This is our first social roundup of 2020 and we’re kicking off the year with some of the biggest platform news and campaigns, including Facebook for Super Bowl LIV, NBC for the Olympics, and First Direct.
Enjoy! And don’t forget to browse our social media reports and articles, or why not take some training and attend our Fast Track Paid Social course.
Vine successor Byte launches
The second coming of Vine is finally with us. Introducing Byte.
Byte was first mooted two years ago by Vine founder, Dom Hofman, when he announced he was building a successor to his 6-second video sharing app. So what’s new?
For former Vine users, you can expect a similar experience with Byte keeping all videos limited to six seconds and providing the hallmarks of a social media platform – individual profiles, feeds, explore pages and sharing options.
Byte can’t yet match all the bells and whistles of its biggest rival, Tik Tok, which has AR filters, music and bonus features, but what it lacks in tools it will make up for in monetisation options for creators, according to Hofman.
Byte will soon launch its partner program which will help popular users monetise their creations, something that was lacking on Vine and has not yet been realised on Tik Tok and other similar platforms.
Speaking with Tech Crunch, Byte’s founder explained that the partner program is still being worked out but would likely work on a revenue shares + supplemented funds from Byte to pay the creators on its platform.
LinkedIn is kicking off the New Year with welcome updates
This month, professional social network, LinkedIn, has made some updates to its company pages to help brands humanize themselves on its platform.
There are three major updates that LinkedIn believes will facilitate brands engaging their audiences in more personal and interactive ways.
‘Live Streaming’ will enable brands to talk to their followers in real-time, where followers can comment and react, which opens up the opportunity for both meaningful conversations and two-way feedback.
The ‘invite to follow’ feature is a result of one of LinkedIn users’ biggest bugbears: getting relevant people to follow their company page(s). The new tool allows users to invite their first-degree connections to follow their company page(s), and also allows users to opt-out of being invited to join pages.
Lastly, LinkedIn is giving brands the option to post as either themselves or as an individual working there with less friction than before.
Facebook runs its first-ever Super Bowl campaign
Did you know over 98 million people watched last year’s NFL Superbowl (LIII)? Did you know Superbowl LIII generated over $400 million in ad revenue in 2019, from companies like Microsoft, Verizon and Audi? Did you know one of the world’s biggest companies, Facebook, has never run an ad campaign for the Superbowl?
Enter 2020, Chris Rock and Superbowl LIV.
Facebook will be launching a series of ads for the early February showdown, with both Chris Rock and Sylvester Stallone appearing.
According to a company spokeswoman, the campaigns aims to show “how people from different backgrounds come together over shared interests and experiences, all through Facebook Groups.”
First Direct takes makes money a wellness issue
HSBC-owned UK bank, First Direct, kicked off the New Year with its #MoneyWellness campaign.
Is money a wellness issue? We think so. #moneywellness pic.twitter.com/5Z7KWwgZdI
— first direct (@firstdirect) January 13, 2020
First Direct CMO Helen Priestly told Campaign, “Banks are where people put their money and engage, so if we can’t talk about [money] both positively and negatively, then who can?”
The #MoneyWellness campaign is First Direct’s attempt to address the elephant in the room for a lot of UK citizens; money and anxiety.
Considered a taboo topic in the UK, #MoneyWellness intends to help de-stigmatise the discourse around money, through a series of social films of people opening up about their personal relationships with money.
This initiative is supported by First Direct research which found that a majority of UK consumers rank money’s importance higher than other wellness areas, like exercise and diet.
Snapchat and Twitter partner with NBC for Tokyo Olympics 2020
American media company and news outlet NBC will be partnering with Snapchat and Twitter in the US for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, as reported in Variety.
Following on from successful partnerships at past Olympic Games, NBC is taking aim at the US Gen Z on Snapchat to deliver four daily exclusive shows of Olympic content for the social media apps users – two of which will be highlight shows in “near realtime”.
Back in July 2019, NBC agreed a deal with Twitter to produce a 20-minute exclusive daily studio show covering all the latest from The Olympics, with an interactive poll to encourage follower engagement.
Facebook is prioritising privacy in 2020
Mark Zuckerberg has announced three areas of focus for Facebook in the new year as regards user privacy.
On Data Privacy Day, the Facebook CEO published a blog post outlining how Facebook will be prompting people to review their privacy settings, with a call to action coming via the Facebook News Feed taking users to Facebook’s Privacy Checkup Tool to configure their personal settings.
Facebook is also giving people more information on their off-Facebook Activity. Through its Off-Facebook Activity tool, users will now have access to a summary of the information other businesses send Facebook about them; with the option to clear their accounts.
Lastly, Login Notifications (which were launched last month) notifies Facebook users of any log-ins from third-party applications – e.g. games, streaming services – and give users more control over which applications are connected to their Facebook account, with the option to edit this list.
Manchester City FC launches #SameGoals
To boost participation in women’s football, English Premier League champions Manchester City has rolled out its #SameGoals campaign.
This year’s activation aims to encourage more football participation through the club’s social media accounts, with aspiring footballers asked to share videos of themselves either scoring or saving a goal – with #SameGoals – for their chance to win a limited-edition football from the club.
Footballers taking part will also get a chance to meet some of Manchester City WFC’s players; Ellen White, Georgia Stanway, Gemma Bonner and Keira Walsh will all be holding special football clinics for girls in their respective hometowns.
#SameGoals will also see Manchester City hold a festival at The Etihad, next month, where children and their families will be able to take part in games and skills challenges.
Facebook and Cambridge Analytica emails surface
An email chain has surfaced between Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, via former Facebook employee, Brittany Kaiser (of The Great Hack fame), suggesting, as Techcrunch reports, that in late 2015 Facebook only requested by email that CA delete the personality quiz app data — and only asked the company to “provide us with confirmation” [i.e. of deletion], with no mention of a specific process of ‘certification’”, as Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer later told the UK parliament in 2018.
As Techcrunch makes clear, “It wasn’t until January 2016 that Facebook received the signed certification from Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix vowing the company had deleted the data.”
#IsItNormal asks Bupa
With one in four people dealing with mental health issues, Bupa is addressing people’s perceptions of ‘normal’ with its brand new #IsItNormal campaign.
As per Bupa’s press release about the campaign, “the brand aims to normalise seeking support for mental health by offering reassurance that with over seven billion versions of normal on this planet, there is no one type of ‘normal’.”
Bupa is also launching its own online ‘mental health hub’ which aims to be a source of information, guidance and practical tips for people interested in learning more about, and improving, their mental health.
