Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg swung by in Boston this week to address the 2017 graduating class at Harvard College and receive his honorary degree. Of course, he broadcasted the speech via Facebook live, which you can view here. That was probably a distraction from the real Facebook news this week – that the company is issuing refunds to some advertisers after a bug that led Facebook Insights to overstate clicks on websites. Advertisers affected were those that specifically paid for ads that resulted in clicks to their websites. The WSJ’s report on the story is here.
Speaking of social platforms, Pinterest and Quora are both following in Facebook’s footsteps by implementing more video content. Pinterest announced auto-play videos that will be featured in the home feed and search sections. The company claims that the benefit of video ads on its platform is different from other social platforms. Quora is also jumping on that bandwagon and incorporating videos as a medium for answering questions on its platform. You can read more about these updates in the news briefs below.
In influencer marketing news, the FTC has recently taken action against Instagram influencers promoting or endorsing products on the platform without disclosing their relationship with the products. The FTC’s Endorsement Guides state that if there is a “material connection” between an endorser and an influencer, the connection must be explicitly disclosed. If you’re utilizing Instagram influencer marketing for your products, be sure to remember the FTC’s guidelines. Read more about the story here.
In event news, Founder Thomas Smale will be in Vancouver from May 30 to June 1 for Traction Conference. Are you an e-commerce business owner and headed to IRCE on June 6 to June 9 in Chicago? Thomas will be headed there to join one of the biggest e-commerce events of the year. If you’re attending Traction, or IRCE or are just in these areas, reply to this email to set up a meeting with Thomas.
Read on for more information on how Facebook moderates content, Quora video answers and videos on Pinterest.
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- Large Facebook user base with over 1,000,000 likes
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Yearly net profit: $335,000
Asking price: $1,000,000
Sold:
Affiliate – Outdoor Sports – $1.1K gross/mo
In the News…
Facebook Moderation Policy
How Facebook monitors your content and what you see on your News Feed, has now been exposed. According to The Guardian, internal documents were leaked that reveal criteria about posts that are considered violent, sexual, racist, hateful or supported terrorism. These manuals are used as resources for Facebook moderators about what can be posted on the social platform.
The Open Rights Group states, “Facebook’s decisions about what is and isn’t acceptable have huge implications for free speech.” Facebook responded, “We work hard to make Facebook as safe as possible, while enabling free speech.”
Facebook has been known for the past year to experience issues with controversial content. Its human moderators walk a fine line between unconsciously implementing their own biases by violating free speech and protecting its users from dangerous and offensive content. Facebook publishes community guidelines for users for content they produce, but as social media becomes more powerful in providing information and news to the world, moderation becomes more difficult. Read more about the story on BBC.
Auto-Play Videos Now on Pinterest
Pinterest advertisers now have the option to publish automatically playing videos in the home feed and search. How is this different from Facebook and Google? Pinterest argues that because its users behave differently on the platform apart from others – such as searching more intensely for ideas and inspiration and then acting on them later – advertisers can offer products over the whole customer lifetime, as opposed to one moment in the buyer lifecycle.
It seems like as platforms add video features, or any advertising features for that matter, social platforms are trying to improve ad experiences above ad giants such as Facebook and Google. If you’re on Pinterest for your e-commerce store, videos have proven to have greater engagement and offers another source of potential customers, so be sure to check it out.
QuoraTube
This week, Quora announced that it has been testing video answers for questions where it would be easier to provide a solution by showing someone how something works, the best way to complete a task or why one this is better than another. The chosen beta testers will be able to record videos on their phones and upload onto the platform. As a Quora user, you may be aware that answers were previously limited to text, natively hosted photos, links and embedded videos.
In the industry of Q&A platforms, there exist apps such as Whale and Yam that solely focus on video answers. With 190 million users and $226 million in funding, Quora probably isn’t sweating over these competitors. One thing Quora is behind on is monetization. Last year, it introduced its Sponsored Questions ad format that blends with all other answers. Again, another web platform that is moving towards video.