Sherrilynne Starkie
This week's top 5 must-know news from the world of social media featuring innovations from Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and Snapchat
Instagram has a new longer-form video platform in the works to compete with YouTube and Snapchat Discover. TechCrunch reports that Instagram will offer a dedicated space featuring scripted shows, music videos and more in vertically oriented, full-screen, high-def 4K resolution. It’s lining up launch partners for an announcement of the effort tentatively scheduled for June 20th.
More Americans now visit Reddit than Facebook according to Alexa – the Amazon-owned web traffic analyzing platform.
Google is still the most visited site, followed by YouTube, Reddit, and Facebook and Amazon. On average, Reddit users spend 15 minutes and 10 seconds on it daily, Google users spend 7 minutes 16 seconds, YouTube 8 minutes 31 seconds, Facebook 10 minutes 50 seconds and Amazon 7 minutes 37 seconds.
Generation Z is the largest and most diverse generation in US history and Snapchat has published an infographic to explain why this matters for marketers and advertisers.
Gen Z teens are young (age 13-17), but they have a lot of influence on societal norms and brand-consumer relationships. They have $44 billion in buying power, and they influence an additional $600 billion in how their households spend money. In fact, 96 per cent of Gen Z parents say their teens influence family spending.
Facebook has removed the ‘Trending’ section from user timelines because it has become less useful. Products and third-party partner integrations that rely on the Trends API will also be removed. Facebook is trialling a few different ideas to replace trends.
Instagram has introduced new functionality to boost reach and engagement. Now when someone mentions somebody in their story, the mentioned person can share that photo or video into their own story.
