07 Nov The Secret Meeting that Doomed Vine | Social You Should Know
It seems that Twitter is guilty of letting their 6-second video platform wither on the Vine (sorry…). Meanwhile Instagram is making it easier to sell on the platform and Snapchat analytics arrive, but they’re not cheap, all in this week’s Social You Should Know.
Instagram Lets Users Shop Directly from Ads
Normal Instagram posts are still not clickable, but brands like Kate Spade and J. Crew are among the first to launch taggable ads with click to buy functionality built in. Unlike Facebook, which has always allowed clicks on posts and added optional functionality to boost those clicks, the Instagram product is only available as an ad. This is just the latest move by Instagram to make it easier for brands to sell on the platform. They earlier launched dynamic ads (featuring imagery that a user left in their shopping cart elsewhere) and carousel ads featuring up to 5 photos/videos.
The Secret Meeting Where Vine Died
In case you missed it, Twitter killed Vine, the once influential 6-second video platform. While some speculate it’s part of a larger house cleaning (including 9% of staffed laid off this week) to get ready for a sale, it was also not particularly surprising. I mean, really, when was the last time you were on Vine? But, as it happens, 18 of Vine’s top creators met with Twitter staff last fall, suggesting ways to keep the network vibrant. In exchange for $1.2m each, everyone would produce 3 vines a week, generating billions of views. After some back and forth, the deal was dead. And the major influencers that had kept that network alive moved largely to Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat. One year later, the network has shut down.
Snapchat Analytics are Here
While Snapchat user growth has been explosive, marketers who are focused on numbers have been severely limited in what data they can get, and the relative manual effort getting it. This week, Snaplytics launched, promising easy, detailed reporting for Snapchat accounts. It won’t come cheaply with a standard account billed monthly costing about $2,150 a year (Pro account, billed monthly, comes in at about $3,600 a year) per Snapchat account. Influencer campaigns are $10 per influencer per day. My prediction? One year from now this company will be bought by Snapchat, or Snapchat will start to offer free analytics (as every other network does), decimating this firm. We’ll see.
And finally, if you like to keep track of new emojis coming to a phone near you, take a look. Professions (like teacher, scientist), animals and bugs, a shrug emoji to replace ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and a camel, which will no doubt be used more on Wednesday than any other day, are on the way.
