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Facebook Tests New Stories-Like Notifications Bubbles to Boost Engagement

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As it continues to lose ground to TikTok, where people are increasingly spending their social media time, Facebook is constantly trying to figure out new ways to keep people engaged, and glued to its app instead.

The Social Network’s latest experiment on this front comes in the form of new Stories-like notification bubbles within your Notifications tab, which alert you to new posts shared by your connections.

As you can see in this example, shared by social media expert Matt Navarra, some Facebook users on iOS are now seeing these new alert bubbles at the top of their Notifications stream, which serve as quick links to the latest posts from your connections.

As you can see in the second image, when you tap through on one of these profile images, you’re taken to a listing of that user’s latest posts, making it easier to stay up to date with that user’s updates specifically.

It could be a good way to maximize engagement, and remind users that their most important connections are active in the app, while it may also help to avoid potential algorithmic re-ordering issues, which could see you miss certain updates.

Or it might just be a handy way to catch up with your top friends and what they’re posting – but at the same time, it does feel a little needy from the app, using Stories-style notifiers to juice in-app engagement.

I mean, it does seem to have some practical value, so that’s to say it’s useless. But as noted, with more recent stats showing that users are spending a lot more of their time on TikTok, Facebook really needs to work at providing some more compelling reasons to keep people around, as opposed to them just checking in each day and staying on top of the latest big news from friends and family (or just ensuring they don’t miss somebody’s birthday).

TikTok time spent chart

This is the key element missed from Meta’s own reporting – as Meta shared last week, Facebook added 31 million more daily active users in Q1 2022, taking its total DAU count to 1.96b.

Facebook Q1 2022 - DAU

Which is great news for Facebook – especially considering it reported a quarter-on-quarter decline in daily actives in its previous update. That announcement tanked Meta stock, and while it’s now seemingly back on track, with the trend graph pointing upwards once again for users, the data that Meta hasn’t shared is how long these people are actually spending in the app.

Are they just checking in, then moving on to other platforms? Because if they are, that greatly reduces the value of Facebook’s unmatched reach, because if people aren’t spending much time in the app, that means less ad exposure, and it could well be that TikTok, with fewer users but potentially more time in app, is now a better placement option in terms of reach and boosting brand awareness.

Meta hasn’t shared an official update on time spent in its apps since 2016, when it reported that people were spending 50 minutes per day using Facebook, Instagram and Messenger.

The fact that Meta has chosen not to update this figure would appear to suggest that it’s not increasing, as it would be keen to tout that type of information, while the amount of time that people spend on TikTok is clearly on the rise, in general, based on total downloads alone.

Which is why activations and tests like this are interesting. Does this improve time spent in the app, and get people to stick around for longer, or is this just another prompt to juice Facebook’s numbers, and make it seem like it’s generating more ‘engagement’?

In some ways, the format also aligns with Meta’s push to boost appeal with younger users, with the Stories format now more native to many than the traditional feed.

But still, it’s more just tweaking around the edges, likely with no real impact.

But maybe I’m wrong – maybe this is a valuable, practical tool that will help Facebook users stay in touch, and improve utility in the app.

The new notification format is being tested with some users, with no word on a full rollout plan as yet.

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Musk regrets controversial post but won’t bow to advertiser ‘blackmail’

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Elon Musk's comments at the New York Times' Dealbook conference drew a shocked silence

Elon Musk’s comments at the New York Times’ Dealbook conference drew a shocked silence – Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP Slaven Vlasic

Elon Musk apologized Wednesday for endorsing a social media post widely seen as anti-Semitic, but accused advertisers who are turning away from his social media platform X of “blackmail” and said anyone who does so can “go fuck yourself.”

The remark before corporate executives at the New York Times’ Dealbook conference drew a shocked silence.

Earlier, Musk had apologized for what he called “literally the worst and dumbest post that I’ve ever done.”

In a comment on X, formerly Twitter, Musk on November 15 called a post “the actual truth” that said Jewish communities advocated a “dialectical hatred against whites,” which was criticized as echoing longtime conspiracy theory among White supremacists.

The statement prompted a flood of departures from X of major advertisers, including Apple, Disney, Comcast and IBM who criticized Musk for anti-semitism.

“I’m sorry for that tweet or post,” Musk said Wednesday. “It was foolish of me.”

He told interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin that his post had been misinterpreted and that he had sought to clarify the remark in subsequent posts to the thread.

But Musk also said he wouldn’t be beholden to pressure from advertisers.

“If somebody’s gonna try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money?” Musk said. “Go fuck yourself.”

But the billionaire acknowledged that there were business implications to the advertiser actions.

“If the company fails… it will fail because of an advertiser boycott” Musk said. “And that will be what will bankrupt the company.”

Musk, who met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Israel earlier this week, insisted in the interview that he holds no discrimination against Jews, calling himself “philo-Semitic,” or an admirer of Judaism.

During the interview, Musk wore a necklace given to him by a parent of an Israeli hostage taken in the Hamas attack on October 7. The necklace reads, “Bring Them Home.”

Musk told Sorkin that the Israel trip had been planned earlier and was not an “apology tour” related to the controversial tweet.

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TikTok Encourages Creators To Make Longer Videos, With Focus On Ad Revenue 11/30/2023

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TikTok Encourages Creators To Make Longer Videos, With Focus On Ad Revenue 11/30/2023

With a need to expand its advertising business, TikTok is now fully focused on the output of long-form videos.

A new report by The Information shows the company’s recent efforts to convince
creators to put out longer videos in order to provide more room for ad placements.

According to the …



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X Adds Option To Embed Videos in Isolation From Posts

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X Adds Option To Embed Videos in Isolation From Posts

Next time you go to embed an X post, you may notice a new step:

Now, X will enable you to choose whether you want to embed the video element in isolation, or the whole post, as normal.

And if you do choose to embed just the video (or GIF), it’ll look like this:

Which could be a helpful way to present X-originated video on third-party websites, and add context to, say, your blog post, without the clutter of the full X framing.

But it could also reduce brand exposure for X, which is likely why Twitter didn’t enable this before, though it did once provide an “embedded video widget” which essentially served the same purpose.

X embeds

Twitter gradually seemed to phase that out as the platform evolved, and there’s no specific reason that I can find as to why it removed it as an option. But either way, now, it’s back, so you have more options for using X-originated content, and putting more focus on video elements specifically.

Though I don’t know why they didn’t also take the opportunity to remove the ‘Tweet’ reference. Since the re-brand to X, the platform seems to have gone to little effort to weed out all the tweet and bird terminology, but then again, with 80% fewer staff, that’s probably understandable as well.



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