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 Vic.
1. Instagram lets advertisers create sponsored posts for influencers more easily
Branded content ads have been about for a while now. These are ads that sorta look like organic posts but are labelled as being a paid partnership, so you can see at a glance whether an influencer legitimately likes a brand, or, more likely, if they are just being paid to say they do.
In a recent update, for influencers who have the cash to splash on an advertising agency to manage their paid content, things have just got heaps easier. Whereas previously an influencer had to create an organic post first (ugh, effort), advertisers can now publish branded content ads without them having to do so.
More on that update here.
2. Shiny new Search Console crawl stats
Honestly Google, about time with this one.
The crawl stats report in Search Console had been pretty lame for a while, so the announcement earlier this week about a new and improved report was welcomed.
Google highlights the following ‘new and exciting features’:
- Total number of requests grouped by response code, crawled file type, crawl purpose, and Googlebot type
- Detailed information on host status
- URL examples to show where in your site requests occurred
- Comprehensive summary for properties with multiple hosts and support for domain properties
It’s great for a top-level overview, but I’ll absolutely still be using SEO spider tools like Screaming Frog to crawl sites, as the level of detail is far more comprehensive at URL level.
I haven’t had the chance to have a proper dig about yet, but when I do, you’d better hold onto your hats, because I will no doubt have something to say about it.
3. Seizure later, TikTok strobe video filters
TikTok has announced a new feature designed to protect users with photosensitive epilepsy by allowing them to skip videos that could trigger seizures. After already taking steps to label videos that featured strobe effects, an update will roll out in the next few weeks which will also allow users to set their profile to not show these videos at all, as well as giving them the option to skip all of these video types.
TikTok stated it wanted to make the platform “accessible for everyone”, adding: “Given the visual nature of our platform, we’re beginning this work with a series of photosensitivity features”.
4. Nature Grandpa bails on Instagram
Everyone’s favourite nature Grandpa (David Attenborough) joined Instagram just two months ago, breaking the record for reaching a million followers in the shortest amount of time. But he’s already had enough.
The reason? Could it be that there are ‘too many snakes’ to deal with? Maybe he’s afraid of being cancelled, as so many other celebrities have been on social media? Or maybe, the guys running the account just couldn’t deal with the pressure of pretending to be the greatest dude that’s ever lived.
View this post on Instagram
5. It’s ended in tiers (again)
On Thursday, the UK waited with bated breath to see which coronavirus tier they were going to be in.
Tier 1 basically means you can go crazy and rub yourself all over people and tier 3 means basically the same as lockdown except you can get your haircut and go and buy new underpants from Primark. I’m convinced that all of this is pointless now, as people are largely going to ignore the tier rules, especially now it sounds as though that Christmas is a total free-for-all due to coronavirus knowing that it’s not allowed to infect people over the festive period.
True to form, as soon as the announcement was made, the postcode checker that tells you what tier you are in crashed the site minutes after being pushed live.
Yes, the outage was clearly related to loads of people all trying to access the site at once, but that’s why you should check your hosting can handle an influx of visitors. Websites launching Black Friday/Cyber Monday promotions – take note.
