Social Media News of the Week - YouTube demonetization scandal and more ...

Hello there,

I am publishing this week's social media news as picked up from social media. I figured I could do this for you since I am reading all there is about it anyway. I am still trying to figure out which day of the week might work best for you, therefore I am publishing it on Thursday this week. Let us know what you prefer, Mondays or Thursdays?

LinkedIn - publisher changes layout features - new sleek and shiny interface with
drop in/ embed capabilities for slides, podcasts (a link to an audio file),

Snapchat - have removed local stories (curated stories in select large urban communities, such as LA or NYC) they will be focusing on events stories (content around a big/massive global event).
They are also stepping up the add game to become more profitable, and, for fear of losing their users, they will roll only 3 adds a day per user and they are also to include skip add buttons.

Pinterest - former head of Google image search is now head of engineering at Pinterest to support future changes in their strategy. They are soon to introduce a native video player so as to make shopping pins possible as well as cinematic pins (it appears they will be looking like GIFs)
It seems that they will be doing their best to keep you on the site longer and to sell you more stuff directly on the platform. Meanwhile, 80% of content on Pinteres is re-pins (professional marketers' content and not user generated content) Woooaaa! - They are finally admitting that they are an advertising platform and according to the envisaged stratgey they will start looking more and more like Amazon. Find more here in an interview with Pinterest president.

Google - shop the look available on native google search, only on mobile and only in the US. Basically, you will see adds attached to images that pop up in your search results that will allow direct links to the clothing items you can see in the images.

Instagram - First of all, they are killing photo map. I've never seen it, so I do not know much about it, other that it tracked the places where you took the photos you publish on Instagram. Not very safe, I would say...
- they will be included natively on the new Iphone - they appeared at the Apple Event and disclosed having worked with Apple to develop GIF features, zoom and filters especially geared towards making the best use of the Iphone 7+ technical capabilities,
- the keyword moderation tool is finally here, rolled out to all its users. You can read more on Venturebeat and see my opinion on it here.

Facebook vertical videos went live for adds only. They are also testing a new feature - "what friends are talking about?" that will pick up conversations in your friends list and pop them at the top of your newsfeed.

Youtube -  recently had a not too little demonetization scandal. Video creators just became aware of the fact that YouTube has been sorting through the video content and pulling out clips that they weren't considering add worthy for various reasons (language, theme, topic, etc). As a consequence, Youtubers didn't get paid for those videos in spite of their traffic. Once they started getting notified about their demonetization issues, they started  protesting and declaring it a form of censorship. What is indeed troubling is that they are using an algorithm, and not human moderation, and creators have little chances to appeal the robots' decision, On another note, they've started testing a new community button with select creators for now that will allow creators to share photo and text on top of their videos and get their subscribers notified about their updates.Here is a link to an explanatory video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9V0p29u_UE.

Twitter - direct messages now include read receipts, typing indicators and web link previews looking more and more like a messaging app. It also started sending out alerts when someone in your network is live streaming  Read more here.

Apple - well, there is a lot to say about the new Apple launches, but I will leave the tech guys do this, I am only mentioning that with the Apple iOS 10 update Siri will be able to search Pinterest, send message on Whatsapp or LinkedIn, send money on Squarecash and plenty more. That is cool and scary at the same time.


Thank you very much for reading, and remember: likes are great, shares are even better! :)