So-Called Social: Week of April 15

It’s been a busy week (both at Adobe and on the social medias). Mostly with Facebook, but no surprise there. Spring has sprung for Adobe Capture, arguably the best RickRoll of all time, and some more info on Facebook + GDPR. Keep on reading.

Social nets update stuff

Facebook has added a drawing brush to its Stories Camera feature to allow users to add augmented reality drawings to the videos they create. Annnnnd the social network is also replacing its looping GIF creator with Boomerang. Becoming more and more like Insta every day. We’ll see if this attempt at boosting popularity of FB Stories will actually work.

Facebook is reportedly pitching a “Loyalty Prediction” tool to advertisers. Powered by artificial intelligence, the Facebook ad service would let advertisers target users based on predicted behavior. Via a “confidential” document, it’s unsure what user information would be indexed for this service, but location, device information, WiFi network details, video usage, affinities, and friendship details were listed. Sounds to me like this would be a bad idea considering the trouble they’re already in…

Adobe does stuff

This week, we announced the April release of Adobe Capture, featuring new upgrades to the mobile-to-desktop workflows for Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, Dimension and more. In addition to that, we’re also announcing a new Spring-themed (aka #CaptureSpring) Design Challenge to support the Capture release!

Other brands do stuff

I love this anti-cyberbullying campaign nonprofit Cybersmile worked on with Adam&Eve/DDB. They worked with a social influencer to demonstrate (in a graphic way) the damaging results of trolling. The campaign begins with influencer Chessie King posting a video of herself asking for comments. Naturally, she got what she asked for… loads and loads of hurtful and offensive feedback from trolls. The agency then edited her image until she resembled what the trolls suggested. It’s horrible. #TrollingIsUgly

I am personally invested in this campaign because one thing California truly lacks is fry sauce (amiright, Utah?!). Heinz is taking to Twitter to see if it can make #Mayochup a thing in the U.S. If the ketchup to mayonnaise ratio is right, I’m all about this.

Oh, and HBO / Westworld RickRolled all of Reddit and it was ahhh-mazing. Make sure you watch all 19 minutes of the dog playing piano. Hats. Off.

Interesting stuff

Facebook’s data crisis doesn’t seem to be stopping advertisers. The company just reported their Q1 numbers and ad spend on the platform jumped 62 percent year-over-year. Snapchat’s ad spend increased 234 percent YoY and Instagram’s was up 136 percent.

Logic is the most effective form of persuasion. At least, that’s what this opinion piece on how to drive sales using social media says (and I found the author’s tips to be quite valid). In addition to appeals to authority (like convincing someone that you’re an expert, or of high moral fiber) and appeals to emotion (like convincing someone that this action will make them happy, or scaring them into taking the action), there are appeals to logic. Logical appeals are more objective than subjective, but they still require an art to pull off successfully.

I know I’ve sent around a deeper email regarding Facebook’s privacy updates to some of you dear subscribers, but here’s a good roundup of what some of the bigger changes (thanks to GDPR) mean for marketers.

Instagram is also working on more data transparency by allowing users to download all the data they have shared with the social media platform.

Fun stuff

Watch these sea turtles named after breakfast foods get released into the ocean!

This dad’s letter to his son’s teacher gets an A+.

Gwen Stefani got destroyed by Gwen Stefani superfan while playing Gwen Stefani quiz. Yeah. You read that right.