It’s Monday again and time to take a quick look at some of the major social media stories that broke last week. This Monday’s review looks at a big announcement from Facebook, not so good news from Snap and an interesting item from Twitter that was covered right here on the Digipave blog. So buckle up because here we go!
Facebook Launches Watch: Last Thursday, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook’s new “YouTube competitor” called Watch. Here is what he had to say in a post on his Facebook page: “Today we’re launching the Watch tab in Facebook — a place where you can discover shows your friends are watching and follow your favorite shows and creators so you don’t miss any episodes. You’ll be able to chat and connect with people during an episode, and join groups with people who like the same shows afterwards to build community. We hope Watch will be home to a wide range of shows — from reality to comedy to live sports. Some will be made by professional creators, and others from regular people in our community.” Currently the Facebook Watch tab is rolling out to a limited number of users in the US. We’ll share our feedback on the Digipave blog in the coming weeks as wee see what sort of impact Watch has on YouTube and the larger TV market.
Snap’s Second-Quarter Earnings: Snap, the Snapchat parent, reported weaker-than-expected second-quarter financial results on Thursday last week. On Friday, Snap’s stock lost 14% of its value closing at $11.83. While user growth is up more than 20 percent since last year, it still was not enough to impress Wall Street. Both Facebook’s Instagram and WhatsApp have been extremely successful in copying Snapchat features which has investors worried. So what is the solution for Snap? Well, the company may want to explore some of these ideas, or follow this advice or see if Google is still interested in an acquisition. They could also try buying Twitter. Whatever Snapchat decides to do, we’ll keep you posted right here on the Digipave blog.
Twitter’s New Subscription Ad Program is US Only: Last week Digipave spoke with a Twitter rep who confirmed to us that Twitter’s new subscription ad program is limited, for the time being, to US accounts only. As we wrote in a previous blog post, Digipave was told via email that “this pilot is for US only at this point. We hope to open it up at a later date though.” Once we hear that the program’s been expanded to include international Twitter accounts, we will let all of our readers know.