So-Called Social: Week of January 15

Social nets update stuff

Obviously, the biggest update this week comes from Facebook. Everyone is wondering whether Mark Zuckerberg’s announced tweaks to the news feed will mean the end of Facebook referral traffic as we know it. Long story short: Zuck is trying to encourage people to use Facebook in ways that are good for them, not bad for them, and that means prioritizing posts from friends over posts from brands. But for those brands that have come to rely on Facebook as a promotional vehicle (ahem, most brands), it’s an interesting start to the year. Unsurprisingly, many think this change will make paid ads that much more important on the social network. Then again, some advertisers had already given up on organic reach on Facebook, so they actually see some merit in this News Feed change. I suppose only time will tell, eh? Watch this space for more info as we wrap our head around what this might mean for us.

Ughhhh. It sounds like Snapchat really might be going down the tubes. After the platform’s redesign last fall, the app has pretty much received nothing but a giant thumbs down on the App Store. Hopes were that the new redesign would reignite users (and make Snapchat a little less confusing for us olds), but it sounds like it did just the opposite.

Instagram is testing a new text-only option in Stories. It was being tested in Japan last December, but now appears to be showing up for select groups in Europe as well. The feature is a separate option at the bottom of the screen within Stories (alongside Boomerang and Live). If selected, you can write and choose different options for background and font. It’s not super different from what you can already do creatively in Stories, but might make it a bit easier.

Adobe does stuff

This week, we announced a new partnership with musical artist, BØRNS! The Creative Cloud team is inviting fans to visually interpret the lyrics and emotion of his new song “We Don’t Care” and submit their artwork on Twitter or Instagram for a chance to be featured in the upcoming music video. Suhweet.

Adobe is at Sundance next week! Our mission: to champion and applaud filmmakers and storytellers – from industry heavyweights to indie filmmakers and the next generation of talent. There will be loads to share with you next week on what all went down, so be sure to check back.

Other brands do stuff

BuzzFeed responded to Facebook’s News Feed in the absolute perfect way. FB’s changes prompted BuzzFeed to launch an ad campaign on the social network to draw readers to BuzzFeed’s own app. “Facebook is taking the news out of your News Feed, but we’ve got you covered,” the ad copy says. Brilliant.

So, the Tide Pod Challenge is probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen on the Internet. Seriously. Apparently some teenagers in the U.S. think the little, colorful Tide Pods look like dessert, so they’re filming themselves eating them and uploading videos to YouTube challenging others to do the same. See, the thing is, Tide Pods are detergent which means they’re toxic and this is just so stupid I don’t even have the words to explain. Alas, it’s become a social media phenomenon. Thank goodness YouTube is taking the videos down. And Tide has enlisted one of the NFL’s biggest stars, Patriots Rob Gronkowski, to dissuade teens from participating in this viral stupidity. Let’s hope it works.

On the bright side, Google took over social media this week with a fun campaign encouraging viral selfies. The campaign leverages Google’s noble-minded but pretty unexciting Google Arts & Culture app that was pretty much completely overlooked until it launched a feature last week that let users match their selfies to faces in famous artworks. These comparisons were all over social media (and were quite fun, tbh).

Interesting stuff

We’ve talked about the difference and value of micro vs. macro influencers here before, but here’s a new infographic that illustrates the value props of each. It’s pretty fascinating to watch the world of influencer marketing shift, and who knows… with these new Facebook news feed changes, we might be leaning on our influencers (and employees!) even more.

Now this is my kind of research. Tweets containing a brand name and an emoji have increased frequency by 49 percent since September of 2015. And you all know how I feel about emojis… they’re the perfect representation of an emotion! In this study, Brandwatch not only looked at emoji use, but also the sentiment around said emojis to determine the brands that are most loved on Twitter. Who made the cut? Pantene, Jameson, and Subway (to name a few).

Fun stuff

My favorite GIF of all time. You’re welcome.

I can’t stop watching this video of a man chopping an absurd amount of cilantro.

Matching dogs to their owners is my new favorite pastime.