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2016 The Social Lights ® SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS Q4
| Date post: | 25-Jan-2017 |
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Social Media |
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2016
The Social Lights®
SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS
Q4
SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights® 2
Social media moves fast. Really fast. That’s where we come in.
Every 3 months, we bring you all the updates from around the social sphere.
See what happened in Q4 2016 on: • Snapchat • Facebook • Instagram • Twitter • & more!
SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights® 3
Go live. Be nice. Copy Snapchat.
• Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter all announced live activations in Q4.
• Quality and community care carried the conversation. As fake news and hurtful messages spread, platforms took action to protect users from unwanted content.
• The war between Facebook and Snapchat. Facebook and it’s family of apps repeatedly introduced look-alike features to both retain and draw brands and users away from the Snap, Inc. product. The question is: Can Snapchat innovate as fast as Facebook can copy?
What’s the big picture?
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WHAT’SHAPPENING ONSNAPCHAT?
WHAT’SHAPPENING ONSNAPCHAT?
SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
Snapchat Pushing Ads as IPO Looms
Anticipation continues to mount on this subject, as the latest estimates place the public offering at a cool $25 billion, with a B. Not bad, considering Facebook’s $3B offer back in 2013.
As the IPO draws closer, Snapchat has been pushing for more and more ad dollars from brands, announcing Super Bowl packages and touting it’s dominance of the 18-34 year-old demographic.
Learn More....
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SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
Worth the Spend?
Despite the hype and IPO rumors, brands remain skeptical of the value running ads on the platform provides. As many 35-and-unders than use the platform, Snapchat ads average just 3 seconds per view.
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SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
Spectacles Dropped. Literally.
Snap, Inc.’s latest product built anticipation enough to drive sales, but the launch itself wrote the headlines. Spectacles were dropped in a mobile vending machine that is still traveling the country. How Brands Can Benefit Brands invested in Snapchat can give followers a first-person view of an event, reach unprecedented levels of transparency, or even show a day in the life of a celebrity / influencer.
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SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
Updates and New Features
Scissors: cut sections of your snaps out of the image to store as emojis/stickers. Paintbrush: Add artistic effects to your snaps (eg. Starry Night) Advance / Rewind: Tap the sides of the screen to tap through or re-watch stories. Group Chat: Send and receive snaps from a group of preselected friends
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SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
AR Debut Near?
Snap, Inc. purchased Cimagine Media, an augmented-reality startup, for between $30-40 million.
As VR/AR wearables become more commonplace, it will be important for brands to continually familiarize themselves with equipment like Spectacles and Oculus.
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WHAT’SHAPPENING ONFACEBOOK?
SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
Facebook wants you to go live.
With the general public hesitant to ‘Go Live’ feature, Facebook launched a worldwide IMC across social, print, and TV to promote the feature, showing users and brands that ‘Going live is easy’. To further the push, Facebook adjusted it’s algorithm to favor live broadcasts.
Cool Tool: Facebook Live Map
Where does Live live? With the Facebook Live Map, you can see: • Publicly available live broadcasts • Where these broadcasts are taking place • How many people are watching • Where the viewers are from
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SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
Witnessing the Live Evolution
A primary focus for Facebook, the feature is already evolving past a traditional broadcast. The social giant has announced numerous updates and additions to Live video.
• Live-360 Video • Product integration: drones, digital cameras,
etc. • Broadcast Scheduling (2017) • Keyword-based comment moderation (2017) • Video Adjustments (2017): brightness,
orientation, etc. • Broadcast Trimming (2017)
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SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
Taking a Stand Against Fake News
Following the election, Facebook announced that it would be taking strides to combat the spread of fake news, as well as the outlets that distribute misinformation. The platform put the power in the hands of its users, allowing you to flag news pieces as (un)trustworthy. Flagged articles are then submitted to fact-checking team for review.
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SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
“Give us your web traffic.” - Facebook
While its war with Snapchat has been well-documented, Facebook also announced features that will challenge other online communities.
• Jobs: Heads up, LinkedIn • Marketplace: Watch yourself,
Craigslist.
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Numbers are hard.
Facebook was forced to own up on multiple occasions over the last 3 months in regards to miscalculations in ad performance. Features affected include:
• Instant Articles • Video Views • Page Views • Like/Share Measurement
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WHAT’SHAPPENING ONINSTAGRAM?
SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
We can do that.
The Facebook-Snapchat battle escalated to new heights in Q4, primarily on Instagram. The two heavyweights repeatedly announced features and look-alikes, including Photo frames (filters), Instagram Direct (Snapchat Messaging), Stickers (stickers).
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SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
Instagram Keeps Growing
Latest reports show that Instagram has surpassed the 600-million user barrier, adding over 100 million users since Q2.
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SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
Go Live on Instagram
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Instagram joined the live conversation in December, adding live video to its stories feed. The feature separates itself from that of Facebook by giving the audience 24 hours to view the broadcast. The video then self-deletes.
How Brands Can Benefit
Facebook Creative Hub promises to provide brands with ideas and inspiration, as well as tools to create better ads for mobile.
SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
Speaking of Stories
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Instagram added discoverability to its stories feature, placing recommended stories within a user’s Discover page. This is attractive to brands, as it provides potential outreach to draw in new fans.
Instagram also announced several updates to its Stories: • Boomerang • Profile Mentions • Links (verified accounts only)
SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
Comments, anyone?
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Users can now ‘like’ comments, as well as turn them off completely within a post. The move comes as one of Instagram’s continued attempts to moderate and improve the overall community sentiment on the platform.
SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
Improved Business Features
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In Q3, we shared tips and tricks on how to make your Instagram page shoppable. In November, Instagram announced features that allow businesses to tag shown products within a post, which users can then click/tap to visit the product page. The feature removes many barriers between discovery and purchase.
SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
Save it for later.
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Learn More....
Find a post you like, and want to show someone later? You can! Instagram now allows users to save posts.
How brands can benefit: Is user-generated content part of your Instagram strategy? Use this to save fan posts about your brand. If you’re really creative, you can even build a game out of it.
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WHAT’SHAPPENING ONTWITTER?
SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
#Beyond140
Twitter announced several updates to the 140 Rule over past months, most recently testing the removal of handles in replies. This did not go over well.
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SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
Twitter Live
While Twitter’s streaming of Thursday Night Football captured headlines, the platform extended it’s live streaming to talk shows, News broadcasts, and event coverage.
The platform also announced live-360 video just weeks after Facebook launched the feature.
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SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
Just be nice.
Twitter continues to crack down on harmful and offensive content. Jack Dorsey and crew put several features into action to help users avoid seeing negative or abusive posts.
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Learn More....
SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
Jack’s Thread
Before the turn of the year, Jack Dorsey asked Twitter users what they thought were the biggest issues faced by the platform. The four largest themes fell into abuse, editing, topics, conversations.
The transparency has users ready to see what Twitter does next to remedy these issues.
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SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
WHAT ELSE IS
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HAPPENING ON
SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
Goodbye Like Counts?
Facebook and Pinterest both hinted at the removal of Like Counts in measuring a page’s value. This is encouraging for brands, as the move would eliminate an empty metric, and likely replace it with an actionable business metric.
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SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
To-Do, now To-Done
Pinterest also changed user profiles to include a new metric, checkoffs. The platform will now track how often a project or task is completed by its audience.
How Brands Can Benefit This measurement will likely be used to identify the most influential accounts, with respect to which accounts are generating the most checkoffs. Generate more physical interaction, improve your Pinterest status.
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SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
What about YouTube?
YouTube made a handful of moves that are sure to be impactful in 2017: • Live Sports Broadcasts • Introduction of Native GIF Maker Something for
the Daydreamer • End screens for everyone
These updates put YouTube in strong position amid rumors that the platform will jump into the Live TV game in 2017.
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SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2016 | Q4 The Social Lights®
An old face, and A new one.
Foursquare has been working in the shadows, powering a number of geo-integrated platforms.
Meanwhile, Meerkat has been quietly building a social app that has drawn over 1 million users. Houseparty is centered around video calling and group chats, allowing up to 8 people to video chat at the same time.
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Learn More....
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