So-Called Social: Week of September 24

Your weekly dose of social news.

Happy Friday, fam! I know I’m certainly ready for the weekend. You? I’ve got some good stuff for you this week — both IG co-founders leave Facebook, World Interaction Design Day, and some pretty hilarious AI-written Burger King ads. Read on below.

Social nets update stuff

In wild news, both Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger are stepping down from their respective roles as CEO and CTO at the image- and video-sharing giant (owned by Facebook). As I’m sure you can imagine, there’s a lot of hubbub around the departure of these two, and what it means for Facebook, Instagram, Zuckerberg, etc., etc. Especially since a little exclusive with WhatsApp Co-founder Brian Acton ran on Forbes this week and gave the inside story on #DeleteFacebook and why Acton left $850 million behind. Cue all the speculation.

Facebook’s latest foray into virtual reality comes in the form of a new $399 headset that requires no PC to operate. The Oculus Quest should be out in the spring, and will come with more than 50 games.

Twitter says it’s going to change the way it creates rules regarding the use of its service to now include community feedback. Previously, the company followed its own policy development process, including taking input from its Trust and Safety Council and various experts. Now it says it’s going to try something new: it’s going to ask its users. Fascinating.

Adobe does stuff

This week, we supported Advertising Cloud University, a two-day event featuring presentations by speakers from Adobe, analysts, partners, and customers. We activated a “live video tweeting” initiative which essentially means tweeting out short video clips in close to real time of all the approved main-stage presentations on the @AdobeAdCloud Twitter handle.

On September 25, in partnership with IxDA, we helped bring the global design community together for the inaugural World Interaction Design Day. With over 90 events in over 37 countries — and an estimated 20K participants supporting the theme of diversity and inclusion in design — the initiative supported its mission to show the world the impact of interaction design on the human condition.

Other brands do stuff

Dwayne Johnson is dropping more Project Rock hustle for Under Armour, and it’s hard not to be impressed. The new campaign by Johnson’s own personal ad agency (yeah, you read that right) highlights the day-to-day work it takes to be The Rock. Stylish and gritty, the ad series is “meant to speak to how training is a mentality, that the work you put in the gym extends to real life, and that mentality is consistent.”

So, this is actually pretty creative. Chase Home Lending is using Pinterest boards to get customers to think of financing as they’re planning a home improvement or DIY project. The tips and visuals on the personalized “Chase Dream Boards” are based on a questionnaire the user answers about the type of project, personal style, budget, and how they plan to finance the renovation. And, naturally, the Pinterest boards let Chase collect some user profile data to tailor product recommendations and target ads.

Interesting stuff

The number of people using Facebook Stories on a daily basis has doubled since May, and their experiences are about to change. The social network announced this week that Facebook Stories ads are now available to all advertisers globally. Here’s some insight into what marketers think about it.

Fun stuff

The best deskmate in all the land.

These AI-written Burger King ads are exceptionally bad. And I love them.

Never thought I’d see a sassy seal slap a man across the face with an octopus, but here we are.