So-Called Social: Week of July 9

Your weekly dose of social news.

I’m baaaack!! Hope you didn’t miss me too much. My shutdown was great, thanks for asking. I’m sure you can imagine, I have lots of goodies to share with you today, so settle in and get all caught up on your social news.

Social nets update stuff

Joining the rest of the online world, LinkedIn now lets you translate the posts in your feed into more than 60 languages. LinkedIn will display a “See Translation” option after taking into account various signals, like your own default language setting and current country. If it detects another language in a post in your feed, it will offer to translate the text.

Facebook is testing AR ads in the News Feed and a new tool that will help brands create mobile video ads using existing images and video footage. The AR element of the ads uses camera effects so that users can virtually try out different aspects of a product, and then take an action via the ad.

Instagram just added a questions sticker to Instagram Stories and now my story feed is pretty much all Q&As. The sticker can be customized and placed anywhere on a photo or video in your story. Important note: questions you ask are not anonymous!

Welp, I guess it was about time to put a nail in the Snapchat coffin, eh? Instagram Stories is now officially twice as popular as Snapchat, with 400 million daily users. Overall, Insta has over 1 billion monthly active users, so it’s really no surprise Stories caught on like fire.

Snapchat is still fighting the good fight, though. The company has teamed up with Universal Studios, Six Flags, and Disney to create augmented reality experiences for theme park visitors. Minion characters at Universal Studios, Mickey and Minnie lenses at Disney, and those visiting Six Flags parks can see Superman in action or become the hero themselves.

Reddit is crossing deeper and deeper into the dark side — the platform just released call-to-action buttons to their ads. They look like the CTA buttons on all other platforms. Still a fascinating shift from a totally user-focused platform to opening it up to brands and advertising.

Adobe does stuff

Adobe Drawing has officially launched an Instagram account where we’ll be showcasing the best illustrations, drawings, and paintings from the community. Check it out and give it a follow.

Other brands do stuff

This is just beautiful. CoverGirl launched a 13-minute, 42-second ad for their TruBlend Matte Made foundation, which has 40 shades aimed at meeting needs across multicultural skin tones. But that’s only the beginning. The online ad includes 60 seconds of ad, and 12 minutes and 43 seconds of credits for more than 1,000 women who helped inspire the product line. How did all these women help inspire a product line? They spoke out across social media about needing more from their foundation, and posted consumer reviews on retail sites about how previous foundations failed to address their needs. If this isn’t a perfect use case of social listening and turning it into action, I don’t know what is.

Don’t even get me started on “Chicken Rings,” but this 40-minute, QVC-style Facebook Live event was pretty creative. To promote its latest finger food offering, Chicken Rings, slider joint White Castle staged an impressively authentic home shopping event on FB Live. Hosts Heather and Janelle — great improv actors, apparently — riffed for more than 40 minutes about the glories of breaded circles of white meat chicken and four accompanying dipping sauces.

Interesting stuff

As we know, Facebook and Twitter have both announced that they’ll focus more on ad transparency from now on. And there’s been some debate on whether or not this is a good thing for marketers. This opinion piece talks a bit about the benefits of ad transparency, such as the ability to review the ads of competitors, including creative, planned campaigns, and formats.

Fun stuff

“Queer Eye” was just nominated for four Emmys and Jonathan Van Ness’s “Gay of Thrones” was nominated for one, and their reaction videos posted on social are everything.

And Chrissy Teigen’s dad’s reaction to John’s double nomination is probably the most dad-like response ever.

Grandma confused by GIF goes straight to the Verizon store and hilarity ensues.