January has come and gone, and, as usual, Facebook rolled out a slew of enhancements. That said, other platforms experienced some newsworthy happenings as well.
Here is the latest from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Facebook expanded live video to all iPhone users in the US. Facebook first introduced live video in 2015, at which time it could only be used public figures. Now, it’s available to a large population of users in the United States.
Learn More: Facebook Expands Live Video to All iPhone Users in the US
Facebook launched a new tool for targeting organic posts to your desired audience. Audience Optimization is said to help make posts more relevant in people’s news feeds through being shown to Facebook users who are most likely to engage with them.
Learn More: Now You Can Target Organic Facebook Posts to Specific Audiences
According to Facebook’s Q4 earnings call, the world’s leading social network continues to widen the gap between itself the competition. Numbers are up in just about every way they can be measured — with growth in revenue, daily active users, and number of hours of video watched each day.
Learn More: Facebook Reports Over 100M Hours of Video Watched Daily, More Record Numbers in Q4 Earnings Call
Facebook’s Messenger app hit a milestone in early January as the company announced that 800 million people are using it each month. Throughout 2015, Facebook made strides to improve its Messenger app, which helped it earn the title of the fastest growing app of 2015 in the US.
Learn More: Facebook Messenger Hits 800 Million Monthly Active Users, Details Future Plans
Instagram is rapidly increasing the number of ads it serves each month, according to a report from Brand Networks. The numbers show that Brand Network alone garnered 50 million ad impressions on Instagram in August, 100 million ad impressions September, and 670 million ad impressions December.
Learn More: Seeing More Ads on Instagram? A New Report Shows the Company is Displaying More Than Ever
Although Periscope is owned by Twitter, it could formerly only be accessed through a separate app. Now, Periscope videos can be embedded in tweets and played right within the timeline of Twitter’s iOS app. Like in the Periscope app, broadcasts be replayed for up to 24 hours.
Learn More: Twitter Brings Live Periscope Videos Direct to Its Timeline
Considering the fleeting nature of communication on Twitter, 24 hours is a long time to expect people to pay attention to one of your tweets. That’s how long Twitter polls would last by default, now you can set them to run for much shorter length of time and get the opinions of your audience more immediately.
Learn More: You Can Now Run Twitter Polls Anywhere From 5 Minutes to 1 Week
Twitter introduced a new ad unit designed to drive more back and forth conversation between businesses and Twitter users. These appropriately titled ‘conversational ads’ work by appending a call to action button to promoted tweets inviting people to tweet with the business using a customizable hashtag.
Learn More: Twitter Introduces New Ad Unit For Driving Conversations With Businesses
Multiple sources who know of Twitter’s plans provided information saying that longer tweets are coming to Twitter by the end of Q1 2016. Get ready to see tweets as long as 10,000 characters, sources say, as Twitter is planning to adopt the same character limit currently in place for direct messages.
Learn More: Twitter May Be Upping Character Limit From 140 to 10,000
Upon the rumor Twitter was going to nix its 140 character limit, the company’s stock price hit a new all-time low dropping several dollars below the previous record low of $23.31. Having dropped another 14%, its stock price sat at $19.98.
Learn More: Twitter Stock At All Time Low Following Announcement of Longer Tweets
Featured image via Paulo Bobita
