SOCIAL MEDIA ROUND-UP: Floyd Mayweather Jr., the Most Talked About Athlete on Facebook in 2015

In this week’s social media roundup, cure we dive into Facebook’s most popular topics of the year, Twitter’s experimentation of showing tweets out of order, Google’s new ‘Trial run ads’ and Facebook’s latest update, which allows users to curate the content they would like to see featured at the top of their News Feed.

Facebook reveals the most talked about topics in 2015

Last week, Facebook published the most talked about topics from within their network in the U.S., and globally, from January 1 until December 1, 2015.

FIFA 15 was the most mentioned game in the games category, however no sporting event made it into the top ten global topics.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao were the first and second most spoken about athletes, respectively, leading to the ‘fight of the century’ clenching the title of one of the most influential sport events of 2015.

In comparison, Floyd Mayweather Jr., was the third most talked about athlete in 2014, behind LeBron James and Derek Jeter whereas Manny Pacquiao didn’t feature in the top ten.

Twitter experiments showing tweets out of order

Twitter’s recent experimentation of causing tweets to no longer appear in reverse chronological order has been causing some outrage. The change has not yet been rolled out to everyone and appears to affect random users.

Some users experiencing the change commented that the new format would ruin one of the social network’s assets – its ability to follow real-time events, such as breaking news and sports games.

Users have also commented how this change opposes Twitter’s mission statement, which is to “give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers”.

Putting tweets out of order would create barriers to one of the main reasons people use Twitter – to follow live events as they happen.

Although this will make following live events harder, this addition could make the platform more approachable to newcomers who might not check Twitter as much and miss interesting tweets.

However, as Twitter has already launched ‘Moments’, which curates the best tweets from certain topics, and ‘While you were away…’, which displays a selection of the most popular tweets from people that a user follows when they first sign on, this new addition does not seem necessary.

Moreover, this could change the way brands use Twitter, if build up tweets can appear after the event happened or when the product is no longer available.

Ever wished you could ‘test drive’ an app before downloading it?

Last week, Google began testing ‘Trial Run Ads’, which lets users demo mobile apps for a minute before downloading them. After Google’s revelation earlier in the year that one in four apps downloaded is never used, putting people off downloading an app unless they are certain they want it, this is hoped to increase downloads from people who actually want the app, as well those who are unsure.

According to a blog post written by Google Mobile Ads Director, Sissie Hsiao, and Product Manager, Pasha Nahass:

“The immersive demo increases the likelihood that an install is coming from someone who enjoys playing the game. Users get a taste of the game before going through the download process, and the app developer attracts better qualified users who’ve chosen the game based on their experiences in the app.”

Google has made it clear that advertisers will only pay for a click on the install button, rather than every time the demo is tried.

This is a new way of marketing an app and it is likely this will catch on with other apps and products alike, who always strive to stand out amongst the overload of goods available for the consumer.

The most engaging emoji on Instagram has been revealed as the heart!

According to a report by Simply Measured tracking activity of 2,531 posts by 90 brands, the heart emoji has been the most engaging emoji of 2015 with the caption averaging 120,000 likes and comments.

This is significantly more than the sparkles emoji that came in second and averaged roughly 80,000 likes and comments.

Emojis are becoming more and more common, with the tiny icons included in 35% of all brand captions. The most used emoji by brands in 2015 was the camera icon, which was used used almost 90m times to give photo credit to the photographer.

Hashtags are also an integral part of Instagram, and out of the adverts analysed, each post had on average 2.5 hashtags.

The study by Simply Measured also stated that brands are finding that, engagement is up 53% per post on Instagram than it was last year with each branded post averaging 32,000 likes and comments.

This shows that “regardless of the industry, there’s now an interested audience on Instagram”.

Facebook lets users put the people they love at the top of their News Feed

Last Monday, Facebook began rolling out a new way for users to control which of their friends and pages (public profiles specifically created for businesses, brands, celebrities or causes) appear at the top of their news feeds.

By now, most users should see a reminder note pictured on the top right of the News Feed, reading:

“Put the people you love at the top: We care about showing you posts from people who matter to you. We’ve made new controls that allow you to prioritise friends and family in your News Feed.”

If a user selects his/her top friends and pages, new content will appear from those profiles or pages at the top of the News Feed, along with a star in the top right-hand corner, alerting the user why those posts are on the top.

Every other post will appear as they normally do in the News Feed. This is significant for brands as it puts pressure on them to make sure their content stands out and is liked by users.

Twitter users can now post pictures as they were taken, without having to crop them

Twitter has followed Instagram’s lead in enabling users to post pictures how they are, without requiring them to crop them to fit a certain mould. They also introduced larger, multi-photo displays, which were hoped to ‘bring out more of each photo’.

Last Monday, Twitter announced on Twitterblog:

“Starting today, we’re making your twitter.com timeline more immersive by uncropping photos, so you can experience and present them as they were meant to be viewed.”

Even though Twitter started as an all-text platform, enabling tweets to hold media, such as photos and videos, has been necessary for the platform to evolve, give users the experiences they desire and compete against other platforms.

The year 2015 has been crucial for Twitter introducing visual elements into their tweets, with ‘Moments’ designed around visual media and video autoplay being introduced earlier in the year.

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