Do you manage a Facebook Group? Now you can host Watch Parties. Also, Pinterest celebrated a milestone, and Instagram plays with adding IGTV into its main app. Here are the trending social media stories in the news.
Facebook’s Watch Party – Game Changer
Great news for Facebook Group members and admins – the company’s newest feature will allow another way for
interaction within groups. Watch Party is a feature that launched on July 25 for Facebook Groups that allows hosts to share video streaming sessions. It’s similar to Facebook Live with audience interaction, but you are adding pre-selected videos to your queue instead of recording in real time. Here’s how it works:
- Post to the group per usual, we recommend an eye-catching image and call to action enticing users to get involved.
- Add a few videos to start filling up your queue.
- Once group members have joined, the stream will start. Hosts will be able to go back and forth in the video timeline and add videos as they go along.
These Watch Parties can have multiple hosts that can add new videos to the queue. Everyone in the group will be able to see and comment on the same videos at the same time and suggest videos, which pop up in the hosts’ feeds that they can either approve or deny. The one limitation is that only videos posted on Facebook can be used. Facebook says it is testing it for users to experience with friends, and soon after, test it out with Facebook Pages, too.
Pinterest Reaches Ad Revenue Milestone
USA Today recently reported that Pinterest is “finally approaching $1 billion in ad revenue as it pushes toward an IPO in mid-2019.” Pinterest can attribute much of its success to mobile ads, and its unique edge above its social platform competitors – combining visual, social and search ads into on platform. It has proven to be extremely beneficial for retail, fashion, home improvement and do-it-yourselfers. Now, travel and financial companies are taking a bite out of the Pinterest pie.
The company has been particularly successful with its buyable pins for advertisers. Buyable pins, available to select US merchants and retailers, create a shopping experience for users allowing them to find and purchase items without leaving the app. Pinterest is working to continue to develop new ideas to cater to advertisers, and this recent milestone and projection for 2019 may have proven to skeptics that Pinterest is worth investing in after all. What do you think about Pinterest Ads?
IGTV Tests Carousel Feature
Nestled in the top right corner is Instagram’s newest IGTV feature. Users can choose to click on the orange-lit icon if they want to watch IGTV content, but can easily avoid it by simply looking through their Stories carousel or scrolling through their feed. Instagram plans to change this so that content on IGTV is sprinkled into the app more fluidly. TechCrunch confirmed with Instagram that it is experimenting with a carousel that will be placed between Stories and the Feed.
Similar to Snapchat’s Discover section, the new IGTV preview will show the user’s name, profile pic and a preview tile of the video, and users will be able to swipe to the left to see previews from various IGTV channels. It’s Instagram’s hope that this will encourage more users to explore the feature. TechCrunch predicts that if they don’t see IGTV’s audience as significant to its platform, introducing long-form, vertical videos won’t happen. What is your prediction of IGTV being blended into the main app? Will the numbers of users viewing increase?
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