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 Will.
1. More new Instagram features
There doesn’t seem to be a week goes by without Instagram releasing a new feature, and this week is no different. Instagram is now allowing companies to add shoppable tags to their Stories, as well as within their posts. Shoppable tags were first added to Instagram in 2016 and have been very popular with retailers since the full rollout. Add to this the fact that with over 300 million daily users Instagram Stories has been one of the biggest success stories in the social media . There’s no real surprise Instagram has added this feature. According to a recent survey, Instagrammers said they use Stories as a way to stay up to date with brands, get a behind the scenes view of products and, discover new products – something which will be much easier with the addition of Shoppable Story stickers.
As is often the case with most new features, this is only being rolled out to selected brands initially but if/when it becomes a feature all retailers can access, then it looks to be another extremely useful tool for brands that are looking to drive sales from the platform.
2. 3D Facebook posts
Ok so I’m slightly cheating on this one as this was actually released last month, but this week TechCrunch has given us a first look at Facebook’s new 3D posts. At their F8 conference in May Facebook announced a range of new features, many of which focused specifically on how the platform was advancing it’s AR capability including 3D posts. Initially, the 3D posts didn’t receive much coverage as Facebook didn’t have a lot of information to share at the time. But now we have got visibility of how the new posts will work.
The new posts will sit in your news feed like any other photo, except when you scroll past or engage with them they will respond accordingly. Clicking the image, scrolling past it, or tilting your phone will give the sense of perspective and add a degree of depth to the image.
If you want a more detailed overview of how the posts work then you can check out TechCrunch’s full overview here.
3. Football’s coming home
It’s finally here!
After four long years of waiting, the World Cup is finally here. Whether you like football or not it’s hard to not get drawn into the excitement and hype that sweeps across the nation during the month long competition.
If I’m not glued to a TV watching a match you can be sure I’ll be spending the next few weeks routinely updating various social media channels to stay up to date with all the action. Like any other major global event, the World Cup provides a huge opportunity for brands to get involved – something Rob explains in his most recent blog post.
The World Cup always provides a number of memorable moments from world-class football, to bizarre things happening off the pitch and even though we’re only a couple of days into the 2018 World Cup it seems like this tournament isn’t going to be any different.
4. Who’s the real Pancake King?
Social media provides brands with the chance to display their “human” side and engage with their customers and competitors on a more personal level. Getting it right on social media can be a difficult task, one wrong move and the whole internet will jump on your back. One brand who get it right regularly is Burger King. The people in charge of BK’s Twitter account seem to have perfected the art of using the most recent trends to help boost their social activity, without coming across as a cringe-y brand who are trying to act cool.
This week Burger King started some online beef by grilling fast food rival IHOP as they decided to change their name to IHOb: International House of Burgers to promote their lunch and dinner menus. Burger King seized the opportunity to troll IHOP and changed their Twitter handle to Pancake King, a move that saw other fast food chains to join in the roasting.
https://twitter.com/BurgerKing?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Remember when you were like 7 and thought changing your name to Thunder BearSword would be super cool?
Like that, but our cheeseburgers are still better.— Wendy’s (@Wendys) June 11, 2018
5. Not just another virtual assistant
Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Siri – the world is becoming obsessed with virtual assistants. Personally I don’t see the appeal, yes they are a cool gadget to have but are they really worth it? I’m not convinced.
That was the case until I was introduced to Emoto Robot.
Emoto Robot turns your smartphone into an emotive AI companion and gives it a body, face, and emotions. Emoto turns something nearly everyone has in their pockets into the ultimate smart home sidekick. Details around the new tech are fairly limited at the moment but you can find out more about what could soon become everyone’s cute best friend here.