So-Called Social: Week of February 19

Your weekly dose of social news

Unexpectedly, this week is kinda all about Snapchat… They’ve made a bunch of updates and some of them are cool and some are TBD. There are also some examples of what brands are doing on Instagram Stories, a report and a white paper (not as boring as they sound), and naturally some stuff that will hopefully brighten your week. Catch up below.

Social nets update stuff

Snapchat is finally giving creators data about their audiences! (CELEBRATE) The data includes engagement, demographics, and story views. Not everyone will have access to Audience Insights (just available for verified creators), but those that have it will be about to discover the number of views a story attracted over a specific period of time, the amount of time users spent with certain content, and other metrics as well.

Snapchat also did a huge redesign (as part of their plan to separate the “social from the media”) and they’re getting a lot of backlash for it. CEO, Evan Spiegel is vigorously defending the redesign and basically says we all need to get used to it. (EYE ROLL)

Now copying Instagram (for a change), Snapchat has integrated with Giphy and will introduce a Tabs function for Stories. The Giphy integration is essentially identical to the Instagram Stories. Tabs will help users organize and see the Stories they want (kind of like Twitter Lists, I presume).

All of this is great and all, but we’ll see what happens since Kylie Jenner seems to have single-handedly wiped out $1.3 billion of Snap’s market value with one tweet. (SHOCKED)

Other brands do stuff

Love this creative use of emojis by Air New Zealand! Using the #EmojiJourney hashtag, the carrier is asking users to comment on their ideal break down under using nothing more than a string of emojis. Participants will then be sent a link to a personalized interactive map of the country with emojis highlighting points of interest. (EMOJIS)

Instagram has reported that Stories have encouraged users to stay on the platform longer and visit it more frequently. Personally, I totally waste spend more time on Insta now. Anyhoo, some brands have really taken to Stories. Check out what Airbnb, Brunch Boys, NASA, and more have been up to on the Gram.

Nike is the first brand to sell on Snapchat. (MONEY) The brand partnered with Snap, Darkstors, and Shopify to presell the Air Jordan III “Tinker” with same-day deliver on Snapchat after the NBA All-Star game. Pretty smart, IMO.

Interesting stuff

Singular has created its second annual index of the best ROI for mobile ads, and it has a few surprises… Are you ready? Good. The study ranks the top-performing mobile media sources on iOS and Andoid by 30-day ROI, or how much profit is generated through advertising spending. And Twitter and Snapchat came in up top!

Time’s Viant has published a white paper reporting that 93 percent of digital marketers are investing in people-based marketing on Twitter and Facebook and that 90 percent of respondents say they experience better results from people-based campaigns. Marketing to individuals across devices is definitely gaining traction and the appeal of third-party data and anonymous cookies is quickly fading…

Fun stuff

Okay, this mother and daughter that tried out Curling with a Roomba and a Swiffer deserve all the gold medals.

This guy turned his Tinder profile into a Powerpoint presentation and I think he’s my soulmate.

Why is this even a thing. No. Just, no.