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As promised, Spark Bites is back this week with some updates on how Facebook is handling the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica mess, on top of our usual social media news and updates of course! Read on to find out what’s been going on in the social network world this past week:   Pinterest Pinterest is expanding its visual discovery feature “Shop the Look” with the help of Home Depot. Shop the Look allows users to simply tap the white circle on a pin to see similar, shoppable items. Home Depot is helping Pinterest identify the products in the pins to help improve Shop the Look. Basically, instead of the user having to google “rectangle platform four sticks coming out of it,” Home Depot will just tell Pinterest to tell us that that is a desk. The future is wonderful.   Facebook Last month,...

If you’ve seen the news at all the past few days, you’ll know that this week’s social media news has been a serious rollercoaster that had some of us like: But also kind of like?:Strap yourselves in, folks, because this edition of Spark Bites by Spark Growth contains a lot of important updates about the social media world that everyone should be aware of. Let’s get started! Pinterest Pinterest’s Shopping Ads are now available to hundreds of advertisers. This will allow businesses to automatically create ads on the platform by pulling images from their existing product feeds. To qualify for this program, businesses need to complete a Pinterest Propel Program sign-up form.   Snapchat And now for something you don’t often see on our site: an excellent example of how NOT to use social media marketing. Rihanna publicly criticized Snapchat the other day for...

Welcome back to your weekly dose of Spark Bites by Spark Growth! We’ve got plenty of social network news for users, brands, and even robots this week, so get excited. Read on to find out more! LinkedIn Robots aren’t just taking over jobs, they’re taking over resume-writing too! Microsoft has partnered up with LinkedIn and they’ve recently launched Resume Assistant. While a user is making a resume in Word, Resume Assistant can inspire them by showing them examples of how other professionals within their job industry describe their work experience and skills. (Think your resume is up to snuff? We’re hiring and would love to see it!) The Terms of Service for the social networking site is getting an update next month. Here are some of the things that’ll be changing: More options to control data that can be used to personalize...

With recent data-powered performance results trending in favor of native advertising, display ads face a questionable future. Business Insider reported that native ads will drive 74 percent of ad revenue in the U.S. by 2021. In today’s digital space, the benefits of native advertising over display are becoming increasingly apparent. It’s easy to assume that the only reason native ads currently wield power is their ability to seamlessly blend into website content. While this is certainly an advantage, there’s a broader spectrum of factors boosting native’s relevance. We took a closer look and charted out 6 critical reasons why native advertising has, and will continue to, grab display’s revenue share:   1. Ad-Blocking According to a PageFair study, adblock usage grew 30 percent in 2016, resulting in 236 million desktop devices and 380 million mobile devices adopting adblock. This trend has played a...

Welcome to this week’s edition of Spark Bites ― your one-stop-shop for the latest in social media news! While some social networks crowdsourced their housekeeping, others got in on all the Oscars buzz. Read on to find out more!   Facebook   After a major News Feed overhaul that prioritizes user-generated content over published media, Facebook is now trying to get back into publishers’ good graces. The social network launched a Local News Subscription Accelerator program which will aid U.S.-based publishers in gaining a larger audience. The program facilitates training for publishers to learn about subscriber-acquisition by Facebook’s “digital subscription experts.”   In an effort to make its advertising platform more efficient, Facebook removed 20 ad performance metrics that it deemed redundant. Furthermore, it launched “metric labels,” which will differentiate hard data from “estimated” or “in development” metrics. This feature is expected to aid...

It’s the end of another week and we’re back with the latest in social media news! Social networks teased us with mystery updates and also launched some pretty neat, proactive initiatives focused on community. Find out more in this edition of Spark Bites:   Hide And Seek GIF from Hide GIFs   Facebook   Facebook upgraded its 3D technology to support the industry-standard gITF 2.0 format. This allows developers to create and share 3D objects directly to News Feed and also display websites in 3D. Additionally, users can integrate these 3D objects into Facebook VR and AR.   Facebook announced that it will share the biggest AR/VR news in the company’s history at the upcoming F8 developer conference. F8 is scheduled for May 1-2 2018. To say our interest is piqued is an understatement!   Facebook upgraded Messenger to allow users to convert a one-on-one voice/video call...

Welcome to this week’s edition of Spark Bites! All our beloved social networks had a busy week and churned out quite a few significant and exciting updates. Read on to find out more!   Facebook   Facebook will now count viewable-only impressions to measure a Page’s organic reach. This means an impression will be counted only when a Page post actually appears on a user’s screen. Unfortunately, this change will lead to a decline in business pages’ reported reach numbers.    Facebook is testing a Downvoting feature for comments on public page posts. The social giant intends to learn what qualifies as valuable engagement on public page posts. Downvoting does not affect comment rank, post rank or page rank on users’ news feeds. The test is currently limited to only a few users in the U.S.   Facebook is launching a crisis-response feature on its...

We’re back with the latest in digital marketing news news! Our favorite social networks have doled out some tantalizing goodies this week. Some of the quieter social apps have also announced impactful updates. Go ahead, dive into this week’s edition of Spark Bites!   Facebook   Facebook is testing a new feature called “Your Emoji,” which allows users to overlay an emoji of their choice on their Messenger profile picture. This will be a way for the user to communicate to their friends what they’re currently up to or how they’re feeling. Much like a story, the emoji disappears in 24 hours.   Facebook is planning to expand its video platform, Watch, in order to directly compete with YouTube. The social giant will open Watch to more individual video creators who can post their content for free and monetize it through ads. It also...

Welcome to this week’s edition of Spark Bites! We have a lot to tell you - the world of social networks and paid social has been abuzz with activity. Read on to find out more!   Facebook   It’s official. Publishers have begun rethinking their Facebook marketing strategy after its major News Feed overhaul. Not only are they planning to increase their dependency on paid search and social, but also exploring other platforms. Google and Pinterest currently seem to be the top choices. Can’t say we didn’t see this coming. In fact, we expect paid advertising to see an enormous boom in the coming year. We recommend businesses, big or small, jump on the bandwagon sooner rather than later.   Facebook has banned all cryptocurrency and ICO-related ads, touting them to be “frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices.” However, the platform has...

Another week flies by and social networks continue their scurry to churn out meaningful updates in the new year. This edition of Spark Bites brings you some very impactful announcements from major social networks. Read on to find out more!   Quickly! - Quickly GIF from Quick GIFs   Facebook   Facebook has acquired Confirm.io, a software that facilitates easy verification of users’ identification documentation. This move is expected to make identity verification and account recovery a much smoother process on the social platform. We also expect that the acquisition will better equip Facebook to weed out fake news publishers - a battle that the social network is perpetually fighting.    Facebook has decided to leverage crowdsourcing to help combat fake news. The social network has put in place a 2-question survey that will appear on the screens of randomly-selected users. The survey will determine if...