics on audience and activity, and sleeker UX for consumer-to-company communication options.

Facebook Messenger’s dilema: Encryption, or AI?

Facebook is reportedly planning to launch end-to-end encryption for Messenger this summer. The encryption will prevent outside authorities and Facebook alike from seeing the content shared among those that opt-in from Messenger’s 900 million users. The issue? If Facebook can’t see your messages, Facebook doesn’t have the data needed to contribute to the machine learning projects used to make Messenger a better app. Over the long term, the interesting data to be extracted will tell which users prefer better apps, or better privacy.

Snapchat’s Discover page

Be on the lookout for Snapchat’s redesigned Discover page this week. The channel’s duo-tone circles will be replaced with custom images from brands that make the switch. Snapchat says the Discover section is viewed 150 million active users each day. The question to ask your brand: how will you use the new Snapchat cover to break above the noise floor, and deliver amazing content that backs up bold choices?

Is your bot smart enough?

If you’re all about dat bot, be sure it’s perfect from the bottom to the top. Context, resilience, personalization, and specificity are all critically important in creating a success versus a potential PR nightmare. Bots that provide good info in context and help users get things done are destined to succeed, while lesser entities are likely to be exploited and become a liability risk for your company.

Pinterest changes Pin to Save

It’s a subtle change with a global frame of mind. Like “Tweet” and “Slack”, Pinterest’s early brand strategy counted on using “Pin” as a verb intrinsically tied to the platform. Pinterest reports more than 50% of its users reside outside the United States, thus increasing the need to address that “pinning” something to save it doesn’t translate linguistically or culturally.

Custom Facebook newsfeed layout spotted in Australia

Facebook hasn’t tweaked their feed algorithm so precisely as to always know when you want to read about the latest political mud-slinging, or what your favorite celebs are doing this week, or if you just need to chill and watch cats freaking out over cucumbers. This week, heaps of Australian users saw a navigation bar in Facebook that enabled them to select between feeds that catered to very specific types of content. The execution looks a bit more clunky than we’re used to seeing from Facebook, but it could be a sign of Facebook’s need to increase relevance in the face of decreasing personal sharing.

Back to School Shopping? Parents go to Pinterest

eMarketer reports that 52% of parents will start researching their back-to-school needs well before August, with 12% of them starting as early as this month. Among TV/Radio/Print, online review sites, and social media; Pinterest scored highest for adults researching healthy lunches/snacks, and held steady in the categories for supplies clothing for the kids.

Facebook testing smaller Safety Checks

Facebook’s Safety Check feature is one of the platform’s most powerful tools for lifting user affinity for the platform. The service enables people to use Facebook to tell their friends and family of their status during times of crisis. To date, Facebook has made the determination on which crisis’ warrant the feature to go live. In the coming weeks, Facebook will begin testing the ability to activate smaller Safety Checks based on community posting, and third party reporting.

Community moderation on Periscope

Since the start of the first internet communities, the issue of community moderation has been forefront in the mind of any site/service operator. Averse behaviors best rolled up in John Gabriel’s GIFT have proven to be a timeless problem. Periscope hopes to counter trolls, spammers and other such griefers with a new system that enables viewers to report suspect content from other users. A small vote will follow, asking other users if they agree, which will result in the suppression of the spammer’s content.

Social Dads & Father’s Day

Mother’s Day rules on social platforms, and Social Dads are feeling left out. Despite that 91% of Social Dads are on Facebook, and they have a 77% chance of interacting with tech/electronics content as well as Food & Beverage, 30% of dad’s report they’re not happy with how brands engage them online. According to Social Media Link, Dad’s want content related to men, that acknowledges their needs and wants to promote holidays & interests to men. Be a good child, and get out there and own your Father’s Day campaign!