The biggest social media news of the month is that Twitter is looking for prospective buyers – and it looks like a bidding war might be hotting up. Current potential suitors include; Disney, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Verizon. Whispers of a buyout could be good news for the company, which this month reported UK revenue growth had fallen to 31%. However, not all the news is gloomy. Twitter’s market value has been estimated at £15.5 billion – hardly an insignificant amount – and a new buyer could bring a new lease of life to the platform which has struggled to expand growth in the recent past.
In lighter Twitter news, the 140 character count has been loosened, with users now able to add images or handles without eating into the precious character limit. This is great news for brands, as they are able to post enticing and vivid content without the necessity to restrict the amount of copy used.
Facebook this month has announced plans to develop a ‘Messenger Light’ app which will see the platform being able to be used on slower mobile phones. This is an important development for Facebook, as it reinforces its comment to making Messenger a key social media standalone platform. New Messenger Light will allow users access to messages on the go, on mobiles previously unable to maintain the app. Specifically, this will particularly effect emerging markets, where Facebook has made big in roads in the last few years.
It also came to light in September that Facebook has been overestimating video views on the platform. Facebook has admitted inflating the average time people spend watching videos for two years by failing to count people who watched for less than 3 seconds. This admission is important, because typically a user watching a video for less than 3 seconds will have not absorbed much (if any) of the meaning behind the video. Marketers would therefore be wise to note this trend, and make sure even the opening seconds of a video are eye-catching and memorable. As video views are often a key metric that marketers use to decide where to push posts further, this is shaky territory for Facebook and a backlash could be possible.
Instagram this month has reported more strong growth, impressively doubling the amount of advertisers on the platform over the last six months. Instagram has announced that the majority of advertisers on the platform are now smaller or local businesses. Brands, big or small, would be wise to advertise on Instagram to build up a presence on this ever-growing platform.
by Jenny Connelly
