For the past three years we have been sharing ‘what’s hot on the web’ in our Links of the Week updates on Friday. But guess what: a new year is the perfect time for a new format.
This Week in Social will appear each Friday, starting today, bringing you the latest news from the most popular social platforms and some creative inspiration too.
Tweaks to the news feed in a bid to cut down on hoax posts
In an effort to flag up hoax or misleading stories and hopefully save you time and hassle in the process, the social networking giant is now adding an annotation to posts that have been widely reported as time-wasting content.
Havas partners with Facebook’s Atlas for multi-device ad targeting
Havas Media Group, home to Havas Media and Arena, has formed a partnership with Facebook’s Atlas to better track users and serve ads around the world, starting in the US and Western Europe.
Password-killing tool is now available on the web
‘Digits’ is one element of Twitter Fabric, the new suite of tools for developers the social network rolled out last year during its Flight Developer Conference. Digits replaces passwords with mobile phone numbers with the goal of making it easier to sign up for new apps.
Twitter really doesn’t want it’s top users to share Instagram links anymore
The prompt was sent out to a group of notable users in media, entertainment, sports and other categories, according to a source close to Twitter. That same source characterized the prompt as an educational effort to show the service’s celebrities and influential users how to use the native photo function to boost engagement.
Twitter announces ‘While you were away’ recap feature
The new feature is designed to provide users with a recap of ‘important’ tweets they might’ve missed while away from the service. Twitter has been pushing it to a limited number of users since the start of this month, but evidently now feels happy to go ahead with a full-scale launch.
Video
Ex-Hulu CEO’s site Vessel will show videos 3 days before YouTube
After signing up for Vessel, users are provided video content that will not appear anywhere else online besides the site for at least 72 hours. Vessel has been poaching YouTube stars for months.
Social Winners
The Guardian – The most tweeted UK newspaper
Stories from The Guardian are tweeted on average 392,358 times per week, making it the most popular newspaper in the UK on Twitter.
Social Losers
Pope announces start of World War III in media Twitter hack
The Twitter accounts of United Press International and the New York Post were hacked last Friday afternoon, tweeting that the U.S. and China had begun a war at sea, and that Pope Francis had announced the start of World War III.
Creative of spot of the week
After rebranding last year Airbnb is on a roll again. This time it has launched a creative marketing campaign that is mapping Airbnb activity around the world: a 3D globe where people can zoom in and navigate like Google Earth.
It gives an instant insight into places where it’s more popular and you can even drill down to see the faces behind their success. Visually it’s very impressive but the main take away would be the use of vast amount of data visualized in a creative way.
Its new brand message of ‘belonging’ complements the use of the #OneLessStranger hashtag for this campaign really well too. Airbnb call it a social experiment to reduce the number of strangers in the world.
By Rachel Pritchard (Digital Account Executive) and Umang Dokey (Creative Designer). Tune in next Friday for all the latest social media news and creative inspiration.
