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Becca’s Hype: Facebook shakes things up

This week I talk a lot about Facebook with a touch of Twitter at the end for good measure.

Facebook acquires tbh app

Facebook want to attract a younger audience to their platform (which my 14 year cousin tells me is ‘so not cool’ with teenagers), and so they’re going about it by buying the popular US teen app, ‘tbh’. What’s the app about then? tbh takes a different approach to traditional question and answer apps such as ASKfm and the now closed down Formspring, letting users answer polls about their friends, anonymously. The app encourages positivity by asking users what their favourite things are about their friends, and the person with the most votes will receive gems. These are used as little trophies to show who’s the best study buddy in class. The app has been described by New York Magazine as ‘woke’. If that’s not high praise I don’t know what is 😉

Let’s cut to the chase, why have Facebook acquired tbh? I think it’s so that they don’t let the next big app slip through the net, (see Snapchat). Facebook already have a dominance in the social media app charts, so why shouldn’t they add to that further? Most importantly though, by having an app with this younger demographic, Facebook get what they love most – data. Data about the people they find hardest to reach. It gives them a footing in an audience they’re struggling to crack.

Facebook Explore feed shakes things up

Here’s the deal with Facebook’s new Explore feed. It’s designed to aid users in their discovery of content across the platform, further than the pages you’re already following. Sounds cool right? Perhaps a method of breaking the filter bubble? Possibly, but the feed will still tailor the content to your preferences, they want you to like stuff, remember. However, there’s something bigger going on here. As the Explore Feed rolls out globally, it’s been noted by Filip Struhárik that in Slovakia, Sri Lanka, Serbia, Bolivia, Guatemala and Cambodia, all posts by pages are moved from the newsfeed to Explore Feed.

This is big.

In these locations, a massive drop in organic reach has already been seen by social media managers monitoring pages, as users now have to click through to see posts from pages they’ve liked or followed. Facebook have stated that this is just a regional test, but could it be giving us a glimpse of what’s to come next year? Are page admins going to have to pay to get in front of users on the news feed?

Matt Navarra from The Next Web sums it up well in this tweet:

Instagram change the look of their CTAs the merge with user feeds

Ads on the network are going to become a little more subtle thanks to an update to CTA buttons on posts. Rather than being white and then turning to blue if you linger on the post, CTA buttons will now take on the main colour of the ad’s photo or video. Cool, huh? What’s the motivation for this change? It’s going to look a lot less like an intrusive ad to users as they scroll through their feed, perhaps helping to increase engagement from users. Fab!

Can they sort out the algorithm next?

Twitter have released a schedule for updates to their safety policy.

Don’t worry, not all of this week’s updates are Facebook related! Twitter have released a schedule of all the planned safety work they’re going to be carrying out over the next few months, to combat some of the criticism they’ve been facing lately about safety measures on the platform.

Some of the updates you can expect to see include:

  • A better experience for Suspension Appeals
  • Witness Reporting Review Update
  • Expanded enforcement of Unwanted sexual advances

Keep an eye out to see these updates, plus more, roll out. Are they doing enough to protect users or is it too little too late?

Becca Holloway

Becca Holloway

Social Media Consultant

Becca is a social media consultant at Base Creative and has coordinated Sharing Social London meet-ups since launching in early 2018.

Social media engagement

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