The week in social: Instagram ads, 1 billion on WhatsApp, and YouTube Red

Instagram increases video ad length to 60 seconds

Earlier this week, Instagram released a new update for its video advertising product, that allows brands to have ads that last up to 60 seconds. The new update comes in time for the end of football season in the US, with Super Bowl 50. T-Mobile and Warner Brothers are among the first brands to use this new format. Video advertising is relatively new for brands on Instagram, and when they were released back in September, the limit was 30 seconds. This is akin to a standard television spot, and is still longer than the videos able to be made by the average user, which cap out at 15 seconds, although they do automatically loop, similar to Vine.

More information on The Verge.

Twitter offers content to users who are not logged in

For users in 23 different markets, Twitter is going to roll out the ability to see conversations as they unfold, when the user visits Twitter.com on their mobile device, even when they are not logged in. The idea is to get non-logged in users to view content and conversations on Twitter, likely an attempt to attract new users, but also lower the barrier to entry for consuming Twitter content. Users on desktop web can also now view developing and trending stories, displayed as visual modules, even when they are not logged in.

WhatsApp reaches 1 billion total users

The Facebook owned messaging app has officially reached 1 billion users, which essentially translates to 1 in seven people on earth being users of the product. The milestone was announced in an official milestone, offering links to how the product has been used in extraordinary situations, such as communicating natural disasters and running businesses. The announcement capped with sharing a goal of using the service to connect everyone across the world, by focusing on key features such as security and reliability.

More information on WhatsApp Blog.

Facebook updates News Feed to make stories more relevant

In a continued effort to make content on Facebook more relevant for users, the company has tweaked the News Feed algorithm based on qualitative feedback to adjust how content is served. While certain data-driven factors are large contributors to how content is served, such as liking, commenting, and sharing, Facebook also surveys approximately 1,000 users per day, and is using this data to help determine what the wider Facebook community sees. This data is used because often times, people prefer to see specific stories on the top of their feed, even if they are not necessarily interacting with it. The official post from Facebook detailing this process also noted that Pages will be affected based on their posting activity, as well as the makeup of their audience.

More information on Facebook Media.

LinkedIn debuts new course page for Lynda service

Lynda, the professional skills development service owned by LinkedIn, is rolling out a new courses page to make it easier for users to mold the playback of lessons to their preferences. Options include changing the playback speed of lessons, using keyboard shortcuts to control playback, and the brand new ability to take notes right next to a video, which also includes saving specific spots in lessons.

Twitter experiments with serving trending tweets in the timeline

Rumored for more than a year, Twitter is starting to experiment with other changes to the historically chronological timeline with which it serves content to users. The latest change is showing tweets that are part of trending tags or conversations as the top of the content feed. Twitter confirmed to VentureBeat that this is an on-going experiment, but there are few details confirmed in terms of platforms, timeline for wider rollout, and specific criteria for how trends get served to specific users.

Instagram testing multiple account availability on iOS

According to an article from TechCrunch, multiple Instagram users are reporting that they now have the ability to switch between different accounts on the Instagram apps on iOS platforms. The Facebook owned company confirmed these reports, but did not elaborate on if or when this will see any wider rollout. The feature was already in testing for Android users during November of last year. Many power users of the service have multiple accounts for different groups of contacts, and other users further still may want to use this feature to separate business from personal accounts. Users who currently have access to this feature, are able to access it from the settings menu, under the “Add Account” option.

More information on TechCrunch.

YouTube set to premiere original content through YouTube Red

Members of YouTube Red, YouTube’s paid subscription service, are set to be able to access new exclusive content from Creators starting on February 10th. As a way of competing with other streaming media services such as Netflix and Hulu, YouTube will debut several ongoing series from its most popular personalities, including PewDiePie, Lilly Singh, and more. YouTube Red is not available in all countries, but a blog post from the company offers a link to when the service will become available in different regions.

More information on YouTube Global Blog.

Facebook now offers Pages the ability to send private replies

Earlier this week, Facebook released an update to its Pages and Graph API that allows Pages to send a private response to users who post on the Page, as opposed to just liking, commenting, or responding to the post publicly. The announcement was previously made on the Facebook Business Blog, but now the capability is available to all Facebook partners, or Page owners. When a post is responded to by a Page, a messaging session is opened between the Page and the user, so an ongoing dialogue can be created if desired. The comment will also show a notation that it has been responded to, so other users can see that the Page has addressed the comment. This is likely an expansion of the feature that shows how quickly Pages respond to user comments, a feature introduced last year that displays a stat on the main info section of the Page.

More information on Facebook Business.