The Week in Social: Lovers, Haters, and Snapchat Stock

Haters gon’ date

Too good not to come first, Negative Nancys and Skeptical Steves across the U.S. are enjoying their time on new dating app, Hater – a place where people can connect over shared peeves. So now when people ask: “How did you meet?” people can respond with: “We met on a hating app.” Looking to grow past its hype, beyond its current 310,000 users, and even beyond dating, the app is now morphing into a social arena where people can be open about what they hate and meet like-minded dislikers. It’s currently in talks with brands over future integrations, which could see them able to put their own items on the app’s list and analyze the results of who loved and hated what… or what we’ve unofficially named “Hater Data”.

Read more at TechCrunch.

Periscope gives some Group love

Responding to community feedback, Periscope has rolled out two changes to its Groups feature on Android and iOS: closed groups and group invites that allow you to choose which groups you join. Closed groups gives the creator sole administration duties, meaning they have total power over things like the group’s title and who is invited. Then there’s the opportunity to accept or decline group invites rather than the days of yore when users would be added to a group automatically.

Snapchat’s future growth set to be driven by older users

It might be notoriously hard to use and inherently aimed at a younger audience, but eMarketer forecasts that the brunt of Snapchat’s future growth will be thanks to older users. As unfaithful young’ns are moving to Instagram Stories to broadcast their lives, older users are tuning in for content thanks to the social platform’s content deals with brands like include the NFL, NBCUniversal, Turner, Hearst and Disney. Snapchat’s growth has slowed 82% since Instagram Stories launched, and the gap between the two platforms continues to widen, but forecasts show that usage will increase 14.2% year-over-year in 2017 and then slowing through 2021.

Read more at TechCrunch.

Facebook adds a travel-planning feature called “City Guides”

Facebook’s been keeping busy updating its app. It’s added new sections for finding Wi-Fi, meeting new people and checking the weather, and now it’s also added a new feature called City Guides. Found within the “More” menu inside the app, the feature will show you list of cities, along with your friends who’ve visited, as well as where to go and what to do when you’re there. This move means Facebook is finally using its wealth of check-in data for the good of its users. Though it helps if your friends are well-travelled, it also includes a list of “Places the Locals Go” for each city. While there’s been a number of apps who’ve attempted to master this arena in the past, none have succeeded. Facebook’s belated attempt, however, may just stick.

Read more at TechCrunch.

Snapchat hits the stockmarket running

This past Thursday, Snapchat’s founder showed up to the New York Stock Exchange to launch Snap Inc.’s IPO at an opening price of $24 a share. He later walked out richer than Oprah, having successfully satisfied the stockmarket’s thirst for Tech IPOs. More than 200 million shares, the entire size of the offering, changed hands over the course of the day, coming to a cool $5 billion – roughly on par with what Twitter saw on its first day back in November 2013. It’s unconfirmed, but we’re pretty sure we’ll soon see a “Makin It Rain” filter in the near future.

Facebook’s emotional algorithm

It’s been a year since Facebook’s famous thumbs-up was joined by a host of other emotions. As users have loved, laughed, cried, wowed and scowled 300 billion times throughout the past 12 months, the social platform has discovered a more on-the-mark way to weigh reactions to surface content. Here’s what a spokesperson had to say about it: “Over the past year we’ve found that if people leave a reaction on a post, it is an even stronger signal that they’d want to see that type of post than if they’d left a like on a post. So we are updating News Feed to weigh reactions a little more than likes when taking into account how relevant the story is to each person.”

Instagram Stories ads go global

In good news for businesses of all shapes and sizes all around the world, Instagram has made Instagram Stories ads available globally and will be rolling the feature out to all businesses over the next few weeks. These immersive, full screen ads come with targeting and reach capabilities to ensure businesses can reach who they want to reach. Earlier in the year Airbnb ran a series of 15-second ads to build buzz around its Experiences on Airbnb offering, and said it saw a double-digit increase in ad recall.

Uber’s still planning for the future

You’ve probably heard that Uber is not having the greatest year but this is a short write-up so we’ll just stick to the news of the moment. The transportation company is looking to turn its app into a “content marketplace” during rides. It’s set to be a feed of entertainment with a host of potential third party content partners, all brought onboard to grow engagement in the Uber app itself. Apparently the marketplace will be based on a new version of Trip Experiences, a small feature launched a year ago with a select group of partners. Word is it’ll be launching in April, but so far Uber has declined to comment. Stay tuned.

Read more at TechCrunch.