19 Jan Alarming Facebook Demographic Numbers, Facebook Trending and Social Video Setback
Facebook does its best Twitter impression, and new data shows us the alarming rate at which users are leaving Facebook. That, and video marketing takes a hit as Twitter cracks down on uploading prerecorded videos to Vine, all in this week’s Social You Should Know.
Year over Year, Facebook Loses 59% of its Users in College
Facebook use among college student is down 59% to 4.8 million users from 11.7 million users in 2011, averaging out to a loss of more than 50% every year, according to data published by iStrategyLabs. There are various reactions around the web as to the relative importance of this loss, but the change is dramatic, particularly since it’s among Facebook’s initial audience. Use among high school students is also down 59% percent from 2011 while use among 55+ demo is up 80%. I said it last week, and I’ll say it again: Facebook needs to speed up the feed.
Facebook Introduces Trending, a New Product to Surface Popular Content
Taking yet another page from Twitter’s playbook, Facebook announced on Thursday, a new feature it’s calling “trending.” Trending curates for users a customized list of topics based on the user’s personal interests and topics that have recently spiked in popularity across Facebook, as determined by an algorithm. Each topic listed will include a headline that explains why the topic is trending and users can click these headlines to see related posts from friends or Pages. This provides greater visibility and real-time opportunity for marketers to participate in these Trending conversations as it relates to their brands. The feature is still rolling out for web users and is being tested on mobile.
No More Prerecorded Videos on Vine (For Now)
The ability to upload videos to Vine via third-party Vine apps like Vinyet and CustoVine appears to be a thing of the past. A major weakness of Twitter’s social video app has always been the inability to save and edit videos the videos that are created within Vine, making Vine a challenging marketing tool for brands, especially those with more involved approval processes. Solutions came from third-party apps that offered users many more creative options for video production than Vine does, including the ability to prerecord. But now, because of a request from Twitter, the option to share videos to Vine has been removed leaving marketers looking for other ways to create higher-quality Vine videos.
In the meantime, this work-around to battle poor organic reach on Facebook. You also may have noticed this week that your Twitter feed looks a little different after the platform rolled out its redesign for Twitter.com. It’s cleaner and includes .
