Twice a year, the folks at 352 Media Group gather for our
company retreat. What should be three to four days of department summits, team
building and company camaraderie oftentimes turns into a week-long reunion that
rivals college homecoming week. I’ll admit it; I got a little behind on my
social media news while spending time with the rest of the 352 Media clan. With
the Fourth of July, start of the Olympic Games, and Tim Tebow and Ryan Lochte
making sports headlines on a daily basis, you might have missed something, too.
Here’s a roundup of social media news you may have missed in the month of July.
Facebook
Facebook sponsored
stories make $1 million a day (via Mashable)
During their first earnings call last week, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook COO
Sheryl Sandberg and CFO David Ebersman announced that Facebook’s sponsored
stories, the network’s primary social ad product, generate $1 million in
revenue each day, outperforming traditional Facebook ads that display on the
right side of Facebook pages. Sponsored stories, along with other advertising
products, accounted for more than 86 percent of Facebook’s revenue in the
second quarter.
Brands can target
posts by age, gender on Facebook (via Mashable)
A few days ago, Facebook announced that brand Pages can target specific
posts according to a user’s gender, relationship status, education and more.
Pinpointing a target audience for each post is likely another way Facebook is
trying to improve its advertising options after going public earlier this year.
Facebook has fake
accounts? (via BBC, Huffington
Post) Reports in mid-July claim there are millions of Facebook accounts
associated with inflated likes for brand Pages. These likes seem to come from
Egypt and the Philippines and the profile details associated with those users
appear made up. Last week during its company’s filings, Facebook disclosed that
more than 83 million of its users are fake, saying that 8.7 percent of its
users are a combination of duplicate profiles, “user-misclassified” accounts
(pets and memes) and undesirable accounts (spammers).
Twitter
Twitter starts
verifying followers’ ages (via TechCrunch) For
adult-only Twitter profiles such as Skinnygirl and Coors Light, thanks to a new
“Age Screening” system, new followers will have to submit their age to prove
they are legally old enough to follow the brand online. Twitter users who wish
to follow these 21-and-up brands will receive a DM that contains a link to
submit their age. Users will have to confirm they are 21 or older before they
are allowed to follow the alcohol profiles on Twitter.
Twitter premiers
targeted tweets (via Mashable)
In addition to Promoted Tweets, a new feature called targeted tweets will
let advertisers send tweets to only a specific audience, rather than to all of
a brand’s followers. Advertisers only pay when a user engages with them and tweets
can be segmented by location, device and platform.
Foursquare
Foursquare rolls out
new merchant tools (via Mashable)
The new tools will let businesses share updates (photos, specials, news),
as well as let businesses see stats on their dashboards (such as who has
checked in at their location). New Foursquare tools will also let businesses
edit their venues and add new Foursquare managers.
Foursquare now allows
deals for best customers, customers nearby (via Mashable)
Foursquare merchants can now take advantage of Local Updates, which allows
the merchants to send updates to their best customers whenever the customers
are near the business’s location. A merchant’s best customers are determined by
how often and how recently they’ve checked into a location, and customers are
considered nearby when they are anywhere from 1 to 10 miles near a business’s
location.
Promoted ads come to
Foursquare (via Mashable)
Foursquare now allows “Promoted Updates,” ads that target users who have
the potential to become one of their “best customers.” These users could be
Foursquare users who have friends that frequently visit a business, users who
visit locations in the same area or users who have added the venue to one of
their Foursquare lists. Right now the promoted ads are only available to large
chains such as Old Navy and Best Buy, but they are expected to roll out to
other businesses in the next few months.