This week in social media, Facebook draws the line for political ads, Twitter cracks down on spam, Pinterest makes its searches more diverse and Snapchat upgrades its camera glasses.
Facebook: Saving Face
Facebook released a video ad this week that addressed—but does not take responsibility for—the site’s decline from social network to spam, clickbait and fake news platform. Facebook refers to these changes as “something” that “happened,” but promises to address the issues.
The video, called “Facebook Here Together” will run through July on TV and movie theaters, as well as select NBA playoff games.
In an attempt to curb political manipulation on its platform, Facebook now requires political advertisers to disclose who they are, where they live and the source of their funding.
Despite rising public concern about data privacy, advertisers still pour money into Facebook. The company reported a 50 percent year-over-year increase in advertising revenue in Q1 2018, reaching $11.8 billion.
Twitter: Swabbing The TweetDeck
Twitter is waging its own battle against spam, bots, harassment and misinformation campaigns. In February, the platform banned automated mass retweeting across multiple accounts. In March, the company made changes to its API and TweetDeck that curb such activity and in its Q1 letter to investors, Twitter said 142,000 apps, accounting for 130 million tweets, have had their API access revoked.
Overall, Twitter is finally seeing hope in its finances, reporting its second profitable quarter in a row. Twitter reported $655 million, an increase of 21 percent year-over-year (YoY) and exceeding Reuters estimates of $608 million. A majority of that income was generated through advertising revenue, which totaled $575 million—an increase of 21 percent YoY.
Snapchat: Spectacles For Summer
Ahead of its Q1 earnings call on Monday, Snap, Inc. announced a new version of Spectacles that are water resistant and lower profile. The wearable camera also features upgraded audio and the ability to press and hold a button to take a photo.
On Wednesday, Snapchat debuted augmented reality games called Snappables that can be controlled by touch, motion and facial expressions. Games include joining a rock band, fighting aliens, playing basketball and more. Some Snappables feature multiplayer and high scores for competitive play.
Pinterest: More Colorful Searches
Pinterest has created a way to search for ideas by skin tone, allowing people of color to find images that better represent their beauty and hair needs. Now when someone makes a search related to beauty, a filter appears under the search bar that invites users to pick one of 16 skin tones to narrow the results.
Speaking of color, Pinterest has updated its color contrast sensitivity settings for those users with sensitivities to bright colors or low vision.
Pinterest partnered with the Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired to audit the site’s accessibility overall and created accessibility best standards for engineers and designers. The company updated its iOS and web platforms to meet the majority of accessibility standards and will bring these changes to Android in the near future.
