How a popular app listened in to users

Welcome to another blog – this week one of the world's popular sports apps cops a fine for a privacy breach, Snapchat is back in business, and Facebook is trying the ethical approach to data collection.

Spain’s premiere soccer league hacked users’ phones.

Do you have an app that can listen in to you without letting you know?

This week, Spain’s premier soccer league, La Liga, was smacked with a 250,000-euro fine for using its mobile app to spy on millions of fans as part of a ploy to catch venues showing unlicensed broadcasts of professional matches.

Using its app, La Liga would remotely turn on the microphone functions on users’ phones to listen for the sound of a broadcast match. Utilising a similar function to song-finding app Shazam, if broadcast audio was detected, the app was then used to geo-locate that user and the establishment they were in.

Spain’s data protection agency issued the fine after discovering up to 50,000 La Liga users’ phones had been used for the purpose without any of the users being notified. However, it seems La Liga may still come out financially ahead as the ploy revealed 600 establishments using an illegal broadcast, all of which received criminal cases.

Snapchat hits back

Last month, Snapchat achieved the kind of virility most companies can only dream of. On May 8, Snapchat released a photo filter that, by rounding a users’ face and smoothing away their wrinkles, transforms them into the toddler version of themselves.

Over the next two days Snapchat debuted a pair of gender-swap filters which either gave users a square jaw and stubble to look more stereotypically masculine, or a dolled-up, soft glow to look more feminine.

The result was a torrent of user-generated content, mostly people showing the world what they’d look like if they flipped genders. Men “joked” about being attracted to the female versions of their bros, while women trolled their boyfriends with their rugged good looks.

The internet usually churns through viral ephemera in a matter of days, if not hours, but the gender-swap filters have had surprising staying power.

The filters also seemed to drive a sharp increase in the daily downloads of the Snapchat app across iOS and Android. Snapchat was downloaded across the platforms an estimated 41.5 million times worldwide in May, more than twice the number of downloads from the previous month (16.8 million) and in May of last year (17.6 million), according to third-party data.

Prior to these filters, Snapchat was only being downloaded approximately 600,000 times a day.

The filters are a much-needed victory for the embattled social media company, which has struggled to retain users over the past several years. And though the company is experiencing a tepid resurgence — users are holding steady, and revenue and stock price are all up — it remains to be seen whether Snapchat can maintain its momentum.

Facebook will pay you if you allow it to track what you do.

It’s no lie – Facebook will once again begin paying users to monitor how they use their phone through a new app called Study.

The app will monitor which apps are installed on a person’s phone, the time spent using those apps, the country you’re in, and additional app data that could reveal specific features you’re using, among other things. Facebook says it won’t see any specific content, however, including messages, passwords, and websites you visit.

The launch of the app indicates how much Facebook still feels it needs this data on how people are using their phones, and that Facebook has perhaps learned a something from its long list of controversies.

Currently the study is only available to users 18+ who use an Android device.

SPOILER ALERT - Australia’s Dundee Ad campaign has won a Logie!

Bauer Media has today announced that Tourism Australia’s ad Dundee: Australia’s Tourism Ad in Disguise, by Um and Droga5, has been voted Australia’s favourite ad and the winner of the ‘Most Popular Television Commercial’ category for the 61st Logies.

The prize includes a $100,000 marketing campaign across Bauer Network as well as four tickets to the Logies with complimentary flights and accommodation.

Tourism Australia managing director John O’Sullivan said that its Dundee ad had achieved the ultimate success of capturing the imagination of both Americans and Australians alike. Well done Dundee!

That’s it for this week, enjoy your weekend!

Apple branches out, Facebook faces a test

Welcome back to another weekly blog – 13 blogs down now! This week looks at Australia’s data breach scare, Apple’s announcement at their Worldwide Developers Conference, the rising pressure surrounding Mark Zuckerberg, and Facebook’s new cryptocurrency.

Australia just experienced a data breach that many felt was a little too close for comfort

The Australian National University (ANU) is in damage control this week after it was discovered that an estimated 200,000 students have fallen victim to a sophisticated database hack. The hack was discovered a fortnight ago but actually took place in late 2018. The stolen data included names, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, personal email addresses, emergency contact details, tax file numbers, payroll information, bank account details, passport details, and student academic records. It’s a substantial haul.

For those affected it’s an awful situation to be presented with. For wider Australia, having watched Facebook struggle with privacy issues from afar, having something happen in home territory is a reality check.

We aren’t invincible to privacy breaches here and organisations storing databases of our information need to ensure they are up-to-date with the best protective measures to ensure privacy.

ANU concluded their hack announcement acknowledging that they had implemented the latest protection measures to ensure no additional data could be accessed.

We’ll have to see whether or not the number of people affected by this attack increases 

Apple changes it up

Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference took place in California this week and there was a stack of announcements for a variety of their products and services. Here’s a quick run-down of what was shared:

• Apple is killing iTunes: Instead it will be split into three individual apps: Music, Podcasts, and TV & Movies. Apple users have been complaining that the program is out-dated for years and it seems Apple is finally listening.

• Mac Pro: A brand new Apple toy was revealed at the conference. It boasts a list of improved features that make it their best Mac product ever. Apple made a point of highlighting its price ($5,000 USD for Regular, $6,000 USD for XDR Pro) by comparing it to competitors’ models of that calibre ($43,000 USD).

• Dark Mode: Finally, we’ll be able to sit in bed at night on our Apple devices and not strain our eyes (as much). If you aren’t familiar with dark mode I assume you can have a good guess. It will be a toggled option that will darken the display on your phone to make it more eye-friendly at night time.

• Productivity Improvements: Apple seemed to understand that its users, while they want a cool device, want improved productivity more than anything else. For this they announced a bunch of productivity improvements, such as: 30 per cent faster Face ID unlock, app downloads are 50 per cent smaller (quicker to download), app updates 60 per cent smaller (quicker again), app launch speed is 2x faster.

• Safari (phone devices & tablets): Safari will have new options to quickly change text sizing and has per-website preferences.

• Mail: Will get desktop class text formatting for your emails which includes support for rich fonts.

• Notes: Gets a nice gallery view upgrade so you can quickly find your existing notes.

• iWatch Apps: iWatch is getting a bunch of new apps as well as (finally) its own App Store.

• iPadOS: Ever since introducing the iPad to the market, Apple always hoped it would compete with existing laptops and eventually dominate. However, it’s very evident this isn’t the case but Apple isn’t giving up. They have announced a brand-new operating system called iPadOS which is the first serious OS for the iPad which enables it qualities previously reserved to laptops.

But the biggest announcement came when Apple revealed a new privacy measure aimed at combatting our distrust in Facebook/Google sign-ins for apps and websites. Apple announced Sign-in with Apple.

The new tool is described as a fast, easy sign-in without tracking. You’re authenticated via Face ID on your iPhone and granted access without any additional information provided which will make people feel a lot more comfortable using this button.

In cases where apps might want your name and your email, when you arrive at the Face ID verification step, you will be able to choose your actual email address or hide it.

Hiding it will tell Apple to create a unique, random email address which forwards to your real email address.

This unique address can be disabled any time and guarantees your personal email is kept hidden.

In all, the Apple conference was fairly tame on the software and product front but certainly powerful in its attempt to secure the trust of its users.

Pressure increases for Mark Zuckerberg to step down as Facebook CEO, but is it even possible?

Facebook revealed on Monday morning that two proposals to weaken Mark Zuckerberg’s power at Facebook were overwhelmingly backed.

A total of 68 per cent of ordinary investors (those who are not part of the management board), want to oust Zuckerberg as chairman and bring in an independent figure to chair Facebook’s board. It’s worth noting that this is a significant increase from 51 per cent last year on similar proposals.

This increase mirrors the increasing frustration and anger with how Zuckerberg has handled the series of Facebook scandals, including election interference on the social network in 2016 and the giant Cambridge Analytica data breach last year.

The thinking is that Facebook and its investors would benefit from an independent chairman tasked with holding Zuckerberg and his top team accountable.

Facebook’s share price has been suffering in light of all the scandals and still hasn’t recovered to its high of $US 217.50 from July 25last year which prompted 83 per cent of outside shareholders to also back a proposal to scrap the dual-class share structure – currently there is Class A and Class B. Class A shareholder have one vote for each share whereas Class B shareholders get 10 votes per share, and management and directors control Class B.

In fact, Zuckerberg owns 75 per cent of the Class B shares giving him approximately 60 per cent voting power at Facebook.

Put simply – it’s going to be hard to push Zuckerberg at this rate. Investors are clearly concerned and want change.

It will be interesting to watch this situation develop.

Facebook is entering the cryptocurrency market.

Mark June 18 in your calendar.

It’s the date that Facebook is expected to unveil details of their new cryptocurrency codenamed ‘Libra’.

The currency will mainly be used in Facebook products (WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and so on), but the target market is for developing nations where government-backed currencies are more volatile.

The company also plans to install ATM-like physical terminals and there will also be sign-up bonuses for merchants who accept Facebook’s cryptocurrency as payment.

The move aligns with Facebook’s push into e-commerce.

At the F8 conference – Facebook developers conference – the company announced some upcoming shopping features: letting Instagram users buy straight from their favourite influencers; letting businesses put their product catalogues on WhatsApp and letting Facebook Marketplace sellers ship products through the Facebook app to make buying and selling easier.

It’s worth noting that Facebook is attempting to acknowledge people might not trust Facebook to be in charge of a new currency and so the company is reportedly seeking partners to form a foundation to govern the new cryptocurrency.

What we do know for sure is that the Facebook employees who work on this project can choose to be paid in the cryptocurrency token instead of hard cash and a global launch of the currency is expected to happen next year.

That’s all for this week, enjoy your weekend.

Best times for social media posts

Google Chrome is enforcing stricter privacy policies, but at what cost?

Today, Google announced two major changes to how it expects Chrome extension developers to protect users’ privacy. Starting mid-year, Google requires that extension developers only request the personal user information that they need to implement their features – and nothing more. It means you’ll only hand over relevant information to the service. In addition, Google is expanding the number of extension developers that will have to publish their privacy policies. Collectively these changes are part of what Google is calling “Project Strobe”, but does this improved privacy come at a cost?

In a recent, but lesser-known update, Google has made a move to hamper Chrome’s ad-blocking capabilities – i.e. ad-blocking extensions – however they will be available for those who pay $25 per month to use Google’s G Suite.

 This was confirmed by a post in a Google Groups forum by a staffer stating “Chrome is deprecating the blocking capabilities…” and in the same paragraph said “blocking will still be available to enterprise deployments (G Suite) …” This change to Google Chrome’s model isn’t a minor detail. As it stands, Chrome is an ad-free browsing experience, I don’t see a lot of people comfortable with forking out $25 per month just to remain ad-free.

It will be interesting to see how the develops as this is still fresh news.

Tough month for Uber…!

A few blogs ago I mentioned that Uber was gunning to unveil one of the highest IPO’s ever. Well, earlier this month, the company listed its IPO at $45 per share and raised only $8.1 billion despite its hopes of hitting $100 billion.

It highlights a harsh reality for the company as it struggles to obtain new customers amid increasing competition.

With the IPO falling well-short of what Uber hoped for, the stock price followed suit suffering fall after fall until it closed on Monday at just over $41 per share.

I don’t think Uber expected the headline today – ‘Uber loses more than $1bn in first quarterly report since IPO’.

Ouch!

Uber did warn that it expected a significant loss in the first quarter as it continued to spend money to generate new revenue (customers) and head off increasing competition, but $1 billion is significant.

A positive for the company though is that its subsidiary revenue streams such as Uber Eats enjoyed a 230 per cent growth in the first quarter whereas ride-sharing only grew 22 per cvent. With ride-sharing accounting for less than 50 per cent of Uber’s revenue last year, perhaps it’s time Uber diversified.

Working Wikipedia

The North Face hacked the marketing game and Wikipedia didn’t like it! The clothing company released an ad which exploited a vulnerability in Wikipedia and search engine activity which resulted in North Face products being catapulted to the top of certain Google searches. The ad talks about how people google search a location before they visit and more often than not the first result is a Wikipedia link. North Face decided that they could replace every image on a variety of Wikipedia pages with an image that is still the relevant place but included a model in North Face clothing.

The result: completely free advertising. I personally think it’s genius, but I understand the ethical issue here.

Wikipedia went public with the knowledge and forced North Face to apologise. Nonetheless it’s a great watch, view it here: https://youtu.be/CtU1uEESmJM

Time to post

It’s been a while since I included a helpful section in the blog so I thought I’d bring that back this week. Often times in meetings I’m asked when it’s best to post on social media and truthfully it depends on the platform. There is no ‘”one-size-fits-all” guide because it really does depend on your audience and their behaviours and habits.

However, if you’re really stuck and looking for a starting point, below are some great infographics which very simply explain the best times for all your social media channels.

A wild week for the big tech names

HUAWEI… what a week! (Translation: Wowee… what a week!) There’s plenty happening in the tech world – here’s all the quick bites you need: 

• Huawei faces a challenging time. The Chinese tech giant has been in the news this year with the US fearing that their technology was being used to spy on the US. As a result, President Donald Trump issued an executive order stating no American company can do business with Huawei. This became a major obstacle for Huawei almost immediately but the final blow to its expansion hopes was Google recently announcing it has cut all ties with Huawei. It’s well known that Google and Huawei have been involved for years with the Android phone, but with the executive order in place, Google has had no option but to follow suit with the rest of the US and part ways. It leaves Huawei in a really tough spot now: a company that was expected to be the number 1 smart phone vendor in the world hitting a big hurdle.

• Another week another data breach – I feel I’m sounding like a broken record at this point. This week’s data breach targets Instagram. The personal data of almost 50 million users, including celebrities, was exposed to hackers in the social media giant’s biggest leak on record. The leak exposed information such as email addresses, phone numbers, which was being stored on a database seemingly leading to an Indian marketing company called Chtrbox. This particular company pays “social media influencers” to post sponsored content for brands such as Adidas and Ray-Ban. The vulnerability has since been repaired (patched) and all is back to normal, but it’s the latest in the ongoing series of privacy scandals affecting Facebook and its subsidiaries.

• Apple just achieved another record. In a recent report by Forbes, Apple is the first company in the world to receive a valuation of $200 billion or more (in this case, US $206 billion). Below Apple is Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook – Facebook being the only company in the top five that saw a decline rather than growth due to their scandal-plagued 2018. Looking ahead though, Google could take top spot sooner than you may think. The company saw 27 per cent growth in their valuation and shows no signs of slowing. Just four years ago, Apple was twice as valuable as Google. Now things are getting tighter between Apple (US $206b) and Google ($US167.7b).

• To get noticed in the app market, you have to be creative. BP is doing that, celebrating their 100th anniversary by launching a fully integrated campaign called “The Great Aussie Run”. The centre-piece of the campaign is a uniquely Australian arcade-style app where customers can win prizes in-game and redeem them at BP stores nationwide. Customers simply make a fuel or shop purchase, receive a game card and enter a code to unlock up to eight levels and five different characters to “Play to Win”. Since the campaign launched, the app has been downloaded over 120,000 times and has already reached the # 1 spot for free game downloads and is yet to leave the top 10.

That’s it for another week – enjoy your weekend!

Whatsapp faces security questions

Welcome to this week’s blog – we touch on another security breach, the latest Netflix competitor, Uber’s newest feature, and a creative marketing campaign I found this week. Let’s dive in!

Whatsapp’s brush with trouble

Whatsapp this week fell victim to a privacy breach of their own when it was revealed that spyware had been found on user devices. The number of affected users is contained and small, at least in comparison to the better-known Facebook breaches, but this breach has caused widespread concern that may damage the Whatsapp reputation.

A significant portion of Whatsapp’s users enjoy the app because of its security and reliability which has allowed it to become one of the world’s most downloaded apps. Facebook recognised this and acquired Whatsapp a few years ago – then Facebook was found to breach data, and now Whatsapp users are questioning their ability to trust Whatsapp because Facebook’s security measures have been proven to be deceptive.

To be clear – Whatsapp users don’t feel deceived (it appears), but they are questioning whether or not they can trust the app’s security moving forward.

Get ready for a new streaming platform

Have you heard of Quibi yet? My guess is probably not – but you’re about to hear a lot more about the video platform because they just raised $US1.4 billion and are looking for $US1.4 billion more.

Quibi, short for ‘quick-bites’, is a short-form video platform conceived and birthed by former DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman and aimed to compete convincingly against Netflix.

The plan is for videos to be under 10 minutes each, with TV and movies broken down into bite-sized clips.

There will be a $US5 ad-supported subscription option and a $US8 ad-free premium tier.

Speaking at the South by Southwest Conference in Austin earlier this year, Katzenberg said the platform would launch 100 pieces of content a week.

The company has so far announced plans to develop content with the likes of Naomi Watts, Jason Blum and Justin Timberlake. It also plans to produce ‘Frat Boy Genius’, based on the rise of Snapchat and its founder Evan Spiegel. The service is planned to start in 2020.

Quiet up front

Uber has finally given busy commuters and introverts the ultimate feature – quiet driver mode!

It’s as you’d imagine it – if you’re looking to use Uber but need some quiet, you’ll be able to select the option prior to getting picked up and be able to enjoy a guilt-free silent trip to your destination allowing you to continue working or simply enjoy your own company.

The feature is limited to the US at the moment but is expected to be rolled out to the rest of the world in the near future. I personally look forward to this feature hitting Australia!

True crime podcast surges

7News has found success in podcasts – the news network hosts a podcast called ‘The Lady Vanishes’ which has achieved 1 million streams in just 6 weeks. The podcast produced by 7NEWS focuses on the disappearance of Gold Coast resident Marion Barter, after the much-loved mother, teacher and friend stepped on a plane for an overseas adventure and was never seen again.

Marion Barter, the former wife of Australian soccer great, Johnny Warren, went missing in 1997. The circumstances surrounding her disappearance are bizarre but Marion’s daughter, Sally Leydon has never given up hope of finding her.

The podcast is her quest for answers and hitting the million listen milestone means she may be getting closer to finding out what happened to Marion Barter.

The success relies on the increasing buzz around podcasts at the moment as well as the consistent itch audiences have for investigative journalism, particularly a real mystery that’s impacted the lives of real people.

For me, it’s absolutely excellent to see such major attention brought back to an unsolved mystery, but it’s also great to see a leading traditional news giant start to explore newer technology and distribution as well as creating unique content.

Hopefully we see more of this in the near future.

Tapping into the Endgame

And ending on a light note – Coca-Cola Brazil has launched a creative new campaign for the Avengers: Endgame movie swapping out their existing can tabs with collectible Avenger pins.

There are 12 to be collected and if the Avengers’ fan-love is as obsessive in Brazil as it is around the world, I imagine shoppers will be buy Coke by the cartons!

That’s it for another week, enjoy your weekend.

Insta and Facebook make important changes

Welcome back to another weekly blog, it’s been a big week in news so let’s get to it!

Facebook unveils new stuff

Over the last 2 days, Facebook held its mostly-annual F8 Developers’ Conference which gathered the world’s most avid developers and entrepreneurs in San Jose, California. It’s a notoriously exciting event led by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, which aims to update the world on the company’s latest developments and pretty much show them off. But the looming privacy concerns generated by the last few years of agony for Facebook couldn’t be ignored, and they weren’t – in fact Zuckerberg almost needed to stop saying the word “privacy” because it was spread so thick. So, while the theme of the conference was “the future is privacy”, some great new developments were showcased, and they were:

• A change to the Facebook platform (app & desktop): The newsfeed will no longer be the focus for Facebook, instead it will focus on your groups, events, stories, and push your interactions to a more private space … i.e. Facebook Messenger.

• Facebook Messenger: It get its own desktop app. Soon you won’t have to be on Facebook to access Messenger and chat with your close friends. In addition to this, Facebook plans to allow users to communicate to our friends, via Facebook Messenger, on WhatsApp and Instagram simultaneously. Eventually it looks like the Messenger feed will be all cross-platform. As well as these two things, Facebook said it’s going to turbo-charge the video experience so that you can watch videos with other friends in real-time.

The F8 Developers’ Conference covered a stack of other material to do with the other apps Facebook owns which can be viewed on YouTube.

Elsewhere for Facebook this week was the publishing of its latest quarterly results. They included a line on their expected Federal Trade Commission fine of between $US3 and $US5 billion. You may remember from our recent updates that this was over Facebook privacy issues. The largest fine ever handed down by the FTC to date was to Google in 2012 totalling a measly $22 million.

Insta pivots to quality over popularity

Instagram today announced they’re globally testing a newsfeed with a difference. This feed will prevent a user from seeing the number of likes a post has in an attempt to change the focus from gratification to quality of content.

The user who posted the content will be able to see the numbers of likes, but it will be off limits for everyone else.

This latest development was announced at the recent F8 Developers’ Conference and was encouraged by increasing research into the damage social media causes to users’ mental health, especially young people.

I wonder though if this will really solve that issue. I’m someone who is a part of this group of “young people” they’ve identified and for a lot of us, social gratification is what we’ve grown up with.

We won’t leave Instagram, but I think we’ll simply measure the popularity of our posts via an alternate metric, like comments or post saves.

And you will certainly still have people deleting their post after 15 minutes when they (and only they) can see that the number of likes is fewer than they’d anticipated.

Mind you, I’m eager to see how influencers adjust because that will play a large part in helping shape the mindsets of large audiences on Instagram.

Tinder’s festival love

Tinder this morning announced a new feature called ‘Festival Mode’, aimed at connecting singles at festivals. The feature has only been made available in the US, UK and Australia for people attending large festivals. Your profile will display a badge associated with an upcoming festival you’re attending so people swiping through can quickly identify you. Whiled no Australian festivals have been added to the select list of large festivals, I’m sure it won’t be long. Could you find love amongst a raging crowd of thousands?

Vegemite outlines the benefits

To end on a fun note, one of my favourite creative Australian agencies Thinkerbell has recently created a new ad for Vegemite, aimed at getting young kids to eat is as much as possible for the obvious Vitamin B benefits. The ad is super playful, cartoonish, and definitely appealing to young kids. Take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30m4YqBy8uI

That’s it for another week, see you here again next week.

Netflix cuts out Apple in costly move

Welcome back to another Weekly Blog here at 55 comms! It’s been a busy week in our offices and we hope it was busy for you too.

Here we go with another big week in news, although we'll have a Facebook-free rundown this time.

Tinder now beats Netflix – why?

For the first time in years Netflix is not the top grossing, non-game mobile app – instead Tinder is. Why? In December last year Netflix decided to stop paying the so-called ‘Apple Tax’ which means it no longer allows users to sign up and subscribe to its service through the iOS application. This change has said to cost Apple hundreds of millions in lost revenue considering Netflix has been the world’s top-earning, non-game app since 2016. Now, instead of giving 15-30% of revenue to Apple, users have to sign up via the website before they can login and use the app. To give you an idea of the money involved here – in 2018, Netflix earned $853 million in the iOS App Store. A 30 per cent cut costs Apple $256 million.

Uber files for IPO

It might seem silly but if you’re stuck on IPO it’s: Initial Public Offering, meaning it’s the very first time a private company issues to stock to the public.

Yesterday, Uber filed for its long-awaited IPO for $1 billion, but it’s said to be a placeholder for actual plans to raise $10 billion – the latter would be the 8th largest IPO of all time. This news comes not long after competitor Lyft listed. The fears among Uber is that with growth slowing it may never make a profit. Uber’s listing report underscores their rapid growth in the last 3 years but also how a string of public scandals and increased competition from rivals have weighed on its plans to attract and retain riders. It also disclosed how far Uber is from turning a profit with the company stating it expects expenses to increase exponentially in the foreseeable future. The sun is rising on a new era for Uber; it’ll be interesting to see how it unfolds.

Disney reveals their Netflix rival – Disney Plus

Disney has finally revealed details of its Netflix rival product Disney Plus. It will launch on November 12th and cost $7 a month or $70 for the year. Disney is expected to bundle the service with Hulu and ESPN at a discount too. In its first year, Disney Plus will include 25 original series and 10 movies and specials, along with 400 titles from the Disney library. (Very exciting times for the OG Disney fans out there). Disney says it expects to amass between 60 and 90 million subscribers by 2024 and plans to spend $1 billion in the first year and $2 yearly after that until 2024. It’ll be very interesting to see how the video streaming market shifts.

Bachelor in Paradise 2019 has commenced!

Enough of newsy stuff for a second, let me talk briefly about my shocking allure to this country’s woeful yet brilliant reality TV. Bachelor in Paradise 2019 has commenced this week and it’s not playing around. It boasts a great cast of all your previous bachelor/bachelorette favourites and villains and the story already has its hooks. One thing Channel 10 did differently this season was give us an unfiltered look into the conversation between two contestants Richie and Alex – a couple from Richie’s season of the bachelor which have since turned sour. Whilst no explicit terms were used, it became quite apparent what the issue was that broke the two and personally, I’m team Alex and definitely off team Richie. As for the rest of the series so far, it’s still early days – but there’s every ingredient there to keep me coming back every week for some guilty pleasure.

That’s it for this week, enjoy your weekend!

Getting the most from social media content

Welcome to this week’s spin around social media. Last week was information-heavy so we’re changing the focus this week to provide some genuinely realistic tips for better social media. But first, there’s one important piece of news worth mentioning … 

“On Thursday, Australia lawmakers ushered through what are perhaps the toughest legal measures to hold social media companies accountable for the content they share. Only a few weeks after the massacre of 50 people at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, Australia’s House of Representatives passed a law requiring social media platforms to ‘expeditiously’ remove content that shows kidnapping, murders, rape, or terrorist attacks. If the platforms fail to get rid of the content in a timely fashion, employees could face prison time in Australia and companies could be subject to fines of up to 10 per cent of their annual profit.” This law, which was conceived and passed in five days, aims to prevent the fast spread of criminal/inappropriate content – but does it really help that? The advocacy group that represents Facebook, Google, and other companies has spoken out against the regulation saying that it does nothing to address hate speech which was the motivation behind the Christchurch attacks. Personally, I believe this sort of regulation is necessary, but I don’t see it solving any major problems. 

Now that’s out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff! This week I want to provide some useful tips and insight into how to repurpose one piece of content into 5+ pieces, the Facebook algorithm, and introduce a potentially new wave of technology we’ll see more of in the near future.

How to repurpose 1 piece of content into 5+ smaller pieces

Generating content is the constant struggle for a lot of brands on social. Consumers are demanding and content-hungry, so how do you satisfy that appetite? Repurposing content. Put simply, it’s the process of grabbing one big piece of content and extracting interesting and valuable chunks out of it to post across all your social platforms. Let me give you an example: Imagine you work in the fitness industry; probably run your own fitness business. Let’s do an interview with a well-known personal trainer. This becomes your main piece of content. Throughout the interview you cover a variety of topics:

• A workout the trainer uses to set a benchmark in terms of where new clients are in terms of fitness

• Advanced workout for clients who’ve made significant progress

• A simple diet to consider if a client wants to lose weight

• Recommended meal options for clients who don’t have time to cook

• What inspires the trainer to keep fit

Now, looking at these five examples, you’ve got the foundation for at least five smaller pieces of content. Here’s how you could repurpose that one interview into over five smaller pieces of content:

1. Post the interview to YouTube (YouTube is suited to longer-form media)

2. Transcribe the interview into a long-form blog post (for your website)

3. Cut out clips of your five topics (mentioned above) and post these across your social channels. Make sure you provide some additional value in the copy you use alongside the video.

4. Turn each of the workouts (in the five topics above) into an infographic. Send this to clients via email, and post to social.

5. Create a quote tile based on key mentions in the interview.

Depending on the needs of your client and your creativity, your ability to repurpose content is stronger than you might think.

The Facebook Algorithm

The Facebook algorithm is a tricky one – it’s widely spoken about but never defined. I won’t pretend I know exactly how it works, but just over a year on from when Mark Zuckerberg announced he was changed the newsfeed algorithm to encourage more meaningful connections online, how does it look? Well – it’s performed as intended. Let me explain …

Engagement is up, and that was widely predicted. But before you jump down my throat, Facebook page owners probably haven’t seen any of that improved engagement. That’s because we’re seeing less content from pages in our newsfeed and more content from our friends, and as a result we are sharing our friends’ content that we find meaningful. So, it’s essentially performed as intended. But that’s a double-edged sword because it was also expected that #FakeNews and grossly exaggerated headlines would still plague the social platform, and they did. Looking at the list of most shared Facebook posts in 2019 (so far), the top of the list, from US105fm.com, read: Suspected Human Trafficker, Child Predator May Be In Our Area – 806,051 shares. Astounding numbers. Second on the list: LifeNews.com, reads: You Can’t Give A Lethal Injection to Murderers in New York, But You Can Give One to an Unborn Baby – 484,138 shares.

The point I’m making is that while we are seemingly having more ‘meaningful’ connections on Facebook, the attention-seeking headlines will still break through. Ultimately, it’s up to the users to enforce meaningful connection.

#MAFS

Aren’t you just sick of hearing about it?! I certainly am, but at the same time you couldn’t pull my eyes away from the incredibly dramatic, borderline blockbuster movie trailer, advertisement that is promoting the upcoming #MAFS finale. It’s ironic that this follows the Facebook algorithm topic above because you could argue the rot that’s cycled around social media about this show is absolutely junk. But as humans we are drawn to drama and the fear of missing out on a turbulent final dinner packed with (bogan) drama is just too good to miss. But what’s interesting to note is that the only people benefiting from these shows are the contestants themselves, not the TV networks. For Channel 10, without the #MAFS program, they aren’t competitive in the ratings. This week without the show they fell short to Channel 7 and 9. What this points to is the ongoing struggle for major networks to secure revenue. The contestants however get a massive social media following which often follows in invites to other reality shows, brand deals, don’t forget the pay-check. Regardless, the demand for good reality TV drama will always be there – TV networks simply need to figure out a way to monetise it better.

To close out this week’s blog I wanted to share a really cool new piece of technology which I suspect will become more prevalent in the near future. Meet Hawkeye. Currently Hawkeye offers two apps: one which analyses where your eyes look on a photo or website and provide you with a heat-signatured image at the end, a very useful tool for digital designers. The other is an eye-sight browser. Yes, once you calibrate your eyes and mouth to the app you can control a cursor on the screen and navigate a selected group of apps with simple eye movements, gestures as well as a mouth gesture. Here’s a link to check it out for yourself: https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/hawkeye-access/id1439231627?mt=8

That’s it for this week!

Happy Friday

The top 5 social media trends for 2019

This week I’ve taken a slightly different approach – instead of pulling apart the past week of media news, I’ll be breaking down the famous Hootsuite annual Social Media Trends 2019 report that was released this week. It’s a fairly lengthy read so I’ve done all the hard work for you, no need to stress your busy schedules! Let’s dive in … 

For validity reasons I think it’s important to note that the data collected and discussed in the report comes from “3,225 Hootsuite business customers, interviews with industry analysts, and exhaustive research”. From this data, the report sets its focus on five key social trends for brands to watch and adapt to in 2019. These are:

1. Rebuilding trust: brands get human as the circle of trust on social media tightens

2. Storifying social: content teams adapt content for Stories

3. Closing the ads gap: more competition on paid social requires marketers to up their game

4. Cracking the commerce code: improved social shopping technologies fuel sales

5. Messaging eats the world: customers demand better 1-to-1 social experiences

Rebuilding trust

It’s common knowledge that in recent months social media users called into question the privacy, accuracy, and ethics of nearly every social network available. And rightfully so as reports showed 60 per cent of people no longer trusted social media. Facebook suffered a 66 per cent drop in trust. What’s this mean? The rules of the game have changed – trust has reverted back to immediate friends, family, and acquaintances on social media. Users are also returning to traditional and trusted journalism and believe social media should do more to support high quality journalism.

The report presents a graph indicating the figures users trust most on social media versus those they trust least. In the top three (in order) it had: technical expert, academic expert, and “A Person Like You”. At the bottom of the list you had Celebrity. So, the point being made with this trend is that instead of assuming the one-size-fits-all approach and shooting for maximum reach, your aim needs to be generating more transparent engagement that produces more tangible and meaningful benefits for the user and business. Some useful tips to achieve this are:

• Branded hashtag: created a branded hashtag that brings your community together around a common interest

• Create a Facebook group: create a Facebook group with your page and focus it around a core audience interest

• Micro-influencers: If it’s good enough for Adidas and The New York Times, it’s good enough for you – focus on influencers with smaller audiences of highly engaged users. These are more affordable for brands and perceived as more trustworthy to consumers.

• Secret Facebook group: Exclusivity always makes consumers feel special. Similar to the above suggestion only this option means group members can only join via invite only. This is a great way to coordinate launch events and special promotions.

• Monthly Q&A Session: These can be done in multiple formats, but I would highly recommend live video for this.

Storifying Social

Stories and vertical video are now growing 15 times faster than news-feed based sharing. In fact, in 2019 it’s strongly predicted that Stories are set to surpass feeds as the primary way people share things with their friends on social media. It’s a complete change in the way we consume; from text-based platforms originally designed for desktop computer use, to truly mobile-only networks that enable users to capture in-the-moment experiences – and Stories embody this. If you haven’t incorporated Stories into your marketing mix, then you’re behind – 80 per cent of brands are already using Stories. It’s not to say you can ignore news-feed style posts because it’s important to have a healthy mix across all media types. It’s that people are feeling that the less polished communication of a moment or story is the more realistic and these perform better. Some useful tips for Stories are:

• Start Experimenting: It’s as simple as that. Explore Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, WhatsApp Stories and get a feel for it. It’ll help you work out which will fit best for your brand.

• Create Story-Specific Content: Keep the raw, unedited, and live-action aesthetics in mind when creating your Stories content. It performs considerably better than pre-produced content.

• Use Stories Highlights (feature): If you’ve captured something major or simple put so much effort in to capturing content that you’d like it to last more than 24 hours, create a Stories Highlight. It’ll live on your profile as long as you like and profile visitors can view it whenever they like.

• Use Stickers: These are a great way to measure engagement on your Stories and a great way to learn more about your audience

Closing the Ads Gap

It’s well documented that Facebook’s organic page reach isn’t what it used to be – for a lot of businesses it became ‘pay-to-play’ if you wanted to see results. But as this grew more popular a new set of challenges arose: prices are increasing for ads and it’s getting hard to get noticed. According to a study mentioned in the report, Click-Through Rate costs have jumped 61 per cent, and cost-per-thousand impressions has jumped 112 per cent. Rising costs and fleeting attention combined have limited return on investment for brands and businesses. So how can you maximise the return on your social ad spend? Amplify your best organic content with paid boosts/ads. You know the content has already performed better than your other content, so target your audience/s with content you know a small percentage really found valuable. There’s other ways to help close the ads gap too, they are:

• Understand and target the right audience: I know, it’s said so monotonously in just about every social media help article ever but it’s so important. Each ad campaign should target a focused group based on interests, jobs, relevant competitors, and previous interaction with your brand/business. If you aren’t 100 per cent sure, research your audience beforehand.

• Define your goals and metrics: It’s important to show that social media has a positive bottom-line impact on your business which is why every social campaign should have goals and metrics that tie back to business objectives that you can measure.

• Invest in high quality content: With an over-saturated ad space, dull content simply gets ignored. You need to create high-quality content that will resonate with your audience.

• Repurpose concepts from top-performing organic content: Creating high quality ads takes time and money, so test your ad posts as organic posts first to see the response. Once you see what’s working, you can create more content like it and push this with ad spend to your audience.

Cracking the commerce code

Social commerce, (social shopping), adoption has been swift in Asia with 70 per cent of Gen Zers open to purchasing direct from social media. North America, however, hasn’t kept the same pace which indicates that there’s still a lot of people around the world who aren’t ready to buy on social media yet. However, there are a number of new technologies social has introduced to help: Instagram’s shoppable posts; Facebook Marketplace; Pinterest’s Buyable pins; and video marketing (vloggers) to highlight the most notable. So how can you incorporate social commerce into your business? It’s important to remember what distinguishes social commerce from other channelsL: it’s the social aspect. Show the consumer how the product fits into their lives, turn written product descriptions into videos, share livestream demonstrations, and encourage video testimonials. Here’s a helpful list of tips:

• Set up shoppable Instagram posts: Before you can start selling on Instagram you need to have a business profile, and that’s both simple and free to set up. From there, add your product catalogue to Facebook with Shopify of BigCommerce (users preference), and Instagram will approve your submission. You’ll then be able to tag your products in posts you upload.

• Share your products in action: Show consumers how your product might fit into their life, solve a problem, or provide value.

• Leverage high-quality user-generated content: To nail social commerce you need to build a loyal following that loves your products and will share how they use them. When they do, grab the high-quality user content and repost it. Nothing makes a customer feel more special!

Messaging eats the world

Top messaging apps WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, QQ, and Skype now collectively count nearly 5 billion monthly active users in 2018, according to a study mentioned in the report. For perspective, messaging apps now completely eclipse traditional social network users worldwide. Users are now spending more time on messaging apps and less on sharing to the newsfeed as the shift from public to private spaces continues amidst looming trust issues with social media. For businesses it’s important to note: 9 out of 10 customers would like to use messaging to communicate with businesses. In the US, 69 per cent of people said it helped them feel more confident about a brand. But it’s even more important for businesses not to exploit this consumer trust and use messenger as ad space. So how do you up your messaging game and not screw it up? Here are a few tips:

• Enable Facebook Messenger for your Facebook business page: Once you’ve done this, set up an instant reply for when users send a message to your page. This can be as simple as a short greeting, or you can provide additional information such as typical response times, support hours, or links to support pages or frequently asked questions.

• Add plugins to your website that drive customers to messaging apps: Let your customers know you’re available to chat with a plugin on your website. They’ll be able to click this and get in touch with you instantly.

• Run campaigns that incorporate messaging apps: There are a number of great tools out there, (like ManyChat), which work with Facebook Messenger to help you run effective campaigns. For example, you can target an existing post you’ve made and ask people to comment a specific word on that post. Using ManyChat, you can target that word so that anyone who comments on it subscribes to your Messenger. Later down the line you’ll be able to message all those people individually as your brand about that very product they initially engaged with.

And that’s it for another year! If you’d like to read the full report then visit Hootsuite’s website and follow the prompts.

Facebook gaffe fuels big tech critics

The debate about the dominance of tech giants such as Facebook, Google and Amazon continues, fuelled by media publishers whose lives have become much harder in this new world. Google didn’t help its cause this week when it was handed another fine by the European Union for $1.7 billion, bringing their fine total to $3 billion. The root of the complaint involved the terms that third party websites had to agree on to use Google’s search bar tool on their websites. It’s alleged Google enforces that these websites favour ads from its own advertising services above that of competitors. This operates against the European Union’s anti-trust rules. Google has responded to the fine by stating it ceased this sort of practice back in 2016 but the search engine giant hasn’t commented on whether or not it will challenge the fine despite previously appealing fines.

Disney acquires 21st Century Fox

Disney has finally closed the deal acquiring 21st Century Fox. The goal of the enormous $52.4 billion deal was to help position Disney for a streaming-centric future. The company has already taken a step in that direction with the ESPN+ streaming service, and it has plans to launch another service called Disney+ later this year, which will include new shows based on the Star Wars and Marvel universes, as well as Disney’s entire movie library. With the Fox acquisition, Disney has even more films, TV shows and intellectual property to draw on — as indicated by the redesigned lead image on the Disney corporate website, which now features The Shape of Water, Avatar and Deadpool (all Fox films), as well as The Simpsons and Atlanta (which are produced by Fox studios and air on Fox networks). It also becomes the majority owner of Hulu, with CEO Bob Iger saying that Disney will invest in more original content for Hulu and help it expand internationally.

In addition, the deal solidifies Disney’s already dominant position in Hollywood, as seemingly the one studio that can still reliably draw massive audiences to theatres. Thanks to its previous acquisitions of Marvel and Lucasfilm, Disney has had the No. 1 movie at the worldwide box office for each of the past four years, and in 2018, it released three of the top four films, while Fox had two movies in the top 10.

Eggboy! 

Horrific tragedy struck New Zealand last week, sparking an outpouring of commentary and sorrow from around the country and the world. However, there’s always a minority that exists somewhere and amidst the sadness a particular minority decided to use their platform to reiterate a highly controversial message. Cue Australian Senator, Fraser Anning and Eggboy! There’s no point rehashing the details of Senator Anning’s comments due to their entirely inappropriate nature (which were called ‘disgraceful’ by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern), but it’s worth mentioning Eggboy, aka: Will Connolly. The young teenager ‘heroically’ egged Senator Anning last week which resulted in viral online support around the country and the world. Suffering minor injuries from being restrained, a GoFundMe was set up for Will to help with legal fees but he’s instead decided to give that money (well over $30,000) to Christchurch to help that situation.

But now that the dust has settled, Will has found himself at the helm of a massive new following, 635,000+ Instagram followers in fact. At one point, Will was gaining a thousand followers every few minutes. It’s a platform he probably wasn’t expecting which may be why he hasn’t posted anything on Instagram since the egging incident. It’ll be interesting to see what Will does with his new audience – whether he’ll continue being a normal 17-year old or whether this has given him a pathway to build from. Only time will tell…

Facebook… again

Just when I thought I might be able to get by one week without reporting on Facebook, another story breaks. Today it’s about passwords – hundreds of millions of user passwords, that Facebook has stored for years in an encrypted format easily readable by Facebook employees. Facebook did comment saying they didn’t discover any misuse of that data, (indirectly accepting the truth of the allegation). It’s not entirely clear exactly how many people were affected but Facebook says it plans to notify them all. Digital security best-practice calls for all passwords to be stored in an encrypted format making them unreadable even by the company that holds them. In Facebook’s case, these passwords were stored in plain text meaning anyone with the file could access these passwords. It’s another strike against the social media giant as it tries to fend off the critics.