15 Jun Social You Should Know: Vine Grows, MySpace Shows, and Facebook Introduces #Hashtags
Vine keeps creeping, MySpace pins its hopes on a $20 million re-launch campaign, and what #hashtags on Facebook mean for marketers in this week’s Social You Should Know.
Also, Wednesday, June 19 at 1pm EST, my colleagues at Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group Anita Root, Josh Gunderson and I will present Ignite Social Media’s latest webcast: The Art of Building Social Media Marketing Campaigns that Drive Revenue. Register now and join us.
Hashtags on Facebook Actually Matter
If your news feed is like mine, it was filled with #hashtag jokes on Wednesday when Facebook finally confirmed that hashtags will work on their site soon, even when posted from Instagram, Twitter, etc. This will help brands see specific conversation threads (among public updates at least), but that’s not all a brand marketer needs to know. The details have been covered nicely in this article on our blog.
Make fun, but I think this is a big move for Facebook. It may help regain some ground it’s lost to Twitter in terms of current events chatter. Plus, I hope it marks a return to product development beyond new ad formats. Facebook needs to make some changes to the user experience to stay at the top of the game. This was, hopefully, just the first.
Vine Creeps Past Instagram on Twitter
Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram. Twitter paid a reported $1 million for Vine. Looks like a deal, as the number of Vines (6-second videos) shared on Twitter has doubled in the last month and now surpasses Instagram. (Remember that Instagram blocked photos from appearing in expanded Twitter “cards” and that may be hurting them.) While brands rush to Instagram, many struggle with approval processes of Vine because the app doesn’t let you edit or save drafts.
MySpace Relaunches with $20M Ad Campaign
Quick, name a social network that grew because of a great ad campaign. Yeah… I can’t think of one either. But MySpace relaunched this week with support from a new $20 million ad campaign complete with a TV spot full of hipsters dancing around. According to Compete.com, MySpace really needs the help. Compete says that MySpace was at 9.4 million unique visitors in May, down from about 24 million the same month two years prior. We’ll see what the dancing hipsters can do…
While it’s not a social media issue per se, I do think it’s worth pointing out that Google is giving signs that websites with poor mobile SEO won’t rank well when someone searches from a mobile phone. Mobile matters folks.
