21 Jul Pinterest Blocks Marketing URLs; Twitter GeoTargets Promoted Tweets; Facebook Tests Pinterest Look

Posted at 08:45h in Social Media Trends by

Busy week in terms of changes to some of your favorite social media platforms, so I thought I’d fill you in on them as you kick off your Saturday. Here goes:

Promoted Tweets Can Now Be Targeted

Twitter’s promoted tweets product has been helpful to brands, but until yesterday there was no way to target those tweets to users by geography. So if you’ve got a deal or a promotion available in certain cities, regions or countries, it was tough to promote that Tweet. Now you can. You can even customize each tweet for users in each country. You can also choose to target only mobile users of Twitter, too, if you’re trying to drive to store or to a mobile app. This customizing is available to everyone at http://ads.twitter.com.

Pinterest Blocks Pins with Short URLs, Making Tracking Harder

Pinterest is trying to combat spam, which is certainly something they need to do. To do so, they’ve blocked all pins with affiliate links. Also, all pins posted with bit.ly links or other URL shorteners will warn the visitor not to proceed. And they are stripping the “UTM” information at the end of the URL. That will effectively hamper our ability to use tracking links in Pinterest posts, making Pinterest measurement that much harder.

Facebook is Testing a Pinterest-Like Design

Facebook has certainly noticed the success Pinterest has had in attracting eyeballs and generating traffic. That’s no doubt why they are now testing a Pinterest-like display interface. If this moves from testing to live, it will allow Facebook apps that we build to display on Facebook in a Pinterest-like way. It may even let you click “Want” to show your friends that you like the product. If this goes live, we’ll be ready to incorporate it.

Bonus Items

From the NY Times, social traffic rises while search falls and (the most popular post on our blog this week) how the new Twitter search will change the way brands tweet.

Have a great weekend.

Photo Credit: Geekosystem.com