It’s the New Year, which means new plans, new ideas, but mostly – full inboxes and huge to-do lists. So, rather than ramble on about theories and ideas, I’m going to hit you with the top 3 social updates of the week and let you get back to the grind. In case you’d like to go deeper, don’t worry, we’ve got a full set of predictions for 2016 on the blog, and a look back at 2015.

This week’s top 3 social updates, written while actively trying to ignore the season premiere of the Bachelor

  1. First, we’ve got Snapchat. Twitter’s big mainstream moments happened during the 2013 and 2014 Super Bowls with Oreo’s Dunk in the Dark, then 2014 with the ESurance #EsuranceSave30 campaign. Those two events made Twitter a focal point for every major advertiser. Now, Snapchat is starting to see that same mainstream adoption, beginning with the NHL Winter Classic. Given its success, and the way that Snapchat seems to be constantly adapting its software to add cool new features, it seems to be planting a fairly strong foothold in pop culture.
  2. PopSugar just taught us all a valuable (if not fairly obvious) lesson about Facebook video. Facebook added the ability to tack views over 30 seconds to its videos, so the big media outlet started testing its videos to optimize for longer views. It turns out that the 2 things that lead to longer views are: Early, eye-catching visuals. ie. no need for subtlety or nuance – make a point brightly and boldly. And, the ability to follow along without sound. Specifically text-over-video. So many views are auto-plays, so users tend to test-drive the content without audio before they commit to turning the sound on. Given that, text over video gives a significant edge to videos looking to make that silent impression.
  3. Your Facebook News feeds may be about to get more variety. Right now, Facebook is testing a feature that would allow users to create multiple newsfeeds where they could categorize the posts that they want to see , for example: a home feed, one for travel, business, news, comedy, etc. No word yet on when or if it will be rolled out to the rest of us, but everyone with a Facebook Page should be encouraged by the fact that Facebook is making an effort to make out content more easy to find, organize and curate.

Thanks for checking in. We’ll be back next week with our regularly scheduled rants, opinions and predictions for the future.

In the meantime, if you need anything, you know where I won’t be:

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To pass on any quick hitters, Snap winners, or Bachelor-related Gifs, hit us up on Twitter at: @JunctionYVR