@realDonaldTrump regularly causes outrage on Twitter… but don’t expect the micro-blogging platform to block him any time soon. New research released this week says that, as Twitter’s most prominent user, the US President is worth an estimated $US 2 billion to the company. That means, without Donald Trump, Twitter would lose almost a fifth of its value.
As the above proves, there’s no doubt that Twitter is a powerful communications platform, with huge influence over the public, politics, finance, etc. And yet, the company is struggling to turn this user engagement into advertising revenue. Why is this? Financial Times journalist Matthew Garrahan explores in this article – take a look.
Facebook this week announced updates aimed at making the news feed more readable. These weren’t major changes, but several subtle ones you may not have otherwise noticed, including increased colour contrast, larger link previews and circular profile picture frames. Facebook also updated its comments design, introducing bubble-shaped responses.
Facebook has been cracking down junk or spam content on the platform a lot recently. And this week it updated its news feed algorithm to start penalising photo posts with fake click-to-play buttons and videos that are actually just static images. These pesky videos have become popular as a sneaky way of increasing engagement or views on posts.
Visual
LinkedIn has added another feature aimed at increasing messaging on the platform. ‘Active Status’, now appears as a little green circle alerting you when your connections are online and available to chat. The simple change, which is currently being rolled out to all users, is likely to make the platform a lot stickier. Note – this feature is activated by default!
Earlier this year, Microsoft revamped its Skype mobile app, making it more heavily slanted towards media-sharing and introducing emojis, reactions and even a Snapchat-like stories feature. Now the revamped Skype design is rolling out on desktop too, but in a more limited fashion. The new interface gives Skype a more ‘youthful feel’, TechCrunch notes.
Winner
It’s something we’ve seen time and time again when ugly incidents hit the world stage – the triumph of togetherness and love through it all. And this week’s Charlottesville violence was yet another example. Amongst it all, Barack Obama sent out the tweet below – and it went on to become the most liked tweet of all time, with over 4 million likes.
Loser
We’ve written about this particular type of social fail several times before, and yet the brands never seem to learn! The UK’s National Lottery launched a campaign this week in which Twitter users could have their handles automatically superimposed onto photos of British Athletics team stars. Unsurprisingly, the campaign was hijacked as users changed their handles to controversial names and statements. Take a look.
Creative
An advertising agency in Cincinnati recently came up with a novel idea for attracting new recruits from out of town: setting up a Tinder profile… for Cincinnati. The idea came after the agency realised that ‘getting to know a new city is a little bit like going on a blind date’. The stunt paid off – connecting the agency with a new assistant account executive from Chicago. Who said romance was dead?
