The week in social: Golden Globes, Facebook news feed changes, and video chat hardware

Facebook announces big changes to what will show up on the news feed

In an effort to make the time spent on Facebook more meaningful for its users, the company is changing how content appears on its feed, and is de-prioritizing posts from brand Pages, as well as news outlets. According to Facebook, this means that time spent on the platform may be less, but that time will be more invaluably used, and users will form deeper social connections as a result. Advice from a Facebook News Room post that detailed the changes suggested that Pages who produce content that sees a large amount of conversation and interaction will be less affected.

More information on Facebook News Room.

Oprah Winfrey’s speech during the Golden Globe’s drives massive social engagement

With its video posted on Facebook Watch, The Golden Globes speech from Oprah Winfrey generated 24 million views and 400,000 shares on Facebook alone. In addition, hashtags related to the messages most talked about during the Golden Globes generated high engagement, with #TimesUp generated 520,000 Tweets.

Read more on AdWeek.

Facebook will no longer offer its Messenger-based personal assistant

Facebook M is a digital AI and human-assisted bot that would act as a digital assistant for users with various needs through the Facebook Messenger service, but the company has announced that it will be shutting down, effective January 19th. Portions of the service will continue to be available under the label of M suggestions, which offers help for payments, stickers, and more. Facebook will plan to use the learnings from M to power other AI projects at the company.

Read more on The Verge.

Facebook will soon offer video chat hardware

In the second half of 2018, Facebook is likely to launch its foray into video chatting hardware, named Portal right now. The device will compete most likely with devices such as the Amazon Echo Show. The device will work indoors and is primarily mean tot be controlled via voice commands. It is rumored that the device will debut in May at Facebook’s annual developer’s conference.

More information on Cheddar.

College national championship football drives record number of Tweets

As with many big sporting events, the College Football Playoff National Championship generated a mass of Twitter engagement. At it’s peak, Twitter was seeing 54,000 Tweets per minute related to the game, which featured Alabama vs. Georgia. Twitter also awarded a first ever to the winner team Alabama: an emoji trophy. A specific hashtag will also trigger anytime a user Tweets with the phrase #rolltide until the next national championship game.

More information on AdWeek.