This week marks the 100th issue of the Social Pulse!
We live in a social media climate that is always changing, evolving and disrupting itself. And it can be tough to monitor the latest changes in social networks, emerging technology and human behavior – not to mention applying context to know what’s important and why.
I’ve really enjoyed keeping tabs on what’s going on week to week, sharing my favorite highlights, and then looking back to track short and long-term trends with my teams, clients and networks as we anticipate and strategize where we’re headed next.
Cheers to the next 100 weeks! -Greg
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Instagram has redesigned its IGTV to mimic other platforms — with larger tiles that look like Snapchat’s Discover, and the singular feed taking cues from TikTok. It will support horizontal viewing, too. IGTV is still pushing long-form content on a short-form network, so we’re guessing it will take more than a redesign for it to take off.
Texting and driving should definitely be illegal, but how about walking? This week the New York State Senate introduced a bill proposing a ban on texting while crossing the street. LOOK UP!
Twitter is running a test that has increased the number of promoted tweets showing up in people’s timelines. The quality of the ads are bad and some are even malicious. And people are PISSED.
Mmmm…Let’s talk about gastronomical virtual reality experiences. A company called Project Nourished is experimenting with the sense of taste, which is heavily influenced by smell, vision, touch and hearing. In fact, they’ve found using VR to make seaweed taste like sushi just may be a thing. Yum.
As predicted, deep fake videos are starting to become prevalent in politics as we approach the 2020 election. This week a doctored video of Nancy Pelosi appearing to be drunk spread across news feeds, and Facebook decided not to take it down. Also this week, Samsung introduced a deepfake AI that can fabricate a video clip of you from a single photo. There’s a reason the Pentagon is trying to get ahead of this.
PwC and the Internet Advertising Bureau have released all the data and charts you could ever want in the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, incorporating data from 2018 but just published this month. Download the PDF here and impress your boss.
GREG SWAN 