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The Week in Social: Shopping Google images, Facebook adjusts its news strategy, and Pinterest keeps rolling

12 Aug 2019 Majed Alnahwi

Facebook takes another shot at adding news to its platform

Facebook plans to work with news outlets and publishers to revamp the news offerings on its platform by offering $3 million in licensing rights. The Washington Post, ABC News, and Bloomberg are among those showing early interest in working with Facebook. The social networking company wants to include articles in a dedicated section of its platform with plans on launching this fall. This move by Facebook is positive as the company looks to become a more reliable platform for its user base.

Pinterest continues to grow its user base

Pinterest keeps hitting its goals for growth this year. The company hit 300 million monthly active users in Q2 2019, a 30% increase over a year ago. With recent research showing that Pinterest drives high levels of purchasing intent, it’s no wonder the company leans more into e-commerce rather than social networking. Additionally, global average revenue per person is up 29% year over year while total revenue is up 62%; these strong financial metrics point to a strong outlook for the platform.

Twitter plans to tweak its ad-buying system

Twitter recently announced that it will be removing all third party integrations from its ad-buying system. The new policy will force advertisers to purchase their own data when creating targeted ads. The move is unsurprising as this is the latest in many measures that companies have been undertaking to improve data protections, user privacy, and overall security.

Google makes it easier to shop during image search

Google overhauled its desktop image search giving users access to a lot more information when clicking on images. One major change concerns products; users can now see brand, prices, availability, and reviews for the products they’re viewing. It will be interesting to see how Google’s new focus on product discovery will affect Pinterest’s growth as they will be competing in this same area.

Twitter’s desktop site sees more updates

Following Twitter’s major overhaul earlier this summer, the updates keep coming with new customizing features for users. The platform rolled out color, fonts, sizes as well as two different dark mode palettes. Users’ ability to change font size now allows them to view more tweets in a single page.