Five things worth sharing from the last week or so, brought to you by a different member of the Browser Media team every Friday.
This week’s My Five is by Lisa.
1. Stories to surpass News Feed sharing
Using the Stories format to share our lives on social media is currently well on track to completely eclipse the traditional News Feed format of sharing. This is according to a shiny new report that shows more than 970 million accounts across Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and Whatsapp currently consume or create Stories every day – an increase of 842% since early 2016.
The authors of the report say “While Feeds generated a healthy 28% growth, that figure pales in comparison to the 434% growth for Stories in the same time period. If things continue growing at this rate, we can expect well over 1 billion social accounts using Stories daily by the end of the year.”
The report’s findings mirror earlier predictions from Facebook CEO, Zuckerberg and both sources have advised brands to consider putting at least some of their social media efforts into the Stories format if they want to remain relevant with their online audiences in 2018.
2. France seizes France.com
Jean-Noël Frydman, a French-born American bought France.com in the early 90s and set it up as a website to serve as a “digital kiosk” for all things France. For more than two decades, he built up a successful business through the website, often collabing with official agencies, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Roll forward to 2018, and that very same Ministry has spent the past two years filing a lawsuit to obtain control of France.com, resulting in Frydman becoming completely locked out of his own website, without any formal warning or compensation. The website now redirects any traffic to the English version of France.fr website – also run by the Foreign Ministry.
Frydman is now battling to sue the Ministry for cyber-squatting and reverse domain-name hijacking in a campaign to try and regain ownership of his website.
3. Farewells from Maplin go viral
It may be too little, too late; but Maplin has just gone viral on Twitter.
Following news that the highstreet hardware chain will be closing down all of its stores and even its website, one team of staff at a Maplin store took matters into their own hands to tell customers why they’re closing, what the sale discount is, and whether or not you need to convert SCART to HDMI (lol wot?).
If you ignore the misplaced apostrophe *shudders*, it’s a pretty good light-hearted reaction to some very unfortunate circumstances.
https://twitter.com/SouthendNewsNet/status/990276339365285889
However, the sign clearly didn’t answer every single frequently asked question from customers, because the shop staff were very quick set up a second board of answers.
https://twitter.com/SouthendNewsNet/status/990940112233074688
4. No bonehead questions, please
Electric car maker, Elon Musk, made the unorthodox decision to pie off any and all “boring” questions during Tesla’s latest earnings call this week, following report of his company’s record quarterly losses (around £523m).
Business analysts were desperate to understand the Tesla CEO’s plans and predictions for the company’s future, ruffling Musk’s feathers so much that he decided to stop answering them, stating “Boring bonehead questions are not cool. Next.” and “these questions are so dry. They’re killing me”.
Instead, he decided to take questions from YouTube vlogger and journalist, Galileo Russell, who had been listening in on the chat, because he was more interested in the technology of the cars, rather than “boring bonehead” business matters.
Maybe Musk really is the face and brains of @BoredElonMusk after all?!
5. Finding love on Facebook
With everything still up in the air following his little visit to Congress, you’d think Mark Zuckerberg would be wanting to lay kinda low on the whole collecting and using personal data thing. But, he has once again stunned audiences, by announcing that Facebook will soon be launching its own dating service, rivalling the likes of Tinder and Match.com.
Speaking in front of a packed crowd at Facebook’s annual developer conference, F8, Zuckerberg positioned the new dating feature as a tool for building “real long-term relationships – not just hookups” adding that it had, of course, been “designed this with privacy and safety in mind from the beginning”.
Soon after his announcement, Mandy Ginsberg, CEO of Match Group, which owns Tinder, threw some serious shade at Facebook, stating: “We’re surprised at the timing given the amount of personal and sensitive data that comes with this territory”.
And, true to its form, a quick scroll through Twitter reveals that Mandy is definitely not the only cynic amongst us on this one.
Facebook announces plans for a new dating service, which will match users based on their medical records and bank details.
— Have I Got News For You (@haveigotnews) May 2, 2018
Have a wonderful Bank Holiday weekend!
