The week in social: Tango, Bleep, and Percolate

Carousel format now available on Facebook mobile app ads

Based on the success of the carousel ad format that Facebook recently introduced for advertisers which has driven 30-50% lower cost per conversion on average and 20-30% lower cost per click on average, the format is being extended to mobile app ads. The new format of the ad, when clicked, will bring a user to the application store where they can download the advertised app. The advertisements work by showing not just one image of an ad in the news feed, but several that the user can scroll through to get different pieces of information and imagery.

Local ads on Facebook can now feature a “call now” CTA

Facebook is adding two more options to the list of CTA options on local awareness ads, a “call now” and “get directions”, as a method of helping small businesses expand their reach and give their customers and prospects direct ways to interact with their businesses. The button for “call now” appears on the bottom right corner of an ad in the news feed which when clicked, will use the smart-device to automatically make a phone call to the business. The “get directions” button works the same way, opening the natively programmed navigation app to help guide the use to the business location.

More information on Business News Daily.

Nearly 2 billion interactions occur on Facebook for Mother’s Day 2015

This past Mother’s Day generated more interactions on Facebook than the last Super Bowl, the NCAA championship, and the last Olympics combined, according to the company. There were a total of 1.8 billion interactions (social actions including likes, comments, and shares), completed by 229 million users. The United States led in terms of interactions, but top countries also included India, the Philippines, Turkey, and Canada. The US counted for approximately 1 billion of the interactions.

Pinterest and Tumblr are the fasting growing social networks of the last year

In the last year, both Pinterest and Tumblr have seen incredible growth as social networks as a function of active usage, with Pinterest rising by 97% and Tumblr rising by 94%. Other social networks, including Twitter, YouTube, and Google+ experienced ranging increases of 7-13%. This is in stark contrast to Facebook, which experienced a decline of 8%. It is speculated that this could be due to saturation for the social network, and the cropping up of other specialist social networks. Specific behaviors have also migrated to these other networks, with photo uploads increasingly happening on networks such as Instagram.

Tango updated to feature social shopping integration

With 300 million registered users, Tango is an already successful mobile messaging application, and it has recently been updated to feature new social shopping integration. In a collaboration between Tango, Walmart and AliExpress, the companies now allow social shopping of a catalog of million of products, with suggested curated based on the preferences of the user. Item collections can be created and shared with contacts, friends and family, with the ability to purchase items from the aforementioned retailers. There are plans to expand the service to additional retailers in the near future, as well as further regions outside of the US.

More information on Recode.net.

More than half of Facebook users visit multiple times per day

A new study conducted by GlobalWebIndex shows that 54% of Facebook users are on the site more than once per day. The statistic is in stark contrast to other such networks like Twitter and Instagram, where are 30% and 28% respectively. The contrast is even greater with networks such as Pinterest, with only 15%. The infographic study goes on to say that less than 8% of Facebook’s total audience accesses the service less than once per week. The research was based on a user survey rather than tracking usage or gathering statistics from networks themselves, so it is based on the recollection of those users surveyed, a strong indication of their intent to use.

Facebook debuts instant articles

Facebook has created a new tool for content publishers to share interactive content through Facebook. Instant Articles, which debuted earlier this week, the crux of the new feature is that articles uploaded with this tool will load much faster than a shared article on Facebook, which has historically taken 8 seconds or more. In addition to this, instant articles will provide additional features such as the ability to zoom in on photos by tilting the smart-device, and videos included in articles will auto-play, much like they do on the news feed. Additional interactive features will highlight the articles, in an attempt to make the user experience richer than clicking offsite to another article.

More information on Facebook Media Blog.

LinkedIn changes and updates its developer program

In an effort to improve its user experience, LinkedIn has introduced major sweeping changes to its developers program as of earlier this week. The change log was detailed back in February but have only started recently rolling out, and among the inclusions are allowing users to represent their LinkedIn profile online using the API, allowing users to post certifications straight to their profiles, enabling companies to share professional content to LinkedIn with the company API, and more. Users are encouraged to reference LinkedIn API troubleshooting tips for any problems with the new updates.

More information on Adweek.

Percolate raises $40M in series C funding

Percolate, a marketing startup focused on providing social media tools across a variety of functions, has just closed on its next round of funding, a total of $40M USD. President James Gross of the company said that while the tools are still a major function of what the company, the business has expanded to become more of a “system of record” for marketers. The system is now meant to help marketers across all functions of their business, and Percolate states that the average Fortune 500 business is using 50 different software to manage the marketing process. The company’s customer base has grown by approximately 200 percent in the last year, and their next round of funding was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

BitTorrent encrypted messaging app Bleep adds new features

Bleep, an encrypted P2P (peer to peer) messaging app build by the popular file-sharing service BitTorrent, has just moved on from its alpha phase where it currently has 200,000 users across different platforms. The next phase of its development sees an iOS version that has just launched, that will also come with a “Whisper” mode, where messages are deleted after 25 seconds no matter what, and cannot be saved through any method, including taking a screenshot of the device screen. In recent years, BitTorrent has moved away from its reputation of being strictly a file-share service to introduce other products such as Bundles, Sync, and Maelstrom.