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As Mixer dropped news they will be partnering with Facebook Gaming (find out more below) and on Tuesday Twitch stars hosted a blackout to raise awareness of sexual harassment, the streaming world has had quite the week. However, your favourite social media platforms have still been releasing new features and tests, so if you’re behind you’re in the right place to get the lowdown on everything!
Read last week’s This Week In Social here, and head over to Ventura’s LinkedIn profile where we post daily updates on everything social media!
Microsoft shuts down Mixer and partners with Facebook Gaming. On Monday, Microsoft owned streaming site Mixer shut down after announcing its partnership with Facebook Gaming, with the declaration that all streamers are being transferred to Facebook’s site with immediate effect. But why did Mixer fail? In short, they failed to compete to Twitch. Microsoft’s Head Of Gaming stated, “We started pretty far behind, in terms of where Mixer’s monthly active viewers were compared to some of the big players out there…I think the Mixer community is really going to benefit from the broad audience that Facebook has through their properties, and the abilities to reach gamers in a very seamless way through the social platform Facebook has.”
For the first time, Facebook will enable Instagram advertising without linking to a Facebook page. Businesses that choose to exclusively use Instagram as an advertising platform independent of Facebook will follow a five step process to setting up ads, which starts by clicking “Promote” on a published post from a business profile. It is thought the change in direction is to separate Instagram from Facebook (after years of linking the two networks through Facebook Business Manager) due to the backlash Facebook has received during the BLM protests. Initially Instagram advertising outside of Facebook is only available in the US and Turkey.
Instagram have also revealed they will be expanding the access to Instagram Shopping to more businesses using the platform, including creators looking to sell their own merch. Guidelines specify Instagram accounts looking to sell products can’t front for an affiliate seller (such as Amazon) and they must “demonstrate trustworthiness”.
#CampYouTube was announced this week to keep children engaged alongside new toolkits for aspiring YouTube stars. With regular summer camp’s off the card due to the pandemic, YouTube is offering online alternatives to re-create popular camp activities through videos. YouTube have also added education resources to help creators maximise their YouTube presence. There are currently five toolkits of this kind on the platform, with more to come. Aspiring YouTubers are set to utilise these resources as the number of children looking into a career on the video sharing site increases.
This week Facebook have launched Forecast, a new app to host crowd-sourced predictions and discussions. Forecast will enable users to pose questions and ask other users to vote on and discuss predictions for the future. Facebook have described Forecast as “a place to ask questions and use in-app points to make predictions about the future. All questions are submitted by the community and then moderated for clarity, using Forecast’s moderation guidelines and Facebook’s Community Standards.” The app has a points system (users earn points by posing questions and by implementing reasoning to their answers) which is essentially a creditability score. Find out more about Forecast here.
New data on how Snapchat users are responding to COVID-19 has been published. Evolving habits, purchases and concerns from Snapchatters have been published, providing marketers with an insight into how to use Snapchat during this time and how audiences might change behaviours post-pandemic. The results published were collected via an in-app survey which earned responses from an estimated group of 2,000 users (not a huge percentage of Snapchat’s 229 million daily active users, but a sample size nonetheless). Some high-level insights include:
