1. Meta Announces ‘Recurring Notifications’ for Business Messaging – Meta introduced ‘Recurring Notifications’ on its Messenger Platform this week at its first-ever ‘Conversations’ messaging conference, allowing businesses to send ‘proactive, automated messages to users who have opted in to receive them.’
Businesses will be able to send sales notifications, updates, newsletters, and pretty much anything else they want, with frequency options ranging from daily to monthly, allowing them to reach customers at any point in their journey.
“Recurring Notifications is a new, optional premium feature that we intend to charge businesses for in the future. It is currently available to all businesses using Messenger Platform as part of a free trial period. We currently charge businesses to send messages from the WhatsApp Business API and we’re listening to customer feedback to guide decisions on our pricing model.”
After failing to find a viable way to commercialize its messaging services, Meta appears to have landed on charging businesses to use its messaging capabilities – but it is unclear when this will begin and how much it will cost.
2. Displaying eBay Listing in Snapchat Snaps – Snapchat has launched a new partnership with eBay, allowing users to share eBay listings directly from their Snaps. You can now share an item you’re seeing in the eBay app to your Snaps and Snap Stories, with the listing appearing as a sticker that you may overlay on your post. Per Snapchat:
“More than 142M buyers shop on eBay globally to find everything from the latest sneaker drops to rare, vintage handbags, and now, Snapchatters have a seamless way to share what they’ve been eyeing, or even what they are selling, right where conversations with real friends are already happening.”
With eBay sellers able to efficiently market their current listings to their Snap contacts, the latter could be more useful. This is similar to free advertising, except it is limited to your contacts alone.
3. TikTok Launches New ‘Branded Mission’ Creator Monetization – TikTok is trying to make it easier for creators to make money from their clips by launching a new program called ‘Branded Mission,’ which will allow creators to participate in what are essentially branded content challenges, with the brand then choosing from the submitted clips for promotional campaigns. Per TikTok:
“To make it easier for brands to tap into the creative power of TikTok communities and co-create authentic branded content that resonates with users, we’re launching Branded Mission. Branded Mission is an industry-first ad solution that enables advertisers to crowdsource authentic content from creators on TikTok, turn top-performing videos into ads, and improve brand affinity with media impressions.”
Brands will be able to set challenges, which creators with more than 1,000 followers will be allowed to join. The chosen makers are then paid in cash, albeit the sums won’t vary dependent on individual video performance at this point.
Instead, each Mission will list possible revenues dependent on the brand’s willingness to pay.
4. LinkedIn Shares What’s Not Allowed in the App – LinkedIn has updated its Professional Community Policies, which regulate what is and is not allowed in your various LinkedIn discussions. Per LinkedIn:
“As part of our updated policies, we’re publishing a set of expanded resources for members to better understand our policies and how we apply them, including detailed examples of content that isn’t allowed and how we handle account restrictions. While harassment, hate speech, and other abusive content has never been allowed on LinkedIn, we’ve added what types of comments and behaviors go against our Professional Community Policies.”
Keep the following in mind: -Harassment and abusive content -sexual innuendos and unwelcome advances’
LinkedIn’s modified Professional Community Policies can be seen here.
5. 6 JavaScript Optimization Tips From Google – Developer Advocate Alan Kent outlines six strategies to optimize JavaScript to improve the performance of your website in a new video from Google.
1. Reduce the spread of JavaScript files
2. Limit the number of DNS lookups
3. Remove JavaScript that is inefficient.
4. Remove any unused JavaScript code
5. Make JavaScript Files Smaller
6. Set Appropriate JavaScript Code Cache Durations
6. Video Activity Tab Launched In YouTube – YouTube is launching a new video activity graph that will show users the most engaged times depending on when they revisit portions. Users can utilize the graph to locate the most relevant bits of each YouTube video.
YouTube Studio now has a new option that allows artists to see which auto translated subtitles are utilized the most on their videos. This will assist producers figure out which languages are most important to their audience, which may then help you decide which translations to focus on in your own caption uploads while also giving you a better idea of who your video are reaching.
The new translations report can be found in the Audience tab or in advanced analytics’ subtitle report.
7. YouTube Sets Weekly Ad Frequency Limits – Weekly frequency capping for video ad campaigns has been added to YouTube, allowing advertisers to limit the number of times a single viewer sees their offer in a given week. Because we’ve all seen how seeing the same ad, with the same song, can drive a company to bankruptcy. Per Youtube,
“Now, you can compliment your reach by actively setting your weekly frequency goal – a solution only YouTube can provide. Combining our unmatched audience reach and leading machine learning capabilities, advertisers will now be able to optimize how many times viewers see their ads in a week. Not only does this mean more efficient spend, but crucially, a better experience for viewers.”
Furthermore, YouTube is expanding its live-stream shopping capabilities.
“Later this year, two channels will be able to go live and cohost together, uniting their communities in a single live shopping stream. And with live redirects, creators can start a shopping live stream on their channel, then redirect their audience to a brand’s channel for fans to keep watching.”
That might be a useful update, as it has a large audience reach and will enable more substantial influencer collaborations, as businesses will be able to combine their audience with that of their partner influencer for much larger exposure.
