Taking a photo and posting it on Instagram, with or without a mug in the frame, is a way for all of us to become our own historians, grasping at tangible evidence of our time on the planet. “Instagram,” Suler said, “is therefore a tool for validating one’s life.”
On Friday, Facebook dropped its restriction around how branded content can be distributed on its social network. Anyone who runs a verified Facebook page — a publisher, brand or celebrity, for instance — can now post articles, videos, photos, links or other content to that page that someone else paid for without needing Facebook’s permission or cutting the company in on the proceeds.
Source: Facebook drops branded content restrictions for publishers
Interesting move. Typically on the web, the FTC frowns upon this type of “branded content” without proper alerts for audiences.
Facebook has built in “tagging” to try to offer some disclosure, but I’m not sure that’s going far enough for most FB users:
There’s another catch: any eligible account posting content paid for by a brand to its Facebook page has to tag the brand so that the top of the post carries the line “[Publisher] with [Brand].” That tagging creates a way for marketers to be notified when a publisher posts content that’s paid for by their brand so that they can share it or promote it as an ad.
The ultimate arbiter, of course, is Facebook’s algorithm itself. Shared items that have a promotional “feel” to hear typically get throttled by the algorithm, which limits exposure on users’ newsfeeds, even if they’ve Liked a page.
It’s amazing how rapidly social algorithmic feeds such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat etc are changing the notions of what is permissible and profitable in the marketing world rather than conforming to tried-and-true tactics or even federal guidelines.
Like it or not, branded content is one of the most successful online marketing strategies over the last few years, and it doesn’t show any signs of slowing as brands, publishers, and social networks continue to figure out how to innovate around the concept.
“The document, obtained by TechCrunch but kept private to protect its verified source, says businesses will be able to send ads as messages to people who previously initiated a chat thread with that company. To prepare, the document recommends that businesses get consumers to start message threads with them now so they’ll be able to send them ads when the feature launches.”
Source: Facebook Plans To Put Ads In Messenger | TechCrunch
Gross.
Messaging is the future of social networking. No doubt.
“People who previously initiated a chat” for Facebook is about as nuanced as people who consume oxygen in their lungs (based on their current model). Expect to see a WHOLE LOT of “if you want to know more, MESSAGE US ON FACEBOOK!” posts / ads in your near future.
Dumb mistakes like this will cost Facebook its rather substantial lead in the messaging space here in the U.S.
Harrelson Marketing will be testing out other ways to do authentic marketing that doesn’t involve this type of cheap real estate move.
“Today, however, the newest data increasingly support the idea that young people are actually transitioning out of using what we might term broadcast social media – like Facebook and Twitter – and switching instead to using narrowcast tools – like Messenger or Snapchat. Instead of posting generic and sanitized updates for all to see, they are sharing their transient goofy selfies and blow-by-blow descriptions of class with only their closest friends.”
Source: So long social media: the kids are opting out of the online public square
I completely agree with the author’s post that young people are rapidly moving from broadcast to narrowcast social media (at least for their most important or personal communications with friend groups etc).
However, the post concludes with a note that young people might not be as aware or open to ideas outside of their close friends group if they’re not engaging in “social media” such as Facebook or Twitter.
“The great promise of social media was that they would create a powerful and open public sphere, in which ideas could spread and networks of political action could form.”
That wasn’t the great promise of social media. Social media, like Twitter, will always have an inherent imbalance. Couple that with the widespread amount of abuse and harassment, particularly of female and transgender users on Twitter, and it’s no wonder why young people would shy away from using these platforms for more meaningful engagement.
Messaging, in small groups, overcomes this. Besides, networks of political action figured out long ago that governments of political action are closely watching broadcast social media and have already turned to encrypted channels such as Telegram.
Narrowcasting isn’t just more meaningful, it has the potential to be more actionable than the hashtag laden culture that we’ve created with public tweets.
Long ago in a conversation (well, more like me pleading with him to shed some light on why he was so enamored with Second Life), my pal Wayne Porter turned me on to the idea of Dunbar’s Number. It took me over a decade to decipher Wayne (as is normally the case), but he was right. The “Monkeysphere” is very real. And it’s going to kill Facebook. It’s already killing Twitter.
I’ve written before (back in 2011) about narrowcasting and responsible marketing… looks like we’re finally getting there.
With the evolution of blogging early in the ’00s and the advent of Technorati, Delicious, Flickr, Friendster, and eventually MySpace we 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, and 80 something year olds were sold a bag of goods with a label of “social media.” It was a glorious time to be on the web. Everything from logos to AJAX to revenue models felt new as we wiped the crust of AOL from our eyes to see the wider world. Everything from grocery delivery to advertising would be revolutionized. We didn’t realize we were the intermediate step.
We were Ham The Chimp to this generation’s Mercury program. We’ve still got a long collective way to go to the Moon, though.
From churches to political campaigns to social media flame wars to real life gang fights… our brains describe so much of our weird actions. Why don’t we care about the people (well, probably robots now) collecting and sorting our trash when we throw glass bottles into a bin (recycling or no)? Why do we so easily eat and wrap our furniture with other tasty mammals who we now know have feelings, intelligence, and memories? Why do we so easily dismiss the conservatives or gays or whites or women or alcoholics or welfare moms? Because they aren’t in our Monkeyspheres.
Not to be devotional, but Lent is a time for me as a person of christian faith to reflect on that and what it means to my own impact on this connected, but ever fragmented, world.
Don’t bemoan the loss of Twitter or Facebook as avenues of advertising and marketing. Let’s shoot for the moon and make revenue models that appeal to the angels of our better selves rather than our lizard brains.
“The golden era of mobile apps is already over. Americans have been downloading zero of them per month on average. Most of us have all the apps we need and have narrowed our use down to a few messaging and social networking services. So, instead of wasting thousands of dollars pushing an app on an unwilling public, businesses like Bauer Kitchen are taking their business to services such as Kik, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp that their customers are already using to text.“
Source: Kik Battles Facebook With Bots In The New Messaging Wars – Forbes
2016 is the year that messaging apps mature into commerce environments that companies will build on top of, rather than building their own apps.
You’ll be ordering food, hailing cabs, buying tickets, and checking the weather all within the same app you message your friends very soon.
From January 2008:
“Other candidates that have been using Twitter have been posting info about events for local followers or either links to YouTube video of rally’s, etc. It would be a shame if the candidates follow McCain lead and bring the negativity so associated with TV political messages into the Twitter medium.”
Source: First Political Attack Tweet? – Sam Harrelson
Dear 8 Year Younger Sam: Ha. It gets worse. It gets much worse. Enjoy it while you can.
“Facebook urgently needs to address the impact that its algorithm changes are having on nonprofits, NGOs, civil society, and political activists—especially those in developing countries, who are never going to be able to “pay to play” and for whom Facebook is one of the few really effective ways to get a message out to a wide audience without government control or censorship.”
Source: Facebook Is Throttling Nonprofits and Activists
I’d urge nonprofits (like our own Hunger Initiative) and activists to seek out means of distributing and organizing online communications that aren’t reliant on social networking silos.
Of course, it’s easy to point to Facebook with its 2 billion users or Twitter with its ~400 million users and say that’s where people are in 2016. However, nothing is to stop groups from developing their own sites / forums / online presences (even on limited funds in places of civil unrest or poor network connections) and piping content into the silos that are at the behest of corporate interests (as in the case of Twitter’s apparent decision to pursue algorithmic feeds).
Indie is the way to go, especially if you want to authentically share your own gospels:
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
“I keep remembering that, between Google Reader and its limits (items must have titles), and Twitter with its limits (only 140 chars, no titles, one link, no styling), same with Facebook (no links or styling) that my online writing has diminished dramatically, conforming to the contradictory limits of each of these systems.
I keep working on this, still am. Every day.”
Source: Blogging like it’s 1999 | Dave Winer
Amen (emphasis mine):
“With social media, be it Twitter, or Facebook, or Instagram, I’m always aware of the audience. I have a general idea of who is following or friending or, most especially, favoriting. And so I’m tempted to write for that audience. Its not so much that I write for the likes —though they have their intoxicating qualities. Its that I start to write based on who I perceive that audience is. I start to mutter about what I think they will be interested in, rather than what I’m interested in.
There is an anonymity of audience when it comes to blogging. It’s like being on stage with the spotlights blinding you from anything beyond the first few rows. You’re up there putting it out there. Those friendly and familiar faces in the front row can be encouraging, for sure, but who knows who, if anyone, is in the rows beyond.”
Source: I’m Not Saying Blogging is Better – by John Chandler
“Changing the button is like Coca-Cola messing with its secret recipe. Cox had tried to battle the like button a few times before, but no idea was good enough to qualify for public testing. “This was a feature that was right in the heart of the way you use Facebook, so it needed to be executed really well in order to not detract and clutter up the experience,” he says. “All of the other attempts had failed.” The obvious alternative, a “dislike” button, had been rejected on the grounds that it would sow too much negativity.”
Source: Inside Facebook’s Decision to Blow Up the Like Button
This is a huge change for the network, and will elicit a number of (fascinating) response types from love to hate judging from previous changes Facebook has made to its privacy policies and Newsfeed over the years… it’ll sort itself out after a few months but expect to see and hear lots in the media about this change!
Similarly, there was a loud outcry when Twitter switched from “stars” to “hearts” to symbolize “favoriting” tweets on its network back in November. Even the ease of “liking” something on Instagram has been a major cause of its success (especially with younger demographics).
So, social feedback on networks such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram can be seen as a major component of why people use them to post personal thoughts, pictures, or updates. Skinner boxes are alive and well, so we’ll see how Facebook handles the transition in the coming months.
Seriously, go listen to the first few minutes of this This American Life episode if you’re a doubter.
#OMGPRETTY
