February Industry Update – Let’s Get Social
Well here we are again, the second of 2016’s Industry Updates from us here at HookedOnMedia! This month it’s been all-go on the social media front, with our favourite social platforms shaking it up a little bit. So let’s take a closer look.
Twitter’s new algorithm has arrived, and it’s out to show you what you want to see rather than just the latest bursts of 140 characters of the people you follow. For now, the change is strictly opt-in and users won’t see the update unless it is manually switched on from the account settings. This will, of course, change at some point in the future when people have had enough time to get used to it.
Your Twitter timeline isn’t going to change too much when the update rolls out to all, but it will mean that certain tweets from your favourite people or topics will appear before and above the chronological tweets that you’re used to seeing.
We’re not yet sure how many “best” tweets will appear, or how Twitter will determine what your “best tweets” will be, but a vague description over on Twitter’s ads blog said: “We look at accounts they interact with, Tweets they usually engage with, interests, and what’s going on in their network.”
Last week, Instagram added a new feature to the app that has had small business owners, marketers and brand managers around the globe rejoice. Now, instead of logging in and out of Instagram accounts to go from your personal pictures to your business ones, or even your clients, you can just swipe between them to upload pictures of your business lunch at leisure #instagramgoals.
It’s been a long time coming, and in response to an overwhelming “need” from users for a “dislike” button, Facebook has rolled out “Reactions” to use for a wider variety of occasions. So, say, your friend posts a status about their cat being injured and having to go to the vets – instead of hitting the “like” button, which is rather inappropriate, you can now react with a “sad” emoji instead.
Of course, the new Reaction emojis have names: Love, Haha, Wow, Sad or Angry. To access these new emotions, just hover a cursor or hold down a finger over the traditional upturned thumb and the new selections will pop right up!
So, how many loves can you get today?
And back to Penguin
Do you remember us talking last month about when Google were going to update the Penguin algorithm? There had been a lot of talk in the SEO world about when Penguin would be rolled out to shake the Internet up again. Well, news in is that Google have said that it’ll be “as soon as it is ready.”
So we’re just going to have to sit back and wait!