Welcome to this week’s #MMSocialReport! We’ve got plenty of news about Snapchat (is it finally the end for the app?), the potential for sponsored GIFs from Giphy, and a mysterious video-chat project from Facebook.
1. Snap looks to prove the effectiveness of its ad tools with new measurement program
This week’s Social Report is filled with news about Snapchat (more about their struggles a bit later). First, though, the parent company Snap is looking to prove their worth to advertisers with a new measurement program with heavy hitters like Neustar Marketshare, Analytics Partners, MMA, and Nielsen. While Snap may still be on the good side of advertisers, they’re struggling to keep up with competitor Instagram.
2. Facebook’s reportedly building a mysterious video chat camera and smart speaker
by @napilopez and @TheNextWeb
Facebook-made hardware is in our future. Reportedly the social media megastar has been working on two products — a device made specifically for video calls and a smart speaker à la Amazon Echo or Google Home. Unfortunately, neither of these ideas sound particularly inventive (do we really need another robot home assistant?), but knowing Facebook, they’ve likely got something cool up their sleeve.
3. Snap hits record low after getting rejected from the S&P 500
by @KatieRoof and @TechCrunch
Snapchat was hit by yet more bad news this week when they were rejected by the S&P 500. Have no idea what that is? Don’t worry—it’s just a popular stock market index. Snap has been on the downslide ever since Instagram released their Stories feature and the results from their most recent earnings report was disappointing. It’s not the end yet though! Snapchat continues to be innovative and exciting as we learned with the dancing hotdog craze last week.
4.Instagram Stories Celebrates a Year of Success—and the Decline of Snapchat
by @ianwright0101 and @prnews
The final piece of news surrounding Snapchat is technically about Instagram. Yes! Instagram Stories turned one year old on August 2nd. Although there were grumbles when the feature was released as a blatant copy of the previously mentioned Snapchat, it now boasts 250 million users. They also have interesting statistics for brands, like 50% of businesses using Stories.
5. Giphy is reportedly about to begin testing sponsored GIFs
by @danideahl and @verge
Everyone loves Giphy, the GIF search engine that has brought appropriate reactions to every conversation (mostly Facebook). Supposedly the service has 200 million users between all of its integrated apps and also has its own creative studio to create original GIFs (and with partners like Converse). Sponsored GIFs could work in a few different ways, the most likely of which would be prioritizing GIFs from companies when someone does a search. This sound like it wouldn’t be disruptive to the already great service.
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