Making headlines this week: Is Facebook’s Notify App the new News Feed, YouTube’s stolen views, Pinterest’s mobile re-design & an update from us – we’ve raised 5M.
Quoted: “People have different ways they want to consume information. Search is one way. Social is another way. And we think push notifications might be yet another.” – Michael Cerda, product director at Facebook.
Ahhhh, Push It
Facebook introduced its new standalone app, Notify, which enables iPhone users to get mobile updates from publishers. Similar to Twitter, the app prompts users to follow category-based “stations” to receive updates straight to their lock screens to stay distracted by connected to the things they care about throughout the day.
Will push notifications be the new News Feed? ‘Featured’ publishers, sponsored stations and notifications have the potential to open up significant revenue and distro channels for the FB and publishers alike, but whether or not users want more ‘push’ notifications is another issue entirely. TBD.
Hot Goss
Shortly following Facebook’s announcement that it’s hitting 8bn video views daily, this YouTube video from Munich-based Kurzgesagt is making serious rounds, accusing FB of ‘stealing billions of views’ (17bn in Q1 2015 alone) from content creators and advertisers.
Since debates over FB’s rigged algorithms have already gone on for days, the key accusations to note are ‘forced virality‘ – the 3 sec. autoplay ‘view’ and ‘freebooting‘ – stolen content.
The bigger i$$ue: the value of 17bn views is on average, $34M to creators ($2 CPM) and $5.1bn in ad revenue ($0.30 CPV).
Second That Emotion
The reign of hearts could be shorter than you think. Twitter is experimenting with emoji reactions to users’ tweets.
Talkin’ ‘Bout That Pin-volution
Pinterest rolled out a revamped mobile profile page in the name of utility. While the grid layout remains the same, the new design evolves to display a user’s most recent pins.
The result serves to reengage users with current (pin)interests, as well as keeping most-recent Pins top-of-mind as the network moves to include more paid options for advertisers.
#MicDrop
Adblock haters, always-on strategists and those in constant mourning over organic social engagement, this one’s for you.
Wrapping up this week, we’re excited to share we’ve raised $5M to accelerate the growth of the Mavrck micro-influencer marketing platform, powering brands to ID & activate their most influential customers to drive word-of-mouth at scale across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Check out the full announcement in TechCrunch or go straight to the source.
