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Social Media News

Social Media News Roundup: August ’18 Week 3

In social media news this week, Instagram wants to give you some recommendations, Pinterest widens its advertisements and Snapchat wants to connect Creators and brands.
Recommended For You

This week, Instagram has been testing a new feature in the news feed – recommended posts. This comes after the success of their ‘Caught Up’ feature, which lets users know when they have seen everything below the announcement.

The ‘Recommended For You’ feature is based on the posts you’ve liked and the people you already follow. Instagram’s idea is that once you have caught up on all your friends and people you’ve followed posts’ then you can take a look at some other stuff they think you might like.

Under the ‘Recommended For You’ tab will be a whole other feed, kind of alien to the one above it as it will feature different people’s posts. Therefore, if you’re seeing random people’s dogs, maybe it’s time to stop liking canine candids.

Pinterest Widens

Advertisers on Pinterest rejoice! Pinterest has been testing max-width videos for advertisements over the last few months and is now rolling them out to everyone. The new bigger advertisements span over two columns on Pinterest, which is a huge difference to just normal ads that are the size of usual Pins. The wider advertisements are considered far more engaging and will aid in advertisers’ journeys to connect brands with users. We mean, there’s nowhere really left to run once a max-width adverts comes onto your screen.

Self-Made Stickers for Creators

Snapchat has set its focus of their own set of Creators this week as the social media app tests sticker packs that can be self-made. This is another move made by Snapchat this year to connect creators with brands – it’s a connection they really want to happen. It seems the social app really appreciates Creators and the hype they bring to Snapchat, so much so that they’ve also been pushing creator-made AR lenses too. It’ll be interesting to see if all the efforts pay off and more users are enticed by the promise of being a Creator someday.