Tag Archives: Social Media Today

Facebook is rolling out some new measures to assist businesses dealing with the impacts of the COVID-19 shutdowns, including more specific detail on its $100 million small business grant program, and new tools that will enable people to support local providers. First off, on grants – last month, Facebook announced a $100 million grants program with the aim of assisting 30,000 SMBs in 30 nations. Facebook has now provided more detail on how the grants program will work – as per Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg: “In the US, we are committing $40 million to support 10,000 small businesses in 34 locations where our employees live and work. Those local businesses […]

This could be interesting. According to reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong, Twitter is considering changing the name of its ‘Lists’ tab in the app to ‘Channels’, which could help to encourage further content discovery and exposure. As you can see here, the ‘Lists’ tab in the left-hand side menu has been switched to ‘Channels’. The functionality is the same, in that when you tap/click on it, you can see a collection of all the lists that you’ve created over time. But the re-naming would focus more on switching to an alternate timeline, based on topic, as opposed to how most people use their Twitter lists at present. The change would […]

Twitter has announced a new update for its Explore tab which will make all of the listed tweets in Explore more location-specific. Now more than ever, it’s vital to see what’s happening anywhere in the world, from wherever. So we updated how Explore location settings work: ???? Changing your location now applies to all of Explore, not just Trends. ???? To select a new location, tap the ⚙️ icon on Explore — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) April 2, 2020 That means that when you head to your Explore listing, all of the content – including Trends, ‘What’s Happening’ and the topic listings – will all be more aligned with the location that […]

Facebook has this week published the latest version of its monthly Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report, covering all the actions that it took in March to remove organized activity designed to mislead Facebook users. And the numbers were down for the month – according to Facebook, it removed a total of 180 Facebook accounts, 170 Instagram accounts, 160 Facebook Pages and one Facebook group, based on three separate investigations in March 2020. That’s down from February, where it removed 467 Facebook accounts, 1,245 Instagram Pages and 49 Facebook groups for the same. The reduction makes some sense, in that the COVID-19 lockdowns have impacted everything, even, likely, networks looking to influence […]

After launching its Messenger desktop app in selected markets early last month, Facebook has now announced the full rollout of the tool, which is available for both MacOS and Windows, and for all users around the world. As per Facebook: “Now more than ever, people are using technology to stay in touch with the people they care about, even when physically apart. Over the past month, we saw more than a 100% increase in people using their desktop browser for audio and video calling on Messenger. Now with apps for MacOS and Windows, the best of Messenger is coming to desktop, including unlimited and free group video calls.” Indeed, demand […]

In what will likely come as no surprise, people are spending a lot more time using apps amid the COVID-19 lockdowns around the world. According to the latest report from App Annie, daily time spent in apps on Android devices increased 20% year-over-year in Q1 2020, while consumer spending in both iOS and Android apps was also up 15% and 5% respectively, setting a new record for in-app spending for a single quarter at $23.4 billion worldwide. As per App Annie: “Time spent in apps in Italy grew 30% in March from Q4 2019, while France, Germany, and the US have all had 15%, 10% and 10% growth respectively. With […]

If you hadn’t heard of Zoom before March 2020, no doubt you have by now. The multi-participant video meeting app has seen a massive surge in usage amid the COVID-19 lockdowns, with everyone from teachers to celebrities using the platform to connect with their respective audiences, and maintain some level of social engagement. Zoom was founded back in 2011, but its primary use case is enterprise video, so it hasn’t made a big push into direct consumer marketing and promotion. But the simple functionality has made it a hit with those looking for some face-to-face meeting time – and with anybody able to go live for up to 40 minutes, […]

In the battle to stop the spread of COVID-19 across the globe, and limit its impacts as much as possible, information accuracy is key, as people need to know and understand the way in which the virus is transmitted, and what they can, and should do to avoid infection and spread. And while this seems like an aspect that we would all be united on, for the greater good of global society, a lot of COVID-19 misinformation is circulating online. Claims, for example, that the coronavirus can be killed by ingesting colloidal silver, that washing your hands is propaganda for soap companies, that reading the Quran will make a person immune […]

Happy quarantine day infinity everyone. We know a lot of social media marketers are riding the metaphorical struggle bus from the comfort of their couches as to how to handle the pandemic on social. Going along with scheduled content as normal doesn’t seem like an option for a lot of us right now. It’s Tuesday Twitter chat day! We’re excited to see everyone on #SMTLive soon (12-1pm ET). Today’s topic: “Mindful Marketing: Adjusting Your Tone During a Crisis” pic.twitter.com/lQVTs7L4YN — Social Media Today (@socialmedia2day) March 31, 2020 We’re thankful that we have the unique opportunity to come together as a community through #SMTLive to address all the many questions we […]

Facebook is rolling out some new measures to assist businesses dealing with the impacts of the COVID-19 shutdowns, including more specific detail on its $100 million small business grant program, and new tools that will enable people to support local providers. First off, on grants – last month, Facebook announced a $100 million grants program with the aim of assisting 30,000 SMBs in 30 nations. Facebook has now provided more detail on how the grants program will work – as per Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg: “In the US, we are committing $40 million to support 10,000 small businesses in 34 locations where our employees live and work. Those local businesses […]