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Facebook's Removing a Range of Ad Metrics and Adding New Data Labels for Context
http://ibn.fm/Qb5zR
Facebook has announced a change to some of their ad metrics to better clarify how they’re calculated, while they’re also removing some ‘unhelpful’ metrics to help marketers stay focused on more actionable objectives.
First off, on clarification – Facebook will be adding some new labels to their metrics to highlight exactly how they’ve been calculated.
Click the link for complete article.
Court Rules that Tweet Embeds Could Infringe Copyright, as Twitter Seeks to Simplify its Offerings
http://ibn.fm/Fg0i8
So this could be a problem - a New York district court has ruled that embedding a tweet on a webpage could violate copyright.
The case relates to an action filed by photographer Justin Goldman who, back in 2016, posted an image he’d taken to his Snapchat story of NFL player Tom Brady walking with Boston Celtics general manager Danny Ainge. At the time, The Celtics were trying to woo free agent Kevin Durant, so naturally, the image was of significant interest - and as such, it was subsequently screenshotted and shared via various social platforms, including Twitter.
Once the image was on Twitter, those tweets were then embedded in several related news stories, including content published by Breitbart, Yahoo, and Vox Media. Seeing his image being used without permission or payment, Goldman sued these outlets for breach of copyright, raising another case of questionable fair use, and potentially setting a new legal precedent.
There are various areas of legal interpretation in the case - with the publications embedding a tweet, as opposed to hosting the image themselves, does that exempt them from usage regulations? Did Goldman’s Snapchat post effectively put the image in the public domain? Would this content qualify under existing ‘fair use’ standards for issues of public interest?
In this case, the judge ruled in favor of Goldman, which could have significant implications for content embeds moving forward, if it's upheld (the decision can, and likely will, be appealed).
This comes at the same time as Twitter outlines its plans to simplify and improve its products – specifically its ad offerings – in order to make the platform easier to use and encourage further adoption.
At the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference this week, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that the platform is still too difficult for users to get a full grasp of.
"One-third of the two million new people who come every day come with expectations of what [Twitter] should be, then get disappointed when they can't find what they want. It's a lot of work right now."
To counter this, Twitter’s looking to improve its algorithm and data matching to provide more personalized on-platform experiences, while they’re also, according to CNBC, “working on making it easier for users to express themselves much faster and with something other than text posts.”
Click the link for complete article.
Facebook Expands Rights Manager to Cover Video Content Posted to Instagram
http://ibn.fm/RxvXd
Here’s a small, but important, update - Facebook has announced that it has expanded its Rights Manager tool to help monitor and protect video on Instagram, in addition to Facebook.
As explained by Facebook:
“While we’ve always provided tools for rights owners to report potential IP violations on Instagram, now Rights Manager offers another way to help protect your videos.”
Rights Manager works by cross-referencing your uploaded video content against other uploads, and alerting content owners to potential violations.
Click the link for complete article.
Why Static User Growth Hasn’t Hurt Twitter Profit
http://ibn.fm/hTdZ3
Could it be that increased uncertainty about changes at Facebook may be opening the door for other social platforms to boost their business offerings?
After Snap Inc. reported better than expected Q4 results earlier this week, Twitter has also beaten expectations with their latest numbers. Well, mostly – Twitter’s user growth problems returned, with another flat result – but the data from their ad business looks solid.
Here’s a breakdown of the results, starting with active users.
Click the link for complete article.
Facebook's Coming Changes Could Help Small Nonprofits
http://ibn.fm/4xueB
The brilliant minds at Facebook have been busy so far in 2018.
With an apparent desire to get back to their roots of connecting the world and building community, Mark Zuckerberg and Co. have rolled out three major changes so far this year.
Each of these announcements has implications for nonprofits, brands, and businesses who post content on Facebook Pages.
Click the link for complete article.
What Does Facebook’s Crypto Ad Ban Mean For Litecoin
http://ibn.fm/a1lTP
The crypto-sphere is full of hearsay and rumor. If nothing else it keeps hopes high in times of adversity, such as right now. Altcoins can go up on a shill or a pump from a whale, and back down on the spread of FUD across social media. It is unlike any other market and is driven largely on impulse at times. Because it is still an embryonic industry, connections can be drawn between large established companies, cryptocurrencies, and potential blockchain adoption.
Click the link for complete article.
Twitter's Adding 'Sponsored Moments' Which Could Give the Option a New Boost
Have Twitter Moments ever become a thing?
I mean, they’re still there, obviously, they’re still a part of the wider Twitter experience, but they never really took off how Twitter had hoped – that being a new way for users to discover the best of what the platform has to offer in an easy, user-friendly way.
Well even if you haven’t paid them much mind, Twitter says Moments are being used more than ever – and as such, they’re rolling out a new ad option for Moments, which will enable brands to sponsor Moments from premium content partners.
As explained by Twitter:
“Sponsored Moments include interstitial Tweets from the brand as well as a branded cover. Similar to other In-Stream Sponsorships, advertisers can promote the Moment to their specific target audience, expanding reach beyond the content partner’s existing followers.”
Click the link for complete article.
Facebook's Next Assault on Snapchat – Full-Body AR
http://ibn.fm/XLXMH
Snapchat’s face-altering Lenses have proved extremely popular, not only in terms of usage (Snap says that a third of their 178 million users ‘play’ with Lenses every day), but also in terms of word-of-mouth exposure – people posting pictures of themselves on other platforms, showing them off to friends and gatherings, essentially getting people to try out the app for themselves, based on Lenses alone.
That’s why Facebook copied them, with their own variations of Lenses in the Facebook Camera, Instagram Stories and Messenger Day (RIP). In some of their more recent iterations, Facebook’s Lens-like tools have even superceded Snapchat, and Facebook was the first to take the advanced step of opening up Lens – or Mask, as they call them – creation to outside developers via their AR Studio.
Click the link for complete article.
Twitter Improves Image Cropping Process to Better Focus on Key Areas of Attention
http://ibn.fm/hdrz4
Ever post a photo to Twitter only to have it look odd and incomplete when it comes up in tweet timelines, maybe focused on the wrong area of the image?
That’s because Twitter crops images to improve display consistency, and thus far, they’ve been using face detection to focus the view on the key element when displaying a tweet image. But that process has some limitations – as explained by Twitter:
“While this is not an unreasonable heuristic, the approach has obvious limitations since not all images contain faces. Additionally, our face detector often missed faces and sometimes mistakenly detected faces when there were none. If no faces were found, we would focus the view on the center of the image. This could lead to awkwardly cropped preview images.”
That’s not great, particularly if you’re, say, a professional organization trying to put your best foot forward in your presentation.
But Twitter’s improving it – here’s a comparison of Twitter’s current (left) and new image cropping system, which uses neural networks to predict the most interesting part of the image.
Click the link for complete article.
Facebook's News Feed Shuffle Is A Buying Opportunity - Seeking Alpha
http://dtn.fm/p99pH
Facebook's news feed shuffle got a negative reaction as if the company is making a strategic blunder, while the opposite is likely true.
Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have been underestimated since the company's inception.
However, the young CEO has continuously demonstrated an extremely high level of competence, clearly illustrated by Facebook's perpetual stellar performance.
Investors are likely to buy this dip aggressively, and the stock should see plenty of new highs throughout the year.
Click the link for complete article.
Twitter Releases Major Events Calendar for January to Help with Strategic Planning
http://dtn.fm/fpGW3
It’s a new year, and Twitter's helping to kick off your social media marketing efforts for 2018 by releasing their January major events calendar.
Twitter started publishing their monthly events calendars last year, highlighting all the key discussions likely to generate significant attention on the platform, along with tweet volume figures from the past year.
So which dates should you be aware of in January?
Click the link for complete article.
Facebook’s latest News Feed tweak penalizes Pages that solicit likes, shares
http://dtn.fm/TGSl7
'Engagement bait' is the latest type of spam that Facebook wants to scrape from people’s News Feeds.
Facebook continues to crack down on the people and particularly Pages that try to game its News Feed algorithm.
Facebook will penalize posts that ask people to like, share, comment on or otherwise engage with the post in order to boost its engagement metrics and trigger Facebook’s algorithm to rank it higher in people’s News Feeds, the company announced on Monday. Facebook refers to these types of posts as “engagement bait.”
Facebook originally attempted to quash these types of posts earlier this year by identifying the Pages that post engagement bait and rewarding the Pages that weren’t in that cohort. But it appears that positive reinforcement wasn’t sufficient at stamping out this spam, so now Facebook will try the opposite tack.
Starting this week Facebook’s News Feed algorithm will demote individual “engagement bait” posts, and eventually, it will extend the down-ranking penalty to the Page level so that any Pages that frequently publish these types of posts would see their entire oeuvre of organic posts and ads impacted.
“Publishers and other businesses that use engagement bait tactics in their posts should expect their reach on these posts to decrease. Meanwhile, Pages that repeatedly share engagement bait posts will see more significant drops in reach,” Facebook’s newsfeed integrity specialist Henry Silverman and engineer Lin Huang wrote in a company blog post published on Monday.
Facebook’s move may sound counterintuitive: Isn’t the point of sharing something on Facebook to share something that other people will want to share (or like or comment on)? Yes. But what they share should be more substantial than a request to share. Otherwise, people’s News Feeds could start to resemble people’s email inboxes in the days of the chain letter. No one wants that, especially not Facebook. The social network would risk losing its audience if, in addition to advertisers’ sponsored solicitations, people’s feeds were overrun with non-sponsored solicitations as well.
Engagement bait marks the latest type of content that Facebook’s algorithm has targeted for mucking up people’s News Feeds. Over the past couple of years, Facebook has repeatedly penalized clickbait posts that are designed to get people into opening a link but do not deliver on the promised content. It has also taken aim at spammy links to sites that feature too many ads and too little original content, as well as photos that trick people into thinking they are click-to-play videos.
Twitter Begins Enforcing New Safety Policies, Banning Violators
http://dtn.fm/ii9MT
Twitter has announced that its latest initiative to crackdown on trolls and abuse is now going into full effect. Which in some ways seems quite odd. Like, if you’re going to eliminate this type of behavior, why aren’t you just doing it, why wait to launch a specific initiative?
Regardless, last month Twitter announced a new set of rules to tackle such issues, following another wave of criticism over their handling of complaints, abuse, profile verification – pretty much every element of the process. Now, they’re going into effect – as explained by Twitter:
“Today, we will start enforcing updates to the Twitter Rules announced last month to reduce hateful and abusive content on Twitter. Through our policy development process, we’ve taken a collaborative approach to develop and implement these changes, including working in close coordination with experts on our Trust and Safety Council.”
Click the link for complete article.
Facebook To Spend Billions On Sports Streaming
http://dtn.fm/MQbq7
Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) is hiring an executive to negotiate sports deals, according to the Sports Business Journal, and has been interviewing candidates for a lengthy period.
Whoever gets the job will reportedly have a budget of "a few billion dollars" for Internet-only sports streaming deals.
While that won't stretch far in the conventional TV world, it could still be used to acquire multiple streaming licenses.
Facebook opens new London HQ, to create 800 UK jobs
http://dtn.fm/zm9O6
Facebook opens its new London office on Monday and said it would add 800 more jobs in the capital next year, underlining its commitment to Britain as the country prepares for Brexit.
The social network said more than half of the people working at the site in central London will focus on engineering, making it Facebook's biggest engineering hub outside the United States.
It will also house Facebook's first in-house start-up incubator, called LDN_LAB, designed to help kick start fledgling British digital businesses.
EMEA vice president Nicola Mendelsohn said Facebook was more committed than ever to the UK and supporting the growth of the country's innovative start-ups.
"The UK's flourishing entrepreneurial ecosystem and international reputation for engineering excellence makes it one of the best places in the world to build a tech company," she said.
"And we've built our company here - this country has been a huge part of Facebook's story over the past decade, and I look forward to continuing our work to achieve our mission of bringing the world closer together."
The new jobs, which come 10 years after the company set up its first London office, will take Facebook's total British workforce to more than 2,300 by the end of 2018, it said.
Facebook, along with other U.S. digital giants including Google and Amazon, has not been deterred from expanding in London by Britain's decision to leave the European Union.
It announced the new headquarters last year, shortly after Google said it was building a new hub in the city that will be able to accommodate more than 7,000 employees in total.
Facebook's new office in the capital's West End, designed by architect Frank Gehry, will house engineers, developers, marketing and sales teams working on products like Workplace, its business product which was built in London, it said.
New Twitter Test Removes Re-Tweet and Like Counts from Tweet Embeds
http://dtn.fm/mK7Il
Twitter’s trying out a new way to boost on-platform engagement, this time by removing the tweet actions from embedded tweets and replacing them with a ‘talking about this’ count.
The idea is to get more people clicking through on the tweet, rather than merely checking out the re-tweet, like and share counts in the embed and moving on. In this format, the user is shown that people are talking about the tweet, that there’s a whole conversation happening around it - but if you want more context, you’ll need to click through to Twitter itself.
Click the link for complete article.
Facebook Announces ‘Community Boost’ Local Training Sessions For Smbs And Workers
http://dtn.fm/a7jPf
The program will tour 30 cities across the US in 2018
Facebook has been holding half-day and day-long digital marketing training sessions (“Boost Your Business“) for small businesses (SMBs) over the past several years. Today, the company is announcing an expanded program for local businesses and workers called “Facebook Community Boost.”
The company says the intention is to “help US small businesses grow and to equip more people with the digital skills they need to compete in the new economy.” The program will be held in 30 US cities, including Houston, St. Louis, Albuquerque and Des Moines, among others. It plans to involve local organizations to offer a range “digital skills training” and entrepreneurial advice.
The curriculum has yet to be fully worked out, according to Facebook. The earlier program, “Boost Your Business,” has reportedly reached or trained over 60,000 US small and medium-sized businesses. Along with today’s announcement, Facebook released some survey data on small business success using the platform:
- 70 percent of small and medium businesses say Facebook helps them attract customers.
- 56 percent say they increased sales by using Facebook.
- 42 percent say they’ve hired more people because of success resulting from using Facebook.
Earlier this year, Facebook said that it had 65 million business profile pages and 5 million advertisers globally. Today it’s 70 million profiles and 6 million active advertisers on Facebook and 2 million Instagram advertisers. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told financial analysts on the company’s third-quarter earnings call that “the vast majority” of its advertiser base consists of small and medium-sized businesses.
Part of the purpose of these “Boost” sessions is to expose SMBs and local entrepreneurs to Facebook marketing and advertising tools and options. And cynics may also see this as partly a PR move to boost the company’s image in the wake of various scandals tied to the 2016 election. Regardless, there is significant demand among local businesses for best practices knowledge and training on social media.
Twitter Pauses Profile Verification in Order to Clarify What Verification Actually Means
http://dtn.fm/IHim5
Does being verified on Twitter matter?
This is something I’ve considered at various times – my personal account is not verified, I applied when Twitter opened up verification to all users last year, but got rejected. At first, I was disappointed, but then I saw the raft of people who were getting verified in the wake of this announcement.
In the past, verification had been reserved for public figures, but the new process lead to a whole heap of people getting the verified checkmark, many of whom would not have qualified under the previous requirements. That's subsequently diluted the status of the tick - of course, I’m saying this as someone who was rejected, of course I’m more likely to talk it down. But objectively, it did seem like the rules behind verification were a bit confused, that Twitter itself didn’t seem to know who or why they were verifying certain users.
That’s been somewhat confirmed this week, with Twitter being caught up in yet another controversy around their own platform rules and policies, and their application in practice.
Click the link for complete article.
Facebook's Adding Some New Poll Presentation Options, Including GIFs
http://dtn.fm/1hRqc
A month after adding a new audience polling option to Instagram Stories, parent company Facebook is now also adding a new poll option, with all profiles and Pages now able to add GIFs and images in their Facebook polls to generate more interest.
Click the link for complete article.
Facebook Vows to Sacrifice Growth for Secure Operations
http://dtn.fm/yS8Fx
Facebook Inc. extended its dominance in online advertising in the third quarter but said it would sacrifice some future growth to invest more heavily in its safety and security operations to address the growing scrutiny of its power and influence.
The social-media giant reported a 79% jump in third-quarter profit on Wednesday, the same day lawmakers grilled executives from Facebook, Twitter Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google during congressional hearings that focused on alleged Russian propagandists' activity during the election. Facebook and Google together capture the bulk of the growth in digital advertising.
Facebook plans to double the number of employees and contractors who handle safety and security issues to 20,000 by the end of 2018. It is also redoubling security-focused engineering efforts in some areas and building new artificial-intelligence systems to detect what Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg described as "bad content and bad actors." Facebook's 2018 expenses could rise as much as 60% compared with 2017.
"I am dead serious about this," Mr. Zuckerberg told investors. "I've directed our teams to invest so much in security on top of the other investments we're making that it will significantly impact our profitability going forward."
Click the link for complete article.
7 Predictions for Social Media Marketing on Twitter in 2018
http://dtn.fm/57MTj
As we enter the last months of 2017, it's time to think about what's coming in the next year - and the best way to do that is with predictions.
Given that we follow the latest social trends and changes fairly closely, we feel we're pretty well placed to make some educated guesses as to where each platform is headed. This week, we'll be publishing our thoughts on what you can expect - we started with Facebook yesterday, and today, it's Twitter's turn under the microscope.
Here's what you can expect from Twitter in the next 12 months.
Click the link for complete article.
Facebook Announces New Ad Transparency Options Amidst Ongoing Investigation
http://dtn.fm/NhGz2
After Twitter announced their new Ad Transparency Center earlier this week, which will give users access to more insight into how organizations are using their platform for promotional purposes, Facebook has announced that it too will be upping it’s transparency efforts, in the wake of the investigation into how both networks were used to spread political messaging ahead of the 2016 US Presidential Election.
Similar to Twitter’s approach, Facebook’s looking to provide a new way for users to see all ads any business is running on the platform at any given time, with a new ‘View Ads’ option to be added to Pages.
Click the link for complete article.
Twitter Will Make Its Ads More Transparent To Brands, Everyone Else
http://dtn.fm/FhBr8
Twitter will open an Advertising Transparency Center and has agreed to a Media Rating Council audit of its ad metrics.
As the spotlight hits the murky side of digital advertising — from election-related controversies to viewability concerns — Twitter is pledging to expose more aspects of its advertising business.
Twitter plans to open an Advertising Transparency Center so that anyone can see all of the ad campaigns currently running on the social network, including those that didn’t originally appear as regular tweets. Additionally, the company has agreed to have the independent Media Rating Council (MRC) audit its ad measurements so that brands can be assured of what they are buying.
Twitter’s Advertising Transparency Center will roll out “in the coming weeks,” according to a company blog post published on Tuesday. The move is an attempt by the company to address the controversy surrounding how Russian-linked entities used digital ads on Twitter, Facebook and Google in an effort to influence last year’s US presidential election.
In addition to indexing all currently running campaigns on Twitter, the Advertising Transparency Center will show how long each ad has been running and what it looks like. And people will also be able to see a list of the ads that have been targeted to them and “report inappropriate ads or give negative feedback (i.e. ‘I don’t like this ad’) for every ad running on Twitter, whether the ad targets you or not,” according to Twitter.
Twitter has also adopted a new policy regarding political campaign ads. Now Twitter will require that those buying such ads to disclose that they are aimed at influencing an election, and Twitter will label these as political ads on its platform. In the Ad Transparency Center, these “electioneering ads” will be displayed along with details about the advertiser’s identity, its historical ad spend and the targeting parameters used.
In addition to making its ad ecosystem more visible, Twitter will make its ad measurements more transparent. After Facebook and Google’s YouTube agreed to MRC audits earlier this year, Twitter has followed suit.
At the moment, independent auditors are checking that Twitter’s measurements comply with industry standards. That work is expected to be completed by the end of this year, and then the MRC will officially inspect how Twitter counts ad impressions, including earned impressions, viewable video impressions and the amount of time people spend looking at a tweet or viewing a video on Twitter, according to an announcement released by the MRC on Tuesday (PDF).
“The MRC’s audit will cover metrics included in the data feeds Twitter prepares for third-party measurers, as well as its own reporting of certain metrics. It is expected that the ingestion and processing of the Twitter data feeds by the third parties will also be audited separately by MRC, to allow for an end-to-end consideration of Twitter metrics as reported through these third-party environments,” according to the MRC.
The independent auditor plans to complete its review of Twitter’s ad measurements sometime during the first half of 2018.
Twitter Releases New Schedule for Updates to Safety Policy and Process
http://dtn.fm/d24OC
Twitter has long been criticized for its inaction in addressing problems with trolls and abuse. But they have made improvements on this front – over the last 18 months, Twitter’s introduced a range of new tools and options, including:
- A new automated ‘Quality Filter’ which helps detect and eliminate questionable tweets from your timeline, including threats and offensive or abusive language.
- An expanded mute option, which enables users to block out any words, phrases, hashtags, @handles and emojis that they don't want to see.
New restrictions on offending accounts, including 12-hour bans where your tweet reach is limited.
- New processes to restrict the creation of abusive accounts and a presentation tool which collapses potentially abusive tweets to reduce their exposure.
- An update to the default egg avatar to encourage users to upload a real photo.
All of those measures are positive steps, and they’ve no doubt helped. But evidently they haven’t been enough – in recent weeks, Twitter has come under fire once again for their action, and inaction, on trolls and abuse.
The latest large-scale controversy came when Twitter suspended the account of actor Rose McGowan after McGowan spoke out about Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, and suggested, via tweet, that others within the industry have long known, and turned a blind eye, to the allegations of sexual abuse around Weinstein’s conduct.
Click the link for complete article.
Facebook Buys TBH, a Teen-Targeted Anonymous Poll App
http://dtn.fm/IWHb3
Facebook Inc., which is trying to make inroads with younger users, has bought TBH, an anonymous polling app that has become an overnight sensation among teens.
Launched less than three months ago, TBH has rapidly gained traction among U.S. teens, a group that analysts say is abandoning Facebook's core social network for services like Snap Inc.'s Snapchat and Facebook-owned Instagram.
A Facebook spokeswoman said TBH, which stands for "To Be Honest," will continue as a standalone app under Facebook. The app's creators will become Facebook employees and continue to oversee the app's expansion. The spokeswoman declined to disclose the price.
The TBH deal is another example of Facebook's willingness to acquire or mimic rival services that pose a threat to its dominance. The social-media company keeps a close eye on potential threats through an internal "early bird" warning system, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.
The app, created by the app development company Midnight Labs, launched on Aug. 3 in the state of Georgia. It quickly rose to the top of the iOS App Store, even though it still hasn't rolled out to all 50 U.S. states.
More than five million people have downloaded TBH and sent more than a billion messages, the app's developers said Monday in a blog post announcing the Facebook deal.
TBH describes itself as "an app for giving anonymous feedback to friends." Unlike other anonymous apps, TBH says the feedback offered to users is strictly positive.
The app asks users for access to their contacts. TBH also requests details such as users' full names, gender, whether they are in high school or college and their grade or year in school. If a user's friends are using TBH, the polling process can begin -- with the promise that responses are anonymous.
The app goes on to pose a series of prompts, paired with emoji, and the user gets to choose which friend best fits the prompt. Examples include, "Always has their phone ready to catch that important snap," "Always wanted to be friends with them," "Wouldn't mind snuggling up with them during a movie" and simply "Your favorite," with a hands-raised emoji.
Facebook Revamps News Feed
Dressed in his trademark hoodie and jeans, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg took the stage today at the company's headquarters to unveil the social networking giant's new News Feed, which has been overhauled to reflect the new ways in which people are using the site.
During an hour-long presentation in Menlo Park, Calif., featuring Zuckerberg and three of his top people, Facebook announced a number of new changes that will be progressively rolling out, including bigger pictures, a choice of feeds and a consistent mobile experience.
The changes will appear to Facebook's tablet and mobile sites in the coming weeks. On the web, a small number of people will be migrated to the new site at first, so the company can collect feedback and put a final shine on the new experience.
Click the link for complete article.
Twitter Announces What’s ‘Happening Now’ For Sporting Events, And Plans For A Bookmarking Feature
http://dtn.fm/S1j6s
Two helpful new features are making their way to a Twitter feed near you. One will help with cornering the real-time market, and the other will help with the overall user experience.
“Happening Now” is launching with sporting events and will make it easier to find tweets about events happening in real time. Bookmarking, also dubbed Save For Later, has been announced and planned, but it hasn’t been rolled out to the masses.
Click the link for complete article.
Facebook Sets Goal of a Billion Virtual-Reality Users, Unveils New Headset
http://dtn.fm/2s3WJ
Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg announced an ambitious goal of getting a billion people into virtual reality and said he wants to ensure the technology is "a force for good."
The comments, made Wednesday at Facebook's annual Oculus Connect developers' conference, conveyed a different tone for the CEO: anticipating the negative ways a new technology can be used, ahead of its widespread use. They follow a torrent of criticism leveled at Facebook for its hands-off policy on controversial information ranging from the live broadcasting of murders and suicides on its app, to its display of ads and content intended to sow social discord.
Virtual reality is no substitute for being with people, Mr. Zuckerberg told the crowd, but when that isn't possible, it can make the world better. "We want to make sure it's safe, a force for good, and accessible for everyone," he said.
His remarks also followed his apology Tuesday over a Facebook post in which he took a virtual-reality tour of the aftermath of the recent hurricane in Puerto Rico. The video was meant to illustrate the power of VR but backfired, as he and another employee congratulated each other on the cool tech.
"When you're in VR yourself, the surroundings feel quite real," he said in his apology. "But that sense of empathy doesn't extend well to people watching you as a virtual character on a 2D screen. That's something we'll need to work on over time."
In the opening keynote to the conference, Mr. Zuckerberg unveiled Oculus Go, a stand-alone, lower-priced headset Facebook said it was working on a year ago. He also showed other planned changes, including 3-D posts, aimed at making VR more visible to users.
The headset, with a $199 price tag and scheduled to be shipped early next year, is part of a new era under Hugo Barra, former global vice president at Xiaomi Corp., who Facebook earlier this year hired to take charge of its VR business.
The steep price tag of Facebook's Oculus Rift headset, which needs to be powered by a separately bought higher-end personal computer, contributed to the company's rocky start in VR. The most popular VR devices by far have been less-costly headsets powered by smartphones, such as the Samsung Gear. Rift sales were so sluggish Facebook cut the price twice since introducing it a little more than a year ago. At the conference, Mr. Zuckerberg said the company would make permanent the current, temporary $399 price for the Rift.
He also announced a new offering -- an Oculus bundle for business -- that includes not just hardware but also licenses, warranties and customer support.
Facebook Connects Video Copyright-Flagging System to Third-Party Tools
http://dtn.fm/a1Bmw
Facebook is promising to make it easier for content owners to police the social platform for unauthorized and pirated videos — and then either monitor or block them, or potentially make money from them.
A year and a half ago, Facebook launched Rights Manager to let media companies and other copyright holders identify unauthorized video sharing based on reference files. But using the system has largely been a manual process, unless rights owners developed hooks from their own automated systems into the Rights Manager’s API.
Now, Facebook is directly integrating Rights Manager with services from three third-party providers — Zefr, Friend MTS, and MarkMonitor — to provide new options to automate such tasks. Facebook says the partners will be activated over the coming months.
“We want to give rights owners access to Rights Manager in the ways that make the most sense for their business,” Facebook product manager Xiaoyin Qu wrote in a blog post.
Google-owned YouTube has for years provided copyright-flagging tools through its Content ID system, which it first launched in 2007.
While Facebook doesn’t charge any fees to use Rights Manager, the third-party partners do. Zefr’s RightsID system was originally created for YouTube. U.K.-based Friend MTS’s services for TV broadcasters let them find illegal live-streams of their channels, while MarkMonitor provides antipiracy-screening services for on-demand and live-streaming video.
“We can look at the world of video on Facebook and identify the content that matters,” said Jason Kirk, Zefr’s chief business officer.
Zefr has worked with the Rights Manager team at Facebook since 2015 as a beta partner. Through Zefr’s access to Facebook’s video-search API, it can help rights holders find intellectual property via descriptive search; Zefr also will offer clients the capability to manage the queues of automated matches returned by Rights Manager.
Facebook’s Rights Manager lets content owners create automated rules to determine what actions to take when it finds a copyright-infringing video. They can block the video from being viewed; leave the video up and monitor it for activity; or claim a share of any advertising revenue generated if an ad break runs during the video. In addition, rights holders can choose to manually review the videos that are flagged as a match.
Content owners must be approved to access to Facebook’s Rights Manager tool, via an application available at rightsmanager.fb.com.
Twitter Adds Ability To Upload And Send Videos Via Tweetdeck
http://dtn.fm/7i1pZ
TweetDeck has announced that users are now able to upload and send videos via tweet through the Twitter management app.
Still something of an under-rated tool yet one widely used by social managers, Twitter has been rolling out gradual upgrades to TweetDeck over time. Last September, they added new time and date search filters to make it easier to find relevant tweets, then in May this year, they added the capacity to search for tweets quoted by other users.
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Facebook, Google bound to change handling of politics ads - marketing executives
http://dtn.fm/4lIy4
Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc's Google have little choice but to rein in internet political ads in the face of growing U.S. government pressure, a panel of advertising consultants and executives said on Monday.
Speaking at a trade conference, the marketers seized on allegations that Russian operatives bought U.S. political ads on Facebook as evidence that the sector cannot go on being unregulated.
"I think there will be more scrutiny, and there better be more self-regulation. Otherwise, I think regulation will be coming," Brent McGoldrick, a political ad consultant and a Republican, said at Advertising Week New York.
Last week, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg vowed to do more to deter governments from using Facebook to manipulate elections in other countries, after the company disclosed $100,000 in Russian ad purchases in the months before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The 3,000 ads included some that highlighted support for Democrat Hillary Clinton among Muslim women, as well as others that showed a deep understanding of U.S. social divides, the Washington Post reported on Monday.
Facebook shares ended down 4.5 percent on Monday, closing at $162.87, as some investors worried the tech sector had become too expensive.
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Monaker Group, Inc. (MKGI) CEO to Present at Robins Equity Research Roundup
Travel and technology company Monaker Group, Inc. (OTCQB: MKGI) this morning announced that it has been invited to present at the Third Annual Robins Equity Research Roundup, which is scheduled to take place September 26-27 at the Shilo Inn and Suites in Portland, Oregon. Monaker CEO Bill Kerby is scheduled to present on Tuesday, September 26 at 11:15 a.m. Pacific Time. He will be joined by Richard Marshall, the company’s director of corporate development, for one-on-one meetings with institutional analysts and investors on that same day. Kerby’s presentation is expected to focus on the Monaker Booking Engine (MBE), a new cloud-based technology platform that delivers ALR reservations that can be instantly confirmed. As the company noted in a news release earlier this month, the MBE platform is currently approaching its first commercial launch by a “major travel industry partner.”
To view the full press release, visit http://dtn.fm/I48iH
About Monaker Group
Monaker Group is a technology-driven travel company focused on delivering innovation to alternative lodging rentals (ALR) market. The Monaker Booking Engine (MBE) delivers instant booking of more than 1.4 million vacation rental homes, villas, chalets, apartments, condos, resort residences and castles. MBE offers travel distributors and agencies an industry-first: a customizable, instant-booking platform for alternative lodging. For more information, visit www.monakergroup.com.
About MissionIRNewsBreaks
MissionIRNewsBreaks provide a rapid summary of corporate news that catch the attention of MissionIR. MissionIRNewsBreaks are created by our Team of professional journalists that keep a constant eye on the markets, these posts are designed to inform you on the latest happenings of our clients and other publicly traded companies on our radar. From earnings, acquisitions and agreements to conference attendance and clinical study results, our news breaks keep you up-to-date with the day’s top movers. MissionIR is primarily focused on strategic communications. We have executed countless communications programs to address the needs of companies ranging from start-ups to established industry leaders, gaining valuable experience and the expertise necessary to determine the most effective strategy for any given situation.
MissionIR (MIR)
Atlanta, Georgia
www.MissionIR.com
404.941.8975 Office
Editor@MissionIR.com
Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the Mission Investor Relations website applicable to all content provided by MIR, wherever published or re-published: http://www.missionir.com/disclaimer.html
MKGI CEO to Present at Robins Equity Research Roundup
Travel and technology company Monaker Group, Inc. (OTCQB: MKGI) this morning announced that it has been invited to present at the Third Annual Robins Equity Research Roundup, which is scheduled to take place September 26-27 at the Shilo Inn and Suites in Portland, Oregon. Monaker CEO Bill Kerby is scheduled to present on Tuesday, September 26 at 11:15 a.m. Pacific Time. He will be joined by Richard Marshall, the company’s director of corporate development, for one-on-one meetings with institutional analysts and investors on that same day. Kerby’s presentation is expected to focus on the Monaker Booking Engine (MBE), a new cloud-based technology platform that delivers ALR reservations that can be instantly confirmed. As the company noted in a news release earlier this month, the MBE platform is currently approaching its first commercial launch by a “major travel industry partner.”
To view the full press release, visit http://dtn.fm/I48iH
About Monaker Group
Monaker Group is a technology-driven travel company focused on delivering innovation to alternative lodging rentals (ALR) market. The Monaker Booking Engine (MBE) delivers instant booking of more than 1.4 million vacation rental homes, villas, chalets, apartments, condos, resort residences and castles. MBE offers travel distributors and agencies an industry-first: a customizable, instant-booking platform for alternative lodging. For more information, visit www.monakergroup.com.
About MissionIRNewsBreaks
MissionIRNewsBreaks provide a rapid summary of corporate news that catch the attention of MissionIR. MissionIRNewsBreaks are created by our Team of professional journalists that keep a constant eye on the markets, these posts are designed to inform you on the latest happenings of our clients and other publicly traded companies on our radar. From earnings, acquisitions and agreements to conference attendance and clinical study results, our news breaks keep you up-to-date with the day’s top movers. MissionIR is primarily focused on strategic communications. We have executed countless communications programs to address the needs of companies ranging from start-ups to established industry leaders, gaining valuable experience and the expertise necessary to determine the most effective strategy for any given situation.
MissionIR (MIR)
Atlanta, Georgia
www.MissionIR.com
404.941.8975 Office
Editor@MissionIR.com
Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the Mission Investor Relations website applicable to all content provided by MIR, wherever published or re-published: http://www.missionir.com/disclaimer.html
Facebook Removes Major Targeting Options to Fight Discriminatory Advertising
http://dtn.fm/Gu9yf
Last week, Facebook announced the ability for advertisers to target their campaigns based on a user's employer and education will be removed from the advertising platform.
The decision comes after ProPublica, an investigative reporting publication, found that advertisers could target discriminatory groups such as “Jew Haters” and “NaziParty” in their ad campaigns.
To address this, Facebook has removed these targeting fields, saying they will not be added back until the "right processes" are in place to prevent the issue.
Emphasizing its focus on building a safe community, the post ends with “we want Facebook to be a safe place for people and businesses, and we’ll continue to do everything we can to keep hate off Facebook."
Click the link for complete article.
Toyota Turns to Twitter for Mood Marketing
http://dtn.fm/dV57B
The calendar still says 2017, but for car brands, it's already 2018. To market this year's Camry, Toyota is veering away from making its car look like the sensible, though boring choice. Its “Sensations” campaign is meant to tap into what its audience is feeling.
Among the commercials designed for the campaign are some that explicitly encourage making the purchase of the care for “the wrong reasons.” Those present the Camry as an attractive choice that makes driving a sensuous experience – as if the car were a sexy sports car.
Click the link for complete article.
Twitter Adds Teams to its Mobile App to Facilitate Business Profile Management on the Go
http://dtn.fm/zCxS2
Twitter’s making it easier to manage business accounts on the go by adding the TweetDeck 'Teams' feature to their Android and iOS apps. The tool enables users to share access to Twitter accounts without having to share a password - similar to how you can manage a Facebook Page via your personal profile, as opposed to logging in as the business. Here's how it works.
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Monaker Group, Inc. (MKGI) Divests Non-Core Assets, Eliminates Convertible Debt ahead of Nasdaq Application
Travel and technology company Monaker Group, Inc. (OTCQB: MKGI) this morning announced that it has divested certain non-core assets for total consideration of $2.9 million. Additionally, the company has completed the conversion of $1.4 million of convertible debt owned by a long-term shareholder and company insider, eliminating the remainder of its convertible debt in preparation for a planned up-listing. “The divestiture of these non-core assets and elimination of convertible debt, along with our recently completed $3 million private placement, substantially strengthens our balance sheet as we prepare our application for up-listing on the Nasdaq Capital Market,” Bill Kerby, CEO of Monaker Group, stated in the news release. “The private placement and conversion of debt into equity reflects the confidence of our major stakeholders in our business model and near-term growth prospects.” The planned up-listing comes as Monaker Group nears the first commercial launch of its cloud-based Monaker Booking Engine (MBE) by a major travel industry partner. The company’s management believes that completion of this milestone, as well as the added exposure provided by a Nasdaq listing, will help attract “a broader base of global institutional and retail investors, and provide greater liquidity for [its] shareholders.”
To view the full press release, visit http://dtn.fm/iuVO2
About Monaker
Monaker Group is a technology-driven travel company focused on delivering innovation to alternative lodging rentals (ALR) market. The Monaker Booking Engine (MBE) delivers instant booking of more than 1.2 million vacation rental homes, villas, chalets, apartments, condos and castles. MBE offers travel distributors and agencies an industry-first: a customizable instant booking platform for ALR. Monaker’s NextTrip.com B2C website, also powered by MBE, is the first to offer significant instantly-bookable ALR products along with mainstream travel products and services all on a single site. NextTrip also features rich content, imagery and high-quality video to enhance a traveler’s booking experience and assist in the search, decision and buying process for both individuals and groups. For more information, visit www.monakergroup.com or www.nexttrip.com.
About MissionIRNewsBreaks
MissionIRNewsBreaks provide a rapid summary of corporate news that catch the attention of MissionIR. MissionIRNewsBreaks are created by our Team of professional journalists that keep a constant eye on the markets, these posts are designed to inform you on the latest happenings of our clients and other publicly traded companies on our radar. From earnings, acquisitions and agreements to conference attendance and clinical study results, our news breaks keep you up-to-date with the day’s top movers. MissionIR is primarily focused on strategic communications. We have executed countless communications programs to address the needs of companies ranging from start-ups to established industry leaders, gaining valuable experience and the expertise necessary to determine the most effective strategy for any given situation.
MissionIR (MIR)
Atlanta, Georgia
www.MissionIR.com
404.941.8975 Office
Editor@MissionIR.com
Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the Mission Investor Relations website applicable to all content provided by MIR, wherever published or re-published: http://www.missionir.com/disclaimer.html
MKGI Divests Non-Core Assets, Eliminates Convertible Debt ahead of Nasdaq Application
Travel and technology company Monaker Group, Inc. (OTCQB: MKGI) this morning announced that it has divested certain non-core assets for total consideration of $2.9 million. Additionally, the company has completed the conversion of $1.4 million of convertible debt owned by a long-term shareholder and company insider, eliminating the remainder of its convertible debt in preparation for a planned up-listing. “The divestiture of these non-core assets and elimination of convertible debt, along with our recently completed $3 million private placement, substantially strengthens our balance sheet as we prepare our application for up-listing on the Nasdaq Capital Market,” Bill Kerby, CEO of Monaker Group, stated in the news release. “The private placement and conversion of debt into equity reflects the confidence of our major stakeholders in our business model and near-term growth prospects.” The planned up-listing comes as Monaker Group nears the first commercial launch of its cloud-based Monaker Booking Engine (MBE) by a major travel industry partner. The company’s management believes that completion of this milestone, as well as the added exposure provided by a Nasdaq listing, will help attract “a broader base of global institutional and retail investors, and provide greater liquidity for [its] shareholders.”
To view the full press release, visit http://dtn.fm/iuVO2
About Monaker
Monaker Group is a technology-driven travel company focused on delivering innovation to alternative lodging rentals (ALR) market. The Monaker Booking Engine (MBE) delivers instant booking of more than 1.2 million vacation rental homes, villas, chalets, apartments, condos and castles. MBE offers travel distributors and agencies an industry-first: a customizable instant booking platform for ALR. Monaker’s NextTrip.com B2C website, also powered by MBE, is the first to offer significant instantly-bookable ALR products along with mainstream travel products and services all on a single site. NextTrip also features rich content, imagery and high-quality video to enhance a traveler’s booking experience and assist in the search, decision and buying process for both individuals and groups. For more information, visit www.monakergroup.com or www.nexttrip.com.
About MissionIRNewsBreaks
MissionIRNewsBreaks provide a rapid summary of corporate news that catch the attention of MissionIR. MissionIRNewsBreaks are created by our Team of professional journalists that keep a constant eye on the markets, these posts are designed to inform you on the latest happenings of our clients and other publicly traded companies on our radar. From earnings, acquisitions and agreements to conference attendance and clinical study results, our news breaks keep you up-to-date with the day’s top movers. MissionIR is primarily focused on strategic communications. We have executed countless communications programs to address the needs of companies ranging from start-ups to established industry leaders, gaining valuable experience and the expertise necessary to determine the most effective strategy for any given situation.
MissionIR (MIR)
Atlanta, Georgia
www.MissionIR.com
404.941.8975 Office
Editor@MissionIR.com
Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the Mission Investor Relations website applicable to all content provided by MIR, wherever published or re-published: http://www.missionir.com/disclaimer.html
Facebook to reject ads from pages touting 'fake news'
http://dtn.fm/a1Z51
Facebook on Monday said that pages that make a habit of linking to bogus news stories will no longer be able to advertise at the world's leading online social network.
The move is the latest shot fired by Facebook in its war against 'fake news' used to deceive instead of enlighten.
"If Pages repeatedly share stories marked as false, these repeat offenders will no longer be allowed to advertise on Facebook," product managers Tessa Lyons and Satwik Shukla said in a blog post.
"This update will help to reduce the distribution of false news which will keep Pages that spread false news from making money."
The social network already didn't allow ads that link stories determined to be false by third-party fact-checkers.
"False news is harmful to our community," Lyons and Shukla said.
"It makes the world less informed and erodes trust."
Fake news became a serious issue in last year's US election campaign, when clearly fraudulent stories circulated on social media, potentially swaying some voters.
Concerns have been raised since then about hoaxes and misinformation affecting elections in Europe this year, with investigations showing how "click farms" generate revenue from online advertising using made-up news stories.
"We've found instances of Pages using Facebook ads to build their audiences in order to distribute false news more broadly," Lyons and Shukla said.
Facebook and Google have been working to curtail, or at least flag, stories crafted to deceive instead of enlighten.
Google earlier this year added a fact-checking tag to search results globally, its latest initiative to help curb the spread of misinformation and "fake news."
The new tags, to be used in all languages for users worldwide, use third-party fact-checkers to indicate whether news items are true, false or somewhere in-between.
The feature debuted about the same time Facebook added a new tool in news feeds to help users determine whether shared stories are real or bogus.
Twitter Releases Major Events Calendar for September to Help with Strategic Planning
http://dtn.fm/0mGOX
We're moving into the home stretch - there's only four months left in 2017. If you haven't started planning out your holiday campaigns, now is the time, but for the immediate future, Twitter has released the latest version of its monthly event calendar to help you tap into the latest, most tweet-worthy events.
So what major events are likely to trend on Twitter in September?
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