At Beyond Fifteen we believe it’s important for marketing professionals to monitor any updates happening in social media – as a slight change in policies or algorithms on any of the key platforms can mean big changes to your marketing approach. Here is a roundup of the latest news on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Facebook to offer option to clear browsing history
It’s probably fair to say Facebook has taken some heat lately in terms of how they handle users’ data and privacy. At the latest F8 developer conference the social media giant announced an important new feature that will give users the option to delete their browsing history.
According to Facebook, the Clear History feature will “enable you to see the websites and apps that send us information when you use them, delete this information from your account and turn off our ability to store it associated with your account going forward.”
The move is understandable in light of the recent furor around Cambridge Analytica and Facebook’s data tracking practices. While the new feature doesn’t necessarily stop data tracking via tools such as the Facebook pixel, it does give users a straightforward way to remove their browsing history from Facebook’s servers, which should ensure there is no connection between such data and the user’s account.
Twitter advises users to change passwords
Potential data breaches are never good news, and certainly not when it happens to one of the world’s largest social media platforms, with over 330 million active users. Twitter recently released a statement confirming that they had found a bug which had “stored passwords unmasked in an internal log,” meaning that the data could potentially have been accessed by third parties.
While Twitter says that there is no indication of an actual breach or misuse – and that they have now fixed the issue – the company has “out of an abundance of caution” advised users of the social media platform to consider changing passwords, both on Twitter itself and for any other websites on which users have used the same password.
Instagram adding on-platform shopping feature
Instagram has always been an interesting platform for marketers, with its image-themed nature making it a natural fit for both visual advertising and showcasing products which you should incorporate into your detailed social media plan to expand your reach. This looks set to go a step further with the rollout of in-stream payment options that would allow users to purchase products directly on the platform, without having to click through to the retailer’s website.
In many ways the move seems like a natural progression. As the fastest growing social media platform, Instagram has 800 million users and, crucially, more than 25 million businesses that actively use the network. According to their own data, over 80 percent of accounts on the platform.