The Week in Social: Facebook rises, Instagram adds, Tumblr falls and FREE CHOCOLATE.

Snickers launches first ever live Super Bowl commercial

The gang at Snickers have played on their “you’re not you when you’re hungry” messaging, launching a live country and western-themed advertisement during Super Bowl. Starring Adam Driver, the whole thing literally (and intentionally) fell to pieces, all followed up by the line: “You ruin live Super Bowl commercials when you’re hungry.” Today they’ve released an apology for the apparent mishap, and are begging forgiveness by offering a 2-for-1 deal at retailers nationwide “to help fans prevent hunger mishaps of their own.”

TLDR: Live commercial. Free chocolate.

Watch and read more at AdvertisingAge.

Facebook works to make its feed more legit

In a world of fake news and ‘alternative facts,’ Facebook has stepped up to the online B.S., implementing a ranking algorithm change that will prioritize authentic content above the rest. The shiny new algorithm will promote content that “people consider genuine, and not misleading, sensational or spammy.” This means Pages that frequently share inauthentic posts will have their content hidden more often, while posts that scream legit will be given extra visibility. What Happens Next Will Shock You…

Read more at TechCrunch.

Choosing what to post on Instagram is about to get much easier

We’ve all been there – trying to choose which the strongest of the sunset/latte/selfie pics we just took to post to social. In an effort to ease our stress, Instagram will soon give users the option to publish up to ten images or videos in a single post, which our friends (fans and lovers) will be able to swipe through horizontally. A feature previously only offered to advertisers, the latest beta release of Instagram for Android shows the same feature will soon be a reality for everyone. As yet there’s no comment from Instagram and the feature currently seems “a little buggy,” so it still might be a while before it makes its way to the masses.

Read more at The Verge.

Facebook set to dip its toe into the stream(ing business)

Turns out Facebook’s been working on a streaming app for years, and, once debuted, it’ll work with devices like Apple TV to bring video content directly to your TV (and advertising $$ directly to Facebook). It’s not clear yet whether clips from News Feed will be featured, but there’s been whispers that the social media giant has been in cahoots with media companies to offer up “tv-like” shows upwards of 10 minutes in length. Apart from “Facebook & Chill” just not having quite the same ring to it, it’ll be interesting to see how this years-in-the-making app stacks up against the world’s go-to streaming giants.

Read more at The Next Web.

Facebook now lets users search for images by what’s in them

The ability to search for images using key words that describe the contents of the photo started out as a feature for the visually impaired in the Facebook community, but is now available to all users. Considering Facebook is rolling billions deep in content, it was able to train its AI to “see” and surface images containing certain search terms. The technology will soon also be able to be used to search videos. Who knows – maybe this might lead to Facebook users being able to shop for outfits based on what they see in images and videos from their News Feeds?

Read more at TechCrunch.

All the highlights from Facebook’s Q4 results

Facebook recently reported its financial results for 2016 Q4 and the full year. Big numbers, as always, but there are some definite milestones from the year worth mentioning:

• Of 1.86 billion monthly active users (MOAs), 1.149 billion of those accessed the social platform exclusively from mobile devices.
• 1.227 billion users check Facebook daily, with 1.146 billion of those doing so via mobile.
• Instagram boasts 600 million MAUs and 400 million of those check in daily, with 150 million of them interacting with Instagram Stories.
• WhatsApp recently celebrated 1.2 billion MAUs, who help send more than 50 billion messages via the platform each day.
• The price of Facebook ads rose 3% during Q4, while the total number of ad impressions served during the period climbed 49%, driven mostly by mobile on Facebook and Instagram.

Read more at AdWeek.