The Week in Social: Superbowl, Snapchat, Instagram and Twitch

Super Bowl LII in Numbers

A television viewership of 103.4 million (the lowest since 2009). $5 million U.S. dollars for 30 seconds (yes, $166,666 per second). 270 million relevant interactions on Facebook. 805 million social impressions and 55 advertisers. The Super Bowl is the summer blockbuster season of advertising, pressure-cooked into a single day. In the wake of every Super Bowl, the social conversation rapidly calls out the brand campaigns that capitalized on fan love, as well as those that appeared to be tone deaf. Here are just a few of the social and advertising numbers from the week coming out of Super Bowl LII.

Facebook invests in community

Facebook is keenly aware that they cannot remain what they are, and expect to grow any larger. As Facebook users grow cynical, Mark Zuckerberg is showing he’s serious about retaking community trust. This week, FB announced they would award $1 million dollars to five community leaders and $50,000 to 500 more to fund their ideas on how to create stronger, better communities on Facebook. The awards will focus on those leaders that can work to improve the trust, and quality of time spent in community spaces.

Google text from browser?

Despite the ba-skillion different texting apps and platforms, one issue often sticks out: traditional SMS texting from anything but your mobile is a giant pain (or security risk). According to two developer reports, Google appears to be making a move to incorporate SMS texting into a browser app. However, in an age where one can share text, images, videos, location, search results, money, and customer comms over so many other apps, is it too late for the humble SMS to survive?

SnapChat Olympics

The best place to watch Olympic sporting events… is probably still on your television. But, the best place to watch short, critical moments from the Olympics may very well be SnapChat. The social network that just won’t quit will air bite-sized clips of critical moments from the Olympics. SnapChat’s deal with NBCUniversal as a test bed enabling TV networks to share content to the social platform without disrupting the business model of either company.

Snapchat trades at 20

… and while we’re looking at the roller coaster story of SnapChat, the shareholders received good news in Q4. Daily active users jumped sharply upward at the end of last year, resulting in a surge of the stock price. The increase worked opposite of the Dow Jones’ ‘normalization’ last week, which may give investors some hope for Snap’s future.

Twitter surges too

Along with SnapChat, Twitter saw a jump in price following positive signs from Q4 earnings. Whether it was the doubling of character count, or expansion outside of the U.S., or even media focus on a particularly notorious user, Twitter beat estimates by $45 million. The increase accompanies speculation that CEO Jack Dorsey may be looking to sell the company, a story that was often floated in 2016.

Share pics to your stories on Instagram

Instagram is deliberate about not allowing you to share other people’s content. You can like, and you can comment, but engagements are locked between you and the content creator. That allows Instagram to collect the interactions and exclusively determine what content is suggested (or monetized) to other users. Alternatively, Instagram is now enabling users to share other people’s content to their own stories. This allows users to share and promote each other, but in an ephemeral way. However, it may also draw IG further into the social-sea-of-sameness.

Facebook may share Watch ad money

It is a time-tested formula for gaining content creators. Provide a free platform, share back a percentage of ads sold on that platform, develop the successes and de-prioritize the failures. Facebook may be taking this exact approach as it develops Watch to compete with YouTube. This could be reflexive to YouTube’s announcement of cutting-off content creators with smaller (read: niche) audiences.

Twitch moderation goes aggro

It is to be expected that social platform owners aggressively purge abusive users from their networks. Twitch, on the other hand, is taking it a step further. The broadcast service announced that they will track off-platform comments on Twitter and YouTube, and consider those comments as cause to ban users. The platform isn’t yet looking for those comments themselves, but they are allowing reports on users to include off-network activity as evidence of abuse.

The Week in Social: Super Bowl Metrics, Olympic Snacks, & Twitch Moderation