The Week in Social: Pinterest's millions, Facebook's billion, and video rules supreme
Pinterest celebrates rolling 200 million monthly users deep
Everyone’s favorite envy, dreaming, planning, and wow-this-did-not-turn-out-how-it-was-supposed-to portal is celebrating a milestone of more than 200 million monthly users. Launched in 2010, the former invite-only photo sharing, creative and inspiration platform has come a long way over the years. To further commemorate this occassion, the company says it will soon be launching a number of features users have been asking for. They’re not saying which but they did say, and we quote: “the first feature on the list is sure to knock your socks off.”
Such mystery. Very wow.
Read more at the Pinterest Blog
Facebook Messenger announces 1.3 billion monthly users
Facebook Messenger is seeing Pinterest’s 200 million monthly users, and raising it over a billion of its own. The social platform announced it’s now garnering 1.3 billion monthly users (the same as its other product WhatsApp), and that number includes 70 million daily users for its slow growing, Snapchat-inspired Messenger Day. With a fair chunk of the world’s population using Facebook Messenger, its growth rate has slowed over the years, though experts are saying that if it continues to copy the best features of its competitors (as it has been doing), and innovating via its ties to Facebook, it will continue to grow – albeit slowly – over time.
Read more at TechCrunch
Video is King and Android users give the crown to YouTube
Mobile video is where it’s at right now: America’s Android users spent 12 billion hours in the top 10 video streaming apps on Android during the 12 months ending July 17. That’s a 45% increase from the year before. According to app analytics specialist App Annie, 80% of those dozen billion hours were spent on the YouTube app alone, meaning it out-flicked Netflix and other streaming big names by quite a margin. Free TV isn’t all the customers are after though, with data showing that iPhone and Android users in the US forking out a combined $570 million on video streaming apps in the same period.
Read more at Variety
Facebook will soon allow you to ‘snooze’ your most irritating Facebook friends
Sometimes it’s like Facebook just… knows. You might all be happy to know that the social platform is apparently testing a new Snooze feature, meaning you can temporarily stop seeing updates from specific contacts.
Frenemy going on a holiday to Santorini? Snooze. Mom a bit heavy on the pics of the new cat? Snooze. Selfie-loving ex got a haircut? Snooze. Instead of going full drastic and unfollowing them completely, this feature allows time for them to get over their current Facebook faux pas without losing your engagement completely. Happy Snoozing! Zzzzzzzz.
Read more at Fast Company
Instagram Stories scores Facebook’s Canvas Ad format
Facebook recently announced several new features for advertisers, the most noteworthy being the expansion of the fresh-to-death Canvas ad format to Instagram Stories. This gives advertisers the opportunity to tap into the feature’s more than 250 million daily users and show off their brand using this full-screen, interactive ad format. Here’s what Instagram had to say about its latest offering: “With the ability to utilize Facebook’s fast-loading full screen Canvas format in Instagram Stories, marketers are able to use the creative versatility of Canvas to tell compelling brand and product stories. This seamless extension of the full screen experience allows advertisers to capture the attention of customers with just a single ad.”
Read more at the Instagram Business Blog