the week in social: 2018 in infographics, birthday fundraisers, and parties that weren't

2018 social (so far) in infographics? Yes, please!

There’s nothing like a good batch of stats to start your week off right! (Just ask anyone on our insights team.) Social Media Today recently published “8 Fascinating Facts of Social Media Usage in 2018” in infographic format, and after what has been pretty big year on social, there are a few useful findings. They cover everything from worldwide social media usage numbers, U.S. social media preference by age group, platform distribution, who’s using what site, social users by generation, and marketing benefits per platform, among others. Click through to the article for all the infographic greatness.

Instagram introduces direct message polls

Good news! Now you can poll your friends privately without your “frenemy” followers getting in on the action and skewing the results. This is perfect for when you want honest feedback from people you trust on things like, say… “Does my butt look big in this?” and other queries you’d like to keep amongst friends. Real friends.

Poll stickers are now available for direct messages and began rolling out to Instagram’s mobile apps last week.

Facebook & Vidpresso to clear a path to more interactive video

As we all know, when it comes to social, video is king, and Facebook is on a mission – alongside Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Snapchat – to make the video-viewing experience as interactive and social as possible. To reach its goal, it’s acqui-hired Vidpresso, buying its technology as well as its team, but not the company itself.

Utah-based Vidpresso works with TV broadcasters and content publishers to make their online videos more interactive. This includes on-screen social media polling and comments, graphics and live broadcasting integrated with Facebook, YouTube, Periscope and more.

The Vidpresso team had this to say about the new partnership: “By joining Facebook, we’ll be able to offer our tools to a much broader audience than just our A-list publishing partners. Eventually it’ll allow us to put these tools in the hands of creators, so they can focus on their content, and have it look great, without spending lots of time or money to do so.”

Instagram is investigating hacked accounts

Hundreds of Instagram accounts have been hacked this month, spurring the social platform to release a blog post ensuring users it’s aware of the problem and investigating the issue.

“We have dedicated teams helping people to secure their accounts. If you have reached out to us about your account, you will hear back from our team soon,” Instagram says.

It’s not yet confirmed exactly how many accounts have been affected, but the company has urged users to head to their security settings and enable two-factor authentication on their accounts, and it will be improving its security settings in turn.

Facebook has added a new authorization process for Page managers

As an extra security step for managers of and visitors to large Facebook Pages, the social platform is rolling out a new authorization process. This will prompt users to secure their account with two-factor authentication, as well as to confirm their primary country location. It’s all starting with U.S. businesses, and will likely be expanded to over time.

Though Facebook doesn’t specify exactly how large a Page needs to be to go through this new process, chosen users will receive a notice at the top of their News Feed to begin the process. The effort will help Facebook “prevent organizations and individuals from creating accounts which mislead people about who they are or what they’re doing” and will make it easier for the platform to detect such misuse, as well as provide more transparency to page visitors.

Twitter kills access to some much-loved third-party app features

Twitter has ignored protests from users and developers alike, killing third-party app access to features like push notifications and automatic timeline updates. This has left some well-established Twitter clients scrambling to remove features from their apps – from ceasing Apple Watch support, to delaying or stopping notifications. Unlike Facebook, which controls almost all of its own usage, Twitter has a bunch of users accessing the platform through third-party apps that provide a more streamlined experience. The update is all about the $$$, since the free streaming server connection that developers past have used is now being replaced by the Account Activity API that is set to cost them $2,899 per month for every 250 users.

Facebook’s birthday fundraisers have raised $300 million in 12 months

It’s been a year since Facebook introduced birthday fundraisers – a feature that lets users mark their birthdays by creating a donation drive for their chosen charity – and over that year, a cool $300 million has been raised. To mark the occasion, Facebook has said that it’s adding several new features including allowing Pages to create and donate to fundraisers, the ability to add matching donations and co-organizers to fundraisers, as well as the option for donors to set up recurring monthly contributions. For many charities (there are 750,000 that have access to the feature) Facebook fundraisers have become one of the best ways to raise donations, especially considering it opens them up to donations from people who may otherwise never visit their site.