#SocialSkim: Apple Takes On Snapchat, LinkedIn Beefs Up Lead Generation

In this week's 'Skim: Apple launches a Snapchat-inspired video editing app; LinkedIn announces big news for its Sales Navigator, adds new retargeting tools; Foursquare plots to take over the world; YouTube phases out annotations; Instagram has a surprising influence on older users; and much more...

Skim for this week's roundup!

1. Apple unveils video creation and sharing app

Apple might not be ready to take a full leap into social media, but what it unveiled last week could be called baby steps. The technology giant introduced Clips, a new, social-media-inspired video, photo, and music editing app on iOS that shares quickly and easily across social networks.

Why social-media-inspired? Users will be able to add filters, speech bubbles, shapes, emoji, and even "full-screen posters with animated background and customizable text." Apple's also added what it calls "Live Titles," animated captions and titles based on what users say.

There will be a music library of tracks for users to choose to set their clips to, and the app will automatically suggest tags of people who are in your contacts or have been previously identified within your iOS Photos app. Clips will launch in April.

2. LinkedIn buffs up its lead generation tool, Sales Navigator

Finding leads on LinkedIn just got a bit easier for brands, with the social network announcing a new Enteprise Edition of its Sales Navigator, its lead-generation solution. The improvements include new customer relationship management integrations, with widgets for quick profile viewing shared within CRMs such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics.

For companies already using the Professional or Team editions of Sales Navigator, a LinkedIn spokesperson described the new Enterprise Edition as one for high-functioning sales organizations, as it now includes up to 50 InMails per month and TeamLink Extend, which lets anyone in your company opt in to share his/her LinkedIn network with TeamLink so that all employees can reach out to one another for introductions to prospects, even if the employees are not directly connected.

3. Others are trying, but Facebook is dominating social video

Gary Vaynerchuk said its video feature is a brand's best friend, and now anew report from social analytics company Quintly shows that Facebook not only dominates video for marketing campaigns but also exemplifies the trend of siloed content's becoming a thing of the past as social networks continue to integrate features copied from one another.

Among the brands studied that use video in their Facebook campaigns, 90% used native Facebook videos, whereas just 30% and 2% used YouTube and Vimeo, respectively. Facebook native videos—those uploaded directly to the platform—also garnered 186% more engagement than other formats, and they were shared 4.6 times more than others.

4. Foursquare is quietly plotting its takeover of the world

You might think of Foursquare as long gone from the social media space, but the company has other ideas. It recently announced Foursquare Analytics and, in the process, continued its transformation from a social media company to a location-data powerhouse.

Foursquare Analytics is essentially a dashboard of insights that lets companies see how they're performing based on measurable, real-world visits. With 50 million monthly users around the globe, and 92% of consumer spending still taking place in the physical world, Foursquare argues the real world lacks features like cookies that make digital work and the company's no-hardware-needed setup means brands can begin providing timely offers to consumers in new ways.

Foursquare Analytics from Foursquare on Vimeo.

5. LinkedIn to boost advertising using email addresses and website visits

Although it won't be rolled out until November, we've got word of a new LinkedIn ad targeting program that will bring the professional social network more in step with other platforms' modern advertising businesses.

LinkedIn will bring back the ability for marketers to retarget consumers who have visited their websites with ads on LinkedIn, as well as let them target consumers based on email addresses. These techniques are already employed by rivals including Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Pinterest, and will be a part of LinkedIn's new "Matched Audiences" program.

6. Older users most influenced by Instagram ads

It turns out Instagram ads could be a surprisingly effective way to influence the decision-makers in organizations who ultimately decide to buy, or subscribe to, your B2B products or services. A new report from Influence.co finds that users 65-74 and 45-54 are the most likely to search out products after seeing promoted posts on the platform.

Though Instagram has certainly become more of a pay-to-play playground for brands, that might not be a bad thing—if the ROI is worthwhile.

7. YouTube to phase out annotations, focus on mobile-friendly features

You might use YouTube as a part of your social media strategy to better showcase your products and all they can do, but maybe you're using the platform less effectively than you could. The Google-owned social video network is phasing out one of its oldest features, annotations, in favor of newer, mobile-first capabilities including end screens and cards.

Annotations let users place pop-up calls-to-action on the screen on a video, while cards place a discreet "information" symbol at the top right corner of videos that encourages users to click through to relevant websites. End screens are placed at the end of a video, and include several types of clickable overlay images that users can select to either visit a website, subscribe to the channel, or view another video.

Do you already use end screens and cards? If not, check out the video to see how to get started!

8. How much you can expect to pay for Instagram influencers

Influencers charge $271, on average, to share sponsored content on the platform and, while that cost varies significantly according to industry, it also is strongly correlated to audience size.

Have you thought about seeking out influencers in your field as a part of your social media strategy? A recent report from Influence.co and a great recap from MarketingProfs dives into what you can expect to pay, whether a male or female influencer will cost you more, the average number of followers you can expect your targeted influencers to have based on niche, and much more.

9. Facebook makes text posts more visual with background colors

Facebook began letting Android users spruce up text-only posts with background colors and larger text back in December, and now it appears the same feature is slowly rolling out to iOS users.

The capability lets users select a custom background color to place their text against in order to make the post more visual and engaging. If brands ever need to publish something without a video, GIF, or other visual to go along with it, they should certainly take note of this new way to enhance what might otherwise be a boring, uninspiring post.

10. Musical.ly, the social music app taking over, rolls out new features

It might be the greatest success story to come out of social media's rush to video, but also one that your brand's never even considered as an opportunity. We introduced you to Musical.ly, which lets users set their own videos to their favorite songs, back last May. As a reminder, the app's highly engaged users spend an average of 13 minutes per day on the platform!

Worth noting is that Musical.ly, which now claims 40 million monthly active users, continues to innovate and launch new capabilities, like its latest duet feature. Moreover, the app's user base has grown older: Whereas at the beginning of 2016 90% of the app's user base was in the 13-24 demo, by September that number had fallen to 60%. In other words, the door is opening wider and wider to brand opportunities. Keep an eye on this one, folks.

11. We'll wrap with Germany's massive threat to Facebook and Twitter

The fight against fake news and online hate speech escalated dramatically last week, when the German parliament drafted legislation that could result in fines for the likes of Facebook and Twitter—up to €50 million—if they don't remove blatantly illegal content within 24 hours. That could lead one to believe that the timing of news that Twitter suspended over 600,000 accounts accused of promoting terrorism in just the second half of 2016 alone wasn't a coincidence.

The German parliament suggests that social media companies have long failed to address the problems of fake news and hate speech that live on their networks, but free speech advocates in the country are expected to push back against the new law. The German government's move comes after Chancellor Angela Merkel raised concerns that fake news and bots could influence upcoming elections.

#SocialSkim: Facebook Clones Snapchat (Again), Google vs. Slack

This week's 'Skim brings copycats and censorship to a whole new level: Facebook brings Snapchat Stories, almost literally, to Messenger; China decides it's had enough of collecting virtual pinboards; Google takes on Slack with a new suite of communication tools for businesses; YouTube launches new app so users can watch videos together; and much more...

Skim for all the social news you need to know!

1. Has Facebook gone too far with Snapchat clone on Messenger?

The cat's out of the bag: Facebook's going to try to copy every successful Snapchat feature across its own platforms. It tackled filters and augmented reality masks by acquiring MSQRD and introduced a near replica of Snacphat Stories on Instagram, and it has now launched Messenger Day—another Snapchat Stories clone—across iOS and Android devices.

Zuckerberg once tried to buy Snapchat for $3 billion, and it appears Snapchat's wariness triggered a rivalry in which Facebook feels the need to beat the ephemeral messaging app at its own game. But many feel that Messenger Day upended what was a great texting application by adding superfluous buttons and unused features to their home screens.

Have you used Messenger Day? What are your thoughts?

2. Google takes on Slack with new communication tools for businesses

Google's taking a swipe at Slack with the introduction of two new features to ease collaboration in businesses: Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat.

Hangouts Meet provides an easy way to share links to video conferences without invitees' having to sign up for accounts or download plugins. Hangouts Chat combines searchable, individual chat rooms based on project with threaded conversations, and it also lets bots automatically schedule meetings for your team.

Even better? Both new tools are integrated with G Suite, which means all content on Google Drive can be shared effortlessly within the new tools. Hangout Meets is available to all iOS and Android users, and Chat is set to roll out over the next few weeks.

3. LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman joins Microsoft's board

Following Microsoft's $26.2 billion purchase of LinkedIn last year, LinkedIn co-founder Hoffman is officially joining the Microsoft board of directors and will continue focusing primarily on the social network; he will also help Microsoft expand its connections in Silicon Valley.

Hoffman gave a glimpse at what could be the future of LinkedIn, given its new family at Microsoft, citing how Microsoft-powered intelligent assistant Cortana could help users decide which third-degree connections on LinkedIn make the most sense to reach out to, or how Microsoft's HoloLens virtual reality gear could make LinkedIn Learning courses more immersive.

The future seems bright, according to Hoffman, so stay tuned.

4. Pinterest just lost access to 1.3 billion people

The People's Republic of China has found something wrong with what's potentially the least controversial social network out there: Pinterest. The Great Fire Wall, as China's Internet censorship system is referred to, has made the social network inaccessible for over one week now.

Conjecture suggests the blackout might be due to the "Two Sessions" meeting of China's governing classes that's currently taking place in Beijing, but it's impossible to know for certain what's caused Pinterest—one of the last American social networks accessible in China—to be taken offline.

5. How to use Facebook Messenger Day for marketing

If your company already uses Messenger to communicate with customers, we've got some top tips to showcase how it can use its newest feature—Messenger Day—to expand and optimize marketing on the platform.

Though Messenger Day functions much like Snapchat Stories, there are a few peculiarities that might make Messenger Day worthwhile for your marketing team. Because Messenger is available only for individual users and not (usually company) Pages, the new feature could be used strategically to spread employee-generated content in a way that builds brand awareness and expands your client base.

For now, content will be coming from employees' profiles, so while Messenger Day could also be used to share news and images, and encourage users to follow your other social profiles, efforts should be focused on driving awareness and relationship-building.

Click through to Social Media Examiner for all the fresh tips and tricks!

6. Seven steps to better customer service on social media

If you don't yet generate many leads via social, that doesn't mean the channel can't serve other needs, such as answering consumers' questions and providing customer service. Social platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, seem to be constantly innovating to provide companies with new and better ways to communicate with customers, so why not take advantage?

Doing so effectively, however, requires some preparation. From educating customers about how to get in touch and investing in the right platforms, to humanizing your messaging and connecting your data streams to complete customer profiles, Kristin Shevis of Conversocial suggests seven key steps to owning customer service on social media.

7. The key to YouTube's six-second bumper ads

YouTube might be just the place for your brand to raise awareness and generate new leads, but as time goes on the social network has reworked its ad formats in a way that might now seem foreign—or impossible—for your brand to convey its message.

Thorough testing and a decidedly better consumer experience means the platform's new six-second bumper ads appear here to stay, but how can your company make the most out of such a short format without fumbling?

Some might try to fit everything they've got into six short seconds, but success requires a more thoughtful approach. From breaking thing down to individual elements, to employing emotion or comedy, Andrew Wohlwend of Zefr presentsthe keys to a successful six-second ad.

Get your creative juices flowing with the example ads below!

8. After overreach, Facebook and Instagram bar developers from using data for surveillance

Following revelations that police gained special access to the two social networks to track protest movements for Black Lives Matter, the two social networks rewrote their privacy policy to ban developers from using the platforms' data for surveillance purposes.

Police gained access via controversial developer, Geofeedia, which partnered with law enforcement to track streams of user content.

The American Civil Liberties Union obtained documents proving the connection last year, and it is now pushing social networks to take a strong stance on human rights to avoid similar missteps in the future. Social media might just be the next frontier for civil liberty battles after all.

9. YouTube launches an experimental app for watching videos with friends

Dubbed "Uptime," the new app from Google's YouTube aims to make video viewing a more social experience by encourage friends to watch—and react—together. In the app, users' profile photos float alongside the video (mostly vertical in format) they're currently viewing, and they can comment or react with emojis that can be seen live or after-the-fact by friends that watch the same content.

Available only on iOS for now, Uptime wants to encourage a co-viewing experience for video; videos on YouTube can be searched and then shared from within the application.

The app is currently invite only, but checking out Uptime's Twitter feed gets you the golden ticket via an invite code, so go give it a shot!

10. Reddit's getting hot as it positions to counterbalance fake news—and Facebook

Remarkable election and referendum results in 2016 prompted many to ask whether social media was creating an echo chamber that shielded users from opposing points of view and simply reinforced the worldview of their "friends".

Reddit—280 million active users strong—thinks it can destroy that echo chamber.

The social network, long a minefield for brands because of some of its users anti-advertising sentiment, lets users post links that are then simply upvoted or downvoted, leaving out the social connection factor of people choosing who to follow.

The small feel of the social network is becoming an attractive place for brands, and it might just force us to be exposed to new points of views that could change the game.

11. We'll wrap up with a way to take on clickbait like you've never seen

On National Read a Book Day, one bookstore in Texas took a novel approach to tricking Facebook users into reading copyright-free classics: It used a superb play on clickbait—or "Litbait," as the bookstore calls it.

Users fell for clickbait-like titles of Facebook articles that were actually descriptions of literary classics, such as Romeo & Juliet. They were then redirected to the entirety of the selected copyright-free novel, online.

Former #SocialSkim columnist Angela Natividad has the scoop from cover to cover in Adage, highlighting how originality on social media can serve not only a cause but also your brand: The bookstore's website had a massive traffic increase in traffic, as well as Facebook engagement.

Check out the campaign for yourself in the video:

Research Data Sources

Government

U.S. Census Bureau – The Census Bureau’s mission is to serve as the leading source of quality data about the people and economy of the US, including population data, geographic data, and education.

U.S. Food & Drug Administration – Here you will find a compressed data file of the Drugs@FDA database. The file is updated once per week, on Wednesday.

U.S. National Center for Education Statistics – The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education.

Uniform Crime Reporting – The UCR Program has been the starting place for law enforcement executives, students, researchers, members of the media, and the public seeking information on crime in the US.

European Union Open Data Portal – The European Union Open Data Portal is the single point of access to a growing range of data from the institutions and other bodies of the European Union.

Eurostat – Here you will find the key to European statistics. Feel free to search by theme, learning about the European economy, population, industry, trade, technology, and transport.

UK Data Service – The UK Data Service includes major UK government-sponsored surveys, cross-national surveys, longitudinal studies, UK census data, international aggregate, business data, and qualitative data.

Data.gov – Data.gov is home to the US government’s open data. Here you will find data, tools, and resources to conduct research, develop web and mobile applications, and design data visualizations.

Data.gov.uk – Data.gov.uk is home to the UK government’s open data. Find data published by government departments and agencies, public bodies and local authorities.

Data.gov.au – Data.gov.au is home to the Australian government’s open data. The site encourages the public to use government data to analyze, mashup and develop tools and applications.

Global Data

The World Factbook – The World Factbook provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities.

International Monetary Fund – IMF Data offers access to macroeconomic and financial data. Created in 1945, the IMF is governed by and accountable to the 189 countries that make up its near-global membership.

UNICEF Research and Reports – UNICEF gathers evidence on the situation of women and children globally. The data sets include accurate, nationally representative data from household surveys and other sources.

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime – One of the key tasks of UNODC is to produce and disseminate accurate statistics on drugs, crime and criminal justice at the international level.

World Health Organization – The Global Health Observatory provides data and analysis on global health priorities, including world hunger and disease.

Google Finance – Google Finance provides you with up-to-date stock market data, market news, and data on emerging trends. You can also create a portfolio and manage your own stocks.

Google Public Data – Launched in March 2010, the Google Public Data Explorer makes large, public-interest data sets easy to explore, visualize and communicate.

UNESCO –  UIS.Stat contains all the latest available data and indicators, for education, literacy, science, technology, innovation, culture, communication and information.

World Bank Open Data – The World Bank’s data catalog is a listing of available World Bank datasets, including databases, pre-formatted tables, reports, and other resources.

World Bank Education Stats – Education is one of the most powerful instruments for reducing poverty and inequality. The World Bank compiles data on education inputs, participation, efficiency, and outcomes.

UNICEF Education Stats – UNICEF provides administrative data on school participation, including net and gross enrolment ratios and survival ratios, by educational level.

Open Data for Africa – Here you can visualize Socio-Economic indicators over a period of time, gain access to presentation-ready graphics and perform comprehensive analysis on a Country and Regional level.

Academic

Google Scholar – Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature and academic studies.

Pew Research Center’s Internet Project – PEW offers scholars and the general public access to raw data sets from their research. You can track key national, political, economic and demographic trends in the US.

Europeana Collections – Explore 54,165,855 artworks, artifacts, books, videos and sounds from across Europe.

Science and Health

NOAA’s Science On a Sphere – Science On a Sphere is a large visualization system that uses computers and video projectors to display animated data onto the outside of a sphere.

Open Science Data Cloud – The Open Science Data Cloud provides the scientific community with resources for storing, sharing, and analyzing terabyte and petabyte-scale scientific datasets.

HealthData.gov – This site is dedicated to making high-value health data more accessible to entrepreneurs, researchers, and policy makers in the hopes of better health outcomes for all.

National Centers for Environmental Information – This page provides quick access to many of NCEI’s climate and weather datasets, products, and various resources.

The Broad Institute Cancer Programs Data – The Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT is committed to meeting the most critical challenges in biology and medicine.

National Weather Service – Climate data, including past weather conditions and long-term averages, for specific observing stations around the United States is only a few clicks away.

NASA’s Planetary Data System – The PDS archives and distributes scientific data from NASA planetary missions, astronomical observations, and laboratory measurements.

NASA’s Earth Data – NASA ESDS Program sets the standard for the delivery of science-quality data related to planet Earth. Search datasets, news, articles, and additional information.

Marketing and Social Media

Social Mention – Social Mention is a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user-generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information.

Google Trends – Google Trends shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world in various languages.

Facebook API – Learn how to publish to and retrieve data from Facebook using the Graph API.

Twitter API – The Twitter Platform connects your website or application with the worldwide conversation happening on Twitter.

Instagram API – The Instagram API Platform can be used to build non-automated, authentic, high-quality apps and services.

Foursquare API – The Foursquare API gives you access to our world-class places database and the ability to interact with Foursquare users and merchants.

Journalism and Media

The New York Times Developer Network – Search Times articles from 1851 to today, retrieving headlines, abstracts and links to associated multimedia. You can also search book reviews, NYC event listings, movie reviews and more.

Associated Press API – The AP Content API allows you to search and download content using your own editorial tools, without having to visit AP portals.

Amazon Web Services – Browse Amazon Web Services’ Public Data Sets by category for a huge wealth of information.

Google Books Ngram Viewer – The Google Books Ngram Viewer is optimized for quick inquiries into the usage of small sets of phrases.

Wikipedia: Database – Wikipedia offers free copies of all available content to interested users. These databases can be used for mirroring, personal use, informal backups, offline use or database queries.

FiveThirtyEight GitHub – Data and code behind the stories and interactives at FiveThirtyEight.

Miscellaneous

Datasets Subreddit – This popular subreddit offers datasets for data mining, analytics, and knowledge discovery.

Million Song Dataset – The Million Songs Collection is a collection of 28 datasets containing audio features and metadata for a million contemporary popular music tracks.

IMDB – This page describes various alternate ways to access IMDb locally by holding copies of the data directly on your system.

Generate Data – Generate Data is a free, open source tool written in JavaScript, PHP and MySQL that lets you quickly generate large volumes of custom data in a variety of formats.

Gapminder – Gapminder produces free teaching resources making the world understandable based on reliable statistics. Gapminder promotes a fact-based worldview everyone can understand.