So-Called Social: Week of February 23

Your weekly dose of social news

Happy Friday! I’m bringing you a slew of news from this week — from Facebook cleaning up metrics to a new social network to watch (maybe?), and more… Keep on reading! ****

Social nets update stuff

Facebook is (finally) cleaning up and clarifying the way advertisers measure their campaign performance. The platform will begin labeling some metrics in Ad Manager as estimated or in development, to provide more clarity and transparency on how they’re calculated and how we should consider using them. FB will also remove some unhelpful metrics (like social reach and noting friends who also like a certain brand). It’s about time.

YouTube Live is getting automatic English captions, live chat replays, and more (oh my!). Arguably the most interesting of these new features is automatic English captions. And as you can imagine, adding automated captions to livestreams is a huge undertaking (I mean, real-time speech recognition, rendering, synchronization, etc.). It won’t be perfect, but it’ll be pretty dang cool.

Twitter is loosening up restrictions on DMs for brands by allowing them to send up to five direct messages within a 24-hour period to users who have initiated contact with them via DM. This means that brands will be able to respond and provide a better customer experience during periods of high volume.

Adobe does stuff

We love anniversaries at Adobe and it’s time for After Effects to celebrate its 25th! We’ve got a couple live streams that aired this week, and a variety of fun, bite-sized content for our community including a new After Effects logo treatment, “25 Days of After Effects” — a short GIF series that highlights hidden gems in the software, and After Effects Trivia!

Leading up to the Oscars, we just launched InDesign’s Movie Poster Week Challenge (#IDMovieWeek). We’re asking folks to design their own original movie poster and submit their artwork to Twitter or Facebook for a chance to win some sweet prizes (i.e. an iPad Pro or a 1-year CC subscription). The contest runs from February 26 to March 5, so spread the word!

Other brands do stuff

As part of its “Start Your Impossible” campaign, Toyota has created a pretty incredible experience on Instagram. Through the account @SeeLikeMenna, fans can see what it’s like to ski down the toughest slopes with only 3 percent vision — just like the Para-Alpine World Cup skier Menna Fitzpatrick. Seriously, whoa.

Well, this is unexpected. Brands are using poetry to cut through the noise and grab users’ attention. Coca-Cola, A+E Networks, Under Armour, and Microsoft have recently built campaigns around poetry to make a more unique emotional connection to consumers who, frankly, are over traditional ad formats.

Interesting stuff

Blockchain could be about to disrupt social platforms, as sights like Steemit are using the technology to attract creators to post content, watch ads, and play games in return for digital currency. This so-called financial internet stands the Facebook business model on its head (by paying content creators instead of collecting the money itself). Of course, all of this is TBD, but definitely watch this space for updates.

As if we needed another social platform to think about… Enter: Vero. While the app launched in 2015, last weekend it rocketed to the top of the iOS app store. Vero, the Latin word for “Truth” touts itself as “the opposite of Facebook” and “the antidote to what everyone hates about Instagram.” It’s ad-free and organized chronologically, as opposed to Facebook and Instagram’s algorithm-driven feeds. And let’s just say, Vero was not prepared for the influx of users over the last week. I signed up for an account and it took 24 hours for them to send me a verification code. Not to mention, users can’t actually experience the platform as nothing is actually working right now, and while #DeleteVero may be trending right now, it’s not actually that easy to delete your account. Andddd some people think the CEO is an awful person.

Fun stuff

Not only do I love Childish Gambino, but I love me a good parody. Especially when it has to do with a father/daughter duo and Girl Scout Cookies.

Oh, and naturally, Donald Glover bought all 113 cookie orders off the Girl Scout who rapped to “Redbone.” He’s a gem. (Protip: Tune in at ~7:30 to see the specific coverage.)

When you ask your boyfriend to pick you up a pair of leggings and he has a complete meltdown.