Tag: Social Media

The User Experience Mentality: The New Social Experience

Updates we hate, love, and learn to love.

Don’t you hate it when Snapchat releases a new update and everything you knew about the app is located in a different place? User Experience innovation is a trial and error process. Sometimes app updates work effectively and though we hate them at first, we accommodate with time and learn to love them. Sometimes app updates don’t work, and everyone reacts negatively to them until they become discontinued and never to be seen again. 

Months before you chose to update your selfie-exchange platform on the App Store, software engineers were probably playing around with the placement of buttons on different parts of the screen, and moving entire segments of the app to different pages. More than just moving stuff around, they were doing lots of user testing. User experience (UX) designers focus on making changes that will make processes easier for the user and achieve objectives for the platform more efficiently. With every change they make, they test the user reactions with a wide range of subjects. They will carefully observe and note things like eye movement, finger navigation, and the timing being the user’s decision making while operating the platform. 

You may not remember it, but the appearance of Facebook’s platform has changed exponentially since it became popular in 2006. This article might help refresh your memory. Though many changes have been made in the past years, it is unlikely you faced a moment were you required lessons on how to use the new updates. If this would’ve been the case, you probably would’ve considered these “lessons” to be unworthy of your time, and Facebook would’ve died off within a year. With every change made to the platform and interface, UX designers were also focusing on making the changes easy to spot and get used to. If there is one thing users hate more than having to think, it is having to learn. UX designers can’t just build an entirely new experience from scratch, and launch it expecting people to react positively off the bat. 

Do you remember a time when you were mad about the “wall” on your Facebook profile being gone? If you said yes, odds are you’re an extremely meticulous person. If I said so myself, you probably don’t even remember it disappearing, because it was replaced by the “timeline”—which made more sense conceptually. The timeline concept was easy to get used to because it worked similar to the way the wall did. The placement of the timeline on your profile page was kept fairly the same to the wall. The timeline wasn’t just a name change for the wall. It introduced easier ways to interact with it. There were more noticeable indicators telling you to write what was on your mind, and the sections for each post became more defined. The idea of a timeline made more sense to us because Facebook was transitioning from being a “wall” where people posted things, to a full recollection of everyone’s treasured life events. 

A new way to interact.

I’m sad to say this, but the social experience for humans has changed in the past decades, and will never be the same ever again. Gen X’s were probably the last generation to ever experience social interactions in the most pure, and humanly form possible. With the introduction of social media platforms, corporations have had the freedom to feed biased information to us; distorting our overall perception of life and the people around us. Moreover, social media has encouraged us to put up an image with the way we lead our lives. These things may sound scary, but at least we can rest assured knowing everything was carefully planned—by engineers who did careful user-testing and just wanted to make our lives easier.

Wayfair, You Know Just What I Need… On Social Media

Over these past few weeks I have talked about many different impactful and notable social media campaigns that took the internet by storm. From Dove’s many mistakes to Ihop becoming Ihob. Today, I want to take another approach and talk about Wayfair’s Instagram. While you probably never thought there was anything special about it, the truth is, in 2017 and 2018 Wayfair has been leaving their mark on social media. Namely, Instagram. First lets touch on their Facebook. In 2017, their Facebook reach increased by 409% year over year. This is because Wayfair created videos to get their point across and to grab viewers attention. As we learned in this class, videos are a great way to boost engagement and gather views. It seemed to work phenomenally for them. On Instagram, Wayfair implemented use of Instagrams new feature which allows you to post links directly on your photo to the merchandise itself. When you tap the photo, names and prices of each merchandise pop up. When you click on one, it takes you directly to the link where you can purchase it on the company’s website. On Instagram, Wayfair increased their audience by 114% year over year. Wayfair and their “shop the look” approach seems to be working for them. It is important to never forget the many ways social media lets you connect with people besides merely posting. Stories, using the shop the look tool, and live videos all come into play. Wayfair knows that showing off their products by enabling the viewer to go directly to their website from the post. Customers can buy right from Wayfair’s photos and that is how you use social media to your advantage.

Split-Second Advertising

Neurons Inc. completed a research study for the Mobile Marketing Association to evaluate consumer’s reaction times to advertisements. Their research found that “consumers took 400 milliseconds to see and react emotionally to 67% of mobile ads tested.” (Ives, 2019) All of the brands had equal opportunities to be seen, however it was the big brands that evoked an emotional response. The majority of reactions occurred within the first second for still advertisements and 2 seconds for videos.

First impressions are just as important in mobile marketing as they are in real life. Since the majority of reactions occur within the first seconds, creating advertisements that focus on creating a strong first impression can greatly affect the ad’s viewing ratings. Viewability is a major player in where brand’s choose to buy spots for their advertisements. This makes sense due to the purpose of the advertisements being to engage a brand’s target audience.

With this information, it will not be surprising to see big brands begin shifting away from the longer advertisements that are common to find online and begin choosing to focus on shorter advertisements that last closer to 15 seconds. Since these brands are being successful in evoking responses at such a quick pace, I believe this would be a better usage of marketing resources. However, this is only referring to bigger brands. The research in this article suggests that small brands that are not as easily recognized will not have quite the same benefits as larger brands. Meaning that continuing with longer advertisements will probably be the best way for smaller brands to use their marketing dollars.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mobile-ads-do-more-work-in-one-second-than-you-might-think-11551870001?

Facebook adds feature that allows users to respond to Instagram messages via Messenger

Facebook announced earlier this week that users will soon be able to respond to Instagram and WhatsApp messages through their Facebook Messenger app. They hope that this will add a heightened sense of convenience with users between platforms. I think this is an awesome feature given that you can’t respond to Instagram direct messages if you’re on another platform besides a mobile device.

Owner of Pavos Extreme, Anibal Fuentes Perez, was selected to be a beta tester for this new software. Perez said that this unified messaging feature helped significantly with customer service issues. “It speeds up my work and has facilitated communication with my clients, especially during busy periods such as Christmas, when I received a large influx of messages,” says Perez.

Mark Zuckerberg announced this unified messaging system alongside his plans to integrate Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. I really think that this feature is going to help out the corporate side of social media, specifically the customer service aspect. Right now, I assume that Facebook customer service personnel probably have to switch between all three different messaging applications when responding to users. Hopefully this integration helps make things a little easier for them. On the public side of things, I also think that users will enjoy having the ability to check all their messages on one platform.

Zuckerberg hopes that this integration program between the three apps is completed by the end of 2019 or early next year. Facebook intends to get this done quickly, so I assume that they are going to do everything in their power to get this update out sooner rather than later.

https://marketingland.com/facebook-pages-will-soon-be-able-to-respond-to-instagram-direct-messages-256708

Instagram continues to be a game changer of social media

Since its launch in 2010, Instagram has been the game changer of social media. Experts have predicted that Instagram will soon surpass the OG of social media, Facebook, in the near future, becoming the most popular and profitable platform on social media. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to many.

When Instagram was gaining its popularity between 2010 to 2012, many people see it as a hipster app, where you take pretentious photos of your latte and throw in a filter to make it look good. Slowly, Instagram started to add in more features. Each time when a new feature is introduced, despite the wave of uproar at the start, many users soon accepted it and embraced it. From allowing users to post videos on their feed to allowing portrait photo format to IG story and to even now, IGTV, Instagram has come a long way. But each feature was a strategic choice that makes the app better and it has succeeded at making the user spend more time on it.

Right now, Instagram is trying to grow its IGTV but since it was launched, the result has been lukewarm. Although Instagram engaged a few creators who have a significant following to engage people to watch IGTV, many people are still turn-off by the vertically-oriented video.

Instagram knows it very well that the reason why IGTV did not take off is that video rarely look nice in a vertical format (this is why we created widescreen!) and it is always hard to tell a story using it. So, the solution that Instagram came up with was to challenge some of the world’s most creative people to show users how to make vertical video looks good in a native ad on ADWEEK.

In the article, creators from all over the world dissect the reasons why the vertical format is difficult to work with for storytelling and video production. Then they continue by showing example and tips on how to shoot in vertical format. After reading this article and seeing the creative example, for the first time in my life I’m loving the vertical video format.

I started to see a lot of potential in IGTV and how it will get really trendy very soon because after seeing all these creative vertical videos many people would be inspired to create their own vertical video and be one of the first adopters of this video format and IGTV.

When creators make videos that are aesthetically pleasing, people would naturally want to spend their time watching it. The fact that Instagram has become an all-in-one app (update function, messaging function, story function, polls, live video etc. ) means that there is a huge potential that other platform can become obsolete if they don’t catch up with Instagram when it comes to innovation. In the near future, IGTV might even surpass YouTube!

https://www.adweek.com/sponsored/the-worlds-most-creative-people-show-you-how-to-master-vertical-video/?mvt=o&mvn=0556ac8f77ef4474bf61919d89dac452&mvp=NA-ADWEEKRESPSITE-11238673&mvl=Homepage+Multi+Creative

Fiji Water stumbles onto Golden Globe success

Award show season always has its share of groundbreaking advertising moments and stand-out publicity stunts, but few have captured the attention of social media like the ‘Fiji Water Girl’ at the 2019 Golden Globes. 

Fiji has long positioned themselves as the water chosen by Hollywood’s stars, so it’s no surprise to see them at the Golden Globes. They’ve sponsored greenrooms of award shows, red carpets at elite events, and fashion shows around the world for years. What made this specific advertising moment reach vitality in the social media world? The face of Kelleth Cuthbert, Fiji Water Girl.

Cuthbert was hired to stand on the red carpet holding bottles of Fiji Water, but while Fiji’s CEO insists that she was given no further instructions, it seems as though the model was intentionally attempting to photobomb as many A-list celebrities as possible. Standing closely behind the likes of Jim Carrey, Dakota Fanning, and Camilla Belle, Cuthbert stole the show with her direct looks into the camera and demure smile. The model insists that the stunt was unplanned and that photographers caught her as she was repositioning herself or looking to move out of the shot, but the photos seem suspiciously intentional. 

Whatever the case, social media ate up the photos of this well-dressed photobomber, with the CEO reporting over a billion impressions across all platforms. According to Apex Marketing, the brand also set a Golden Globes record for virality, earning impression numbers that hadn’t been seen in the award show’s history. Had the brand paid for those impressions through traditional advertising, they would have spent over $12 million to receive the same success. 

What does the Fiji Water Girl teach us about virality? Sometimes social media success is calculated and well-planned. Other times, brands get lucky and have a model in the right place at the right time. Either way, it’s clear that the power of social media and the value of online platforms is crucial to the way brands interact with consumers today. 

Namaste, Snapchat!

As Snapchat sought to expand its’ user base, they questioned what it takes to reach a broader audience. The answer?

Their native language.

With this in mind, Snapchat launched a beta test with 8 new language options including the following:

  • Hindi
  • Marathi
  • Gujarati
  • Punjab
  • Filipino
  • Vietnamese
  • Urdu
  • Malay

D06xcC8XQAAq850.jpg-large

Looking further, the majority of these languages are primarily spoken in India, a growing market for social media. “With Facebook now serving more users in India than in the US. India is also the second biggest market, in terms of users, for both Instagram and LinkedIn, and given it’s the second most populous nation on Earth (behind China) – and the second-biggest smartphone market.” – Andrew Hutchinson, Socialmediatoday.com.

Snapchat was originally made for iOS devices which caused problems in reaching Android users. They struggled to make a version of the app for other devices, leaving many foreign markets out of the loop. Where India is not lacking in population, they are lacking in advancement. In2017, Evan Spiegel, CEO, allegedly said he did not have intentions of expanding the app’s reach”into poor countries like India”. Although Spiegel denied making the comment, it made a bold statement that people couldn’t forget.

There is some truth in the statement. Having India as a strong market for Snapchat would significantly increase users, but before that can happen, they need to cater to the needs of that market. Whether it be adding their native languages or making the app more functional with their technology, changes should be made. Snapchat has made a big step towards foreign markets and I think it only goes up from here.

 

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/snapchat-launches-beta-test-in-eight-different-languages/549789/

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/snap-inc-releases-better-than-expected-q4-numbers-showing-growth-in-users/516483/

Wendy’s with the Roasts

If you have a twitter, or even if you don’t, you probably know about Wendy’s twitter account. Filled with puns, snide comments, and trolling, they have successfully taken a boring fast food twitter account and created something big. Wendy’s income levels for 2017 skyrocketed. According to deputy.com, Net income was $159.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2017 compared to net income of $28.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2016. Statistics show that just by implementing a new social media plan, Wendy’s sales have gone up 49.7%. Wendy’s VP, Carl Loredo stated that Wendy’s has always been different, from frosties instead of milkshakes to a humorous, new take on social media. “Its Twitter presence has made Wendy’s not just a more-fun-than-usual branded account, but a destination in some ways: ‘We believe that people are coming to us today on social to be entertained. That’s the commitment we have to deliver on.’” states qsrmagazine.com. Wendy’s mascot, the red-headed pigtailed girl, is just as playful and carefree as their social media. Which is what Wendy’s may be basing their twitter off of. One of the starts of their brilliant social media success is they mixtape Wendy’s dropped on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, and shared it on their social media sites. Wendy’s is an excellent example of using social media, especially twitter, to a company’s advantage. Social media has the power to transform companies and spike sales if you know how to do it correctly.

 

Screen Shot 2019-03-04 at 4.33.17 PM

Keep the Internet Child Friendly

In December 2018, Oath (who is the owner of AOL and Yahoo) settled to pay $5 million for violating federal child privacy laws. The violation was in regards to their advertisement placements. AOL placed hundreds of advertisements on websites who’s target audience is under the age of 13 using personal data. The usage of personal data placed Oath in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 also known as COPPA. The purpose of COPPA is to prevent children’s personal data from being used by advertisers for target marketing.  

Since this ruling was handed down, more internet companies are making changes to their sites to create a more kid-friendly environment. An example of this is Tumblr’s decision to remove all adult content to make the site more inviting for all ages. A major part of this shift towards making the internet a better environment for children comes from data collected about children’s internet usage. Everyday approximately 170,000 children get on the internet for the first time each day, and according to eMarketers 83% of children interact daily with digital media and 70% are on social media daily.

YouTube has become the latest internet giant to take action towards protecting children who are on their site. Thursday, the company announced that they will be disabling comments on videos with children in them. This is a result of pedophilia behavior that has become a pattern on these types of videos. The reason for completely eliminating the comment section instead of censoring the language used is that some comments currently being left are words that would not necessarily be picked out as inappropriate. Additionally older minors who are also at potential risk of pedophile behavior will have their comments sections turned off as well. These efforts are being made with the intentions of protecting young children who use YouTube and to maintain a kid-friendly environment.

Vavra, Shannon. “YouTube disables comments on videos of children to root out pedophilia”. Axios. Retrieved from https://www.axios.com/youtube-disables-comments-young-children-videos-pedophilia-e95c0b9b-6a3d-420a-ac40-d4e9bdf5b7ef.html?

Fischer, Sara. “The internet reckons with kids”. Axios. Retrieved from https://www.axios.com/internet-kids-online-privacy-oath-payout-29b6a61c-637e-4650-afb5-a56da099e39b.html

Maheshwari, Sapna. “Oath Agrees to $5 Million Settlement Over Children’s Privacy Online.” New York Times. Retrieved from  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/03/business/media/oath-children-online-privacy.html?

 

YouTube Deactivates All Comments Under Minors’ Content to Fight Predators

Lately, the talk of children’s safety while using online platforms like YouTube has been debated. This is due to the fact that many minors find themselves being targets to adult predators online. Recently YouTube has been the platform for small predatorial rings, where content creators share videos and images of minors that are sexually charged.

YouTube has quite a history concerning content moderation, and has come under hot water for many content creators who have posted illegal content. So far, YouTube has decided to disable the comments under content made by minors.

For some, this isn’t a great idea because it gets rid of both good and bad engagement with posts. For those who make money off of the platform, this lowers their engagement stats, and will keep downloadthem from knowing what their subscribers think.

For others, they see this as a small step in the right direction while the social platform updates more efficient ways of filtering and monitoring comments. So far, around 400 accounts have been disabled through this method. This is not a lot in comparison to the billions of YouTube channels that exist globally, however, the company claims that they are working to filter using “trigger” words or language.

It’s unfortunate that one has to worry about the exploitation of children on the internet, but there has to be steps towards stopping it. We cannot allow views, likes, comments, or subscriptions keep us from remembering the safety of children.

For the individuals who think disabling comments are too much, I happen to disagree. I believe that the safety of any individual especially those who are minors- are worth much more than any comment on a video.

 

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/youtube-deactivates-comments-on-videos-featuring-minors-to-combat-predatory/549469/