So-Called Social: Week of January 14

Happy happy Friday!! So ready for the weekend. From Twitter's new beta program to millennials not eating raisins Katelyn Ohashi's perfect 10, there's some juicy stuff in this week's newsletter. Read on.

Social nets update stuff

In the coming weeks, Twitter is launching a new beta program, where a select group of users (surprisingly not under NDA) will get access to features (by way of a standalone app) to use and talk about new features with others. The first version of the beta will focus on a new design for the way conversation threads look - including a different color scheme and visual cues to highlight important replies.

Ruh roh. We've got trouble in Snapchat City (with a capital T). For years, Snapchat has been heralded by publishers and ad buyers for its brand-safe environment. Well, not so much anymore … As Snapchat has grown its self-serve ad system, gone are the days of humans editing and approving said ads which leads to ads promoting fake news (and pissing off Chrissy Teigen, which is NOT COOL).

Hmm well this is a little suspect… Instagram is still selling ad space to companies that sell fake followers, despite reiterating in November that such businesses were banned from buying ads on the platform. Tsk tsk, Insta.

Adobe does stuff

After a brief hiatus, the AEC social team has re-launched the #AdobeChat program hosted by the Experience Cloud Twitter account. These chats are weekly, every Wednesday at 12pm PST. The topics are fresh and new and awesome every week, and the chats will be integrating Marketo and Magento heavily. Tune in or be square.

Adobe Students launched a new contest this week with influencer Paola Franqui called The Reflection Stories photography contest. For this contest, the team is asking college-aged students to photograph a moment of reflection, download the Lightroom preset from Paola Franqui, and share it on Insta. Cool!

Other brands do stuff

Apparently, millennials aren't eating raisins. And that means that Sun-Maid is launching its first ad in 10 years to win them over. The CEO says that the popularity of raisin snacks seem to have skipped a generation, and they're no longer top of mind for millennials who are starting to have children. He's committed to changing that with this ad campaign, rebranding is sour raisin snacks - which come in flavors such as watermelon, berry, and strawberry. Who knew?

It would be remiss of me not to mention the viral video ad that Gillette launched this week. It's a new take on 'The Best a Man Can Get' (a tagline that was introduced 30 years ago) that tackles bullying, sexism, and #MeToo, laying responsibility on men to be better. I won't get into the politics of it all, but it certainly got people talking.

Interesting stuff

Imagine being able to unlock how to predict whether a piece of content is going to go viral. In my mind, we'd hit all our KPIs and make our executives really happy and go on a very long vacation. That would be pretty sweet, right? Well this team at Fractly did some research into the emotional responses of people exposed to content and their intent to share it by measuring galvanic skin response. The study found that viral content provoked greater emotional response, which led to increased electrodermal activity, and that using biometrics was much more accurate than behavioral surveys as a predictor of whether content would become viral. It's all way more clear in the article.

Fun stuff