New landmarks for
- LinkedIn as it reaches 10m members in the UK; this means four out of five British professionals are now part of the business network.
- Google+ reaches 400m members as it reaches it’s 1st birthday, it currently claims to have 100m monthly users. Although 100m monthly users in 12 months is an achievement, this does mean that ¾ of those that have signed up don’t use the site (regularly).
Google acquires Instagram competitor Snapseed
Google acquired the iOS photo-editing app Snapseed for an undisclosed sum of money. Snapseed differs from Instagram in that it lacks the social network aspect, its main features being photo optimisation and film-like filter effects. Earlier this year Google acquired Picnik, a browser-based image-editing tool so it seems likely that Google is working to bring more photo-editing tools to Google+.
Changes to Facebook Offers
- It has started charging marketers for the use of the Offers feature. According to Reuters’ Alistair Barr and Alexei Oreskovic, “in coming weeks Facebook will require merchants to pay at least $5 on related ads to promote each Facebook Offer to a targeted audience of fans and friends of fans. The cost will vary based on the size of a company’s Facebook page.”
- After previously struggling to measure the precise success from the Offer to in-store, it is now going to use barcodes or a unique code that can be tagged to an offer.
Facebook expands Highlights - In May Facebook started testing out a feature called ‘Highlight’ which allows users to pay to get their status to appear in more people’s newsfeeds. The feature seems bizarre to me and gives people the opportunity to pay for the attention they obviously crave on Facebook. It was initially trialled in New Zealand alone and it was obviously a success because Facebook is rolling it out to other countries across Europe now.
Cover photos are the way for social networks- Facebook went first, Google+ updated it’s profile designs last year to have a banner image. Now Twitter has followed suit with a background photo. Twitter has also released updates for its iOS and Android apps, making the design and function nearly identical to the desktop version.
#WaitroseReasons asked Twitter followers to state the reasons why they shopped at Waitrose. This caused a backlash of people joking about how Waitrose is only suitable for the rich e.g. “I shop at Waitrose because the produce is simply sublime darling, leave the peasants to shop at Lidl, haraar!!#waitrosereasons”. Some may say that any publicity is good publicity as this started trending on Twitter. Waitrose responded in an approachable way and thanked people for their funny responses. What do you think of this?
Alzheimer’s Facebook App – A very cleverly designed app which asks users to donate their Facebook timeline to raise awareness of the disease. Once downloaded your timeline appears blank and your cover photo says: “Imagine a life without memories. For 36 million people living with Alzheimer’s disease this is a reality.” A great app for a great cause.
Viral of the week- Samsung Galaxy SIII.-The next big thing is already here.
iPhone5 makes the viral of the week for the second week in a row, not in a good way. Yet again it is genius marketing from Samsung.
