If there’s one thing that’s constant when it comes to social media, it’s that you can expect constant change. Since June 2014, all of the major social media players—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest—have announced several game-changing updates to their platforms, all in the name of creating a better user experience. Each social media network has boundless intelligence on how consumers use their platforms, and with the continuous updates and improvements, they’ve also learned a lot about how brands connect with consumers using their apps. If you’re a marketer of any kind, it’s vital to stay on top of changes happening in the digital realm, so we’ve compiled a look back and forward on the noteworthy social media announcements released since June 2014:
JUNE 2014
Introducing New Creative Tools on Instagram – Already famous for its wide array of filters, Instagram adds brightness, contrast, saturation, warmth and more to its arsenal of photo-editing tools.
AUGUST 2014
Introducing Hyperlapse from Instagram – Video is the darling of content marketing right now, and Instagram bought in early on this trend by allowing users to easily capture and share high-quality time lapse videos in the platform.
Get a Little News with Your Pinterest Notifications – In this update, Pinterest enables users to see a snapshot of their friends’ and followings’ latest and greatest in the added News feed tab.
The Latest on Facebook Video – Between May and July 2014, Facebook video views grew by 50% to average more than 1 billion video views on Facebook each day. And Facebook advertisers everywhere finally took Facebook video seriously.
Pin Tip: Pin on the Go with iOS 8 – Pinterest won iPhone users over by adding Pin It functionality to the share button for the iOS 8 release.
NOVEMBER 2014
More Ways to Control What You See in Your News Feed – Facebook introduces Unfollow/Re-follow prompts for people, Pages and groups, making it easier for people to filter content in and out of their News Feed. This is the first of a major roll-out of updates aimed to restrict unwanted promotional content in News Feeds.
Reducing Overly Promotional Page Posts in News Feed – Facebook cautioned brands and advertisers to phase out promotional content based on negative user feedback and survey results. Overly promotional content won’t be featured in News Feeds.
Discovery and Caption Editing on Instagram – As part of wide-scale platform update, Instagram allows for caption editing—a huge win for brands seeking to optimize copy and hashtags on their photos. Also in this update: a new People tab that allows users to explore other accounts based on their interests.
Introducing Twitter Offers – This update allows advertisers to tweet offers on products and services and measure offer redemption right in the app. Users redeem offers directly in Twitter tied to their credit card account, and Twitter reports real-time redemption and reflects cash savings on the user’s card statement.
More Goodies for the iOS App – Pinterest made a few tweaks to their app design making images and Rich Pin info more prominent on app. The Android update followed shortly.
DECEMBER 2014
A New Way to Edit Pins on the Web – This Pinterest update allows you to move groups of Pins from one board to another (or a new board) effortlessly.
JANUARY 2015
Now on Twitter: Group Direct Messages and Mobile Video Camera – Twitter joins the video game, allowing users to capture and embed video in tweets.
An Update on Promoted Pins – After nearly a year in beta testing with brands like Gap, General Mills, Old Navy, Target, Nestle and a few other big U.S. advertisers, Pinterest rolls our Promoted Pins to all Pinterest businesses.
Search is Getting Smarter – With over 30 billion Pins collected on Pinterest, search functionality and user experience becomes a pressing issue for Pinterest—and thus, Guided Search was born. New customized search results serve up pins filtered by gender and interests unique to you.
FEBRUARY 2015
Announcing 2 Million Advertisers on Facebook and a New App to Manage Your Ads on the Go – Facebook launches a new mobile app dedicated to Facebook Ads on the go. Facebook advertisers rejoice that they can now adjust creative, copy, budgets and targeting options on the fly.
MARCH 2015
Making Page Likes More Meaningful – Likely you saw a drop in Page Likes and/or organic reach hit mid-March due to this update. Facebook announced their plans to remove inactive accounts in order to provide more accurate insights to brand Pages.
Introducing Layout from Instagram – Instagram realized that sometimes it takes more than one shot to tell a story and launched Layout, their stunning vision for digital photo collaging brought to life.
Introducing Curator, a New Way to find and Display Great Twitter Content – We’re keeping our eye on this one; while this feature is only available to media publishers like New York Times and ESPN, a version of this could be making its way to brands soon.
Our 2014 Transparency Report – Pinterest publishes its first full year transparency report for brands and consumers to take a look at Pinterest behind the scenes. They also publish similar reports every six months.
APRIL 2015
Riff: Make Videos with Friends – Videos become collaborative works of art using this new app from Facebook Creative Labs. Riff stitches yours and friends’ short video clips together in a topic stream to make amazing video compilations worth sharing with the masses.
The Save Button for the Internet – Pinterest runs solely on user-generated content, so it’s vital to their business model to improve user experiences transitioning between the internet and the app. This update improved Pin It functionality and user experience across the board.
Building a New Trends Experience – If you’re looking to boost engagement, Twitter trends are an excellent opportunity to jump into timely conversation. Now with more context, relevant trends are easier to isolate for your brand.
Calling all Foodies: Here Comes @TwitterFood – Finally, Twitter launches an entire account for foodies and food-related tweets. Fresh Produce marketers can now follow and engage on behalf of their brands—say hello to @TwitterFood.
Easier than Ever to Have Private Conversations – Direct Messages just got easier. Now, Twitter users can send private DMs to anyone, even if you don’t follow them. For brands, this is a huge customer service win.
Three New Filters and Emoji Hashtags – In this update, Instagram tips its hat to emoji, allowing users to include their favorite emoji in hashtags and search.
MAY 2015
Instant Articles: A Faster Reading Experience on Facebook – This update was big news for Facebook and publishers like New York Times and BuzzFeed. Instant Articles are housed in Facebook, loading publisher content 10x faster than web-housed articles. Brands looking to boost engagement should participate in popular conversation and share content relative to their audiences’ needs.
A New Way to Discover Tweets – Twitter search expands to the World Wide Web. Tweets are now Google search friendly—great news for brands sharing content audiences are searching for.
Introducing Audience Insights – Analytics are critical to improving social media performance, and Twitter Audience Insights does most of the heavy lifting for you. With this tool, you can learn about how your audience uses Twitter to improve your strategy and presence.
JUNE 2015
The Next Steps for Ads on Instagram: New Formats, Increased Revenue, Broader Availability – Instagram announces plans to leverage Facebook’s powerful Ads interface in their new Ads API, now available to select Facebook Marketing Partners and agencies. Instagram plans to expand availability to brands large and small throughout the next year.
Making Conversations Easier to follow on the Tweet Page – Good news for Twitter party-goers! Twitter conversations are easier to navigate than ever with grouped replies and featured exchanges highlighted in the stream.
Introducing Buyable Pins on Pinterest – Pinterest is not only a power discovery and curation tool; it’s become a power buying tool as well—93% of active Pinners report they you the platform to plan purchases and 87% say they have bought something because of Pinterest, according to this research by Millward Brown. Pinterest is now offers in-app purchasing, turning consumers into customers natively in the app.
Stay up-to-date on the latest social media updates and announcements!
- To review updates, announcements and social recaps on Facebook, head over to the Facebook Newsroom.
- For more updates on Twitter happenings, check out the latest announcements on the Twitter Blog.
- Check out Instagram for Business—this blog is devoted entirely to posting inspiration for brands and platform news regularly.
- Lots of new and exciting things are happening at Pinterest right now. Don’t miss any of their news on their company blog, Oh, How Pinteresting!
And of course, keep your eye right here on The Core for regular updates on social media changes that will affect fresh produce marketers. We’ll keep you in the loop with not only the latest info, but what it means for YOU and your brand!
