This Week in Social and Digital (Weeks of November 11 and November 18)
This Week in Social is a weekly digest of some of the biggest stories in social media marketing news. These stories are the show notes for the Brave Ad World Podcast. Each story is discussed at a deeper level on the podcast.
Instagram’s Now Hiding Like Counts in the U.S.
Instagram is starting to extend its test of hiding like counts in the U.S. to some users at least. The test has been active in eight countries, including Canada, since May of this year.
According to Instagram, the goal is to take the pressure out of Instagram and “make it less of a competition, give people more space to focus on connecting with people that they love, things that inspire them.” Ultimately, Instagram is making the case that this is a mental health initiative, and since the test is expanding it must be seeing something positive.
Instagram wouldn’t be rolling this out if it hindered usage of the platform considerably, so it’s probably safe to assume that users in test markets are using Instagram just as much without like counts as they did with them. Expanding to the U.S. is a huge step to determine if this goes further.
The larger question is what this will do to improve the mental health toll social media has on users, especially young ones. Mark Zuckerberg claims that he wants time with Facebook and its products to be “time well spent,” and removing like counts is a step in that based on the premise that Instagram will become less of a competition as users stop comparing their like counts to those of others and it will take the pressure out of posting.
It’s difficult to see just how much removing like counts will do that. Users can still see who and how many likes their own posts received, so they’ll still be able to understand just how much their followers embraced their content or didn’t. Comments will remain public and will likely become the new proxy for content popularity. And the very fact that users compare their real lives to the curated lives they see displayed in their social feeds will continue to be at the root of the anxiety and self-esteem risks associated with the feed whether the like counts are there or not. The ultimate marker of success for Facebook in hiding like counts will be declines in anxiety and depression. Until then, this isn’t a step forward.
Facebook Launches Facebook Pay
Facebook has launched a new way for users to send payments to each other without fees. The service, dubbed Facebook Pay, launched on Messenger and Facebook, but Facebook has plans to expand it to Instagram and WhatsApp.
PayPal is a partner for the feature, even after pulling out of its participation in helping launch the Libra cryptocurrency. This is not connected to Libra.
As Facebook rolls this out, they’re emphasizing privacy. All payment data will be encrypted and monitored for fraud.
Facebook already allows users to send money to each other on Messenger, so the big difference here is that Facebook will now allow users to send money between apps. It’s difficult to see just how much potential Facebook Pay has as it’s definitely late to the transaction-free mobile payments game. One thing this will do, however, is more fully integrate Facebook’s ecosystem of apps—something it’s been working to do for the better part of a year. Another step of further integration could make Facebook more difficult to break up should antitrust concerns continue to rise.
Google Launching Checking Account Services
Not to be outdone by Facebook Pay and Apple’s credit card, Google plans to launch checking accounts through its Google Pay platform next year. The offering, dubbed “Cache” at this time, would launch in partnership with Citigroup and Stanford University credit union.
Checking accounts offer a lot of user data, which would be incredibly valuable to Google. Although, it claimed it will not sell financial data.
While there’s been a lot of antitrust discussion around big tech companies, they’re not slowing down. Big tech aims to get bigger. They even want their hands in financial services. However, it is speculated that they will face “stiff political opposition” according to analysts from Cowen. That means we may start seeing Senate hearings as soon as December.
Twitter Reveals Details on Political Ads Ban
A couple weeks ago Twitter announced that it would ban political ads from its platform, the opposite direction of Facebook which had adopted a lassie faire approach. Now, we have details on what Twitter has in mind.
Any content referencing candidates, political parties, elected or appointed government officials, elections, referendums, ballot measures, legislation, regulation, directives or judicial outcomes are banned. Beyond that, it plans to bring advertising into the light more by making it less micro-targeted. Issues-based ads will be limited in how targeted they can be, meaning there will be limitations to things like ZIP code and political affiliation targeting. Furthermore, for-profit companies can run awareness ads around issues, but they cannot advocate for specific outcomes. Government officials, PACs, political nonprofits, candidates and parties cannot.
What Twitter laid out is clear for the most part, but it is a very, very fine line, especially when it comes to interpreting what counts as an “issues-based” ad. There will undoubtedly be tests to just how much these limits can be pushed, and Twitter acknowledged that trial and error will be part of the rollout of this new policy. The line Twitter has set illustrates just how nuanced this space can be.
News Quick Hits
Yandex, the Google of Russia, has struck a deal to connect its ad network to TikTok. The move is one of TikTok’s first to open up to a third party ad platform, but it’s in line with other efforts to offer more robust advertising capabilities. It’s been working on developing tracking pixels, ad auction capabilities and an audience network, all of which are necessary to compete more directly with platforms like Facebook.
Disney+ has officially launched, giving users access to more than 500 movies and 7,500 TV episodes from the Disney catalogue for $6.99 per month. Disney hopes to have 90 million global subscribers by 2024.
TikTok is trying its hand at social commerce. Some users are now able to add links to their bios and posts. These links drive to products being promoted. Others are even able to allow users to purchase products within TikTok itself. TikTok already has a “Shop Now” feature in China, so it’s likely the feature will be ready for a full rollout in the U.S. in the near future. TikTok would join others, including Snapchat, Pinterest and Instagram in enabling shopping from within its platform.
Snapchat’s joining Twitter in giving Facebook some side eye over its political ads policy. It stated that it will be fact-checking political ads to stem the flow of misinformation. There will be human reviews for every ad on the platform, political or otherwise.
Amazon Music is expanding to allow for free music streaming on more platforms, including iPhone, Android and Fire TVs. Previously, it was only available on the Amazon Echo, which means there’s a lot more competition in the space, so the news sent shares of Spotify down.