Mana is Live: This Week's Social Media News
Channel: Mana Ionescu
Date: 2021-06-11

From Pinterest’s expanded shopping features to LinkedIn’s investment moves, Instagram’s new shopping features, and Twitter’s new subscription and super follow option, this week was a packed news week. 

You could say, three of the four social networks I’ll cover are making eCommerce moves. Could that prove to be more profitable than just advertising? Pinterest’s growth since they introduced ecommerce seems to indicated so. 

So let’s dive in, starting with Pinterest. 

Did you know that Pinterest is now up to 478 million monthly actives, a 30% increase year-over-year. The launch of their shopping features and the year of covid were a boon for Pinterest. 

And they’re not done. 

They’re expanding shopping features to more countries
They just launched a new Shopping List feature, so you can save products and return to buy them later. Pinterest is also updating its merchant profile display to make it easier for businesses to transform their shop tab into a storefront - "with featured in-stock products organized by category, featured product groups and dynamically-created recommendations".

Oh and for those of you who spent the pandemic using Public and Robinhood like it was Twitter, the Pinterest stock has been on the Montley Fools favorite list and it’s rising. 

I’ll go on record to say, I believe Pinterest’s shopping features are now more advanced than Instagram’s. Will Facebook go on and try to copy them like they did everyone else? We shall see. But for now, Pinterest is cashing in. 

Is this making Pinterest more attractive to you? Drop your answer in the comments. 

LINKED IN, HELLO!
LinkedIn and mother company Microsoft are betting on companies continuing to meet online even after offices reopen.

How do I know? LinkedIn just invested in Virtual conference technology company Hopin. Hopin is valued at over $5billion and LinkeIn’s investment in their most recent $500MM round is said to be just under $50MM.

INSTAGRAM:
Announced they are launching a native affiliate tool that will allow creators to discover new products available on checkout, share them with their followers and earn commissions for the purchases they drive — all within the Instagram app.

For creators who already have their own product lines, they can now link their shop to their personal profile in addition to their business profile. By linking their account with one of our four merchandise partners: Bravado/UMG, Fanjoy, Represent, and Spring. This will roll out to all eligible creators in the US by end of the year. 

AAAANd,
They're launching ways for creators to make extra money for hitting certain milestones with badges and Stars.
Starting this week, creators on Instagram are eligible to earn an extra payout when they meet certain milestones while using badges in Live, such as going Live with another account.
Today Facebook is launching Stars Challenges. Creators in the program can earn payouts from Facebook in the form of free Stars if they meet certain milestones, such as broadcasting a certain number of hours or earning a set number of Stars within a designated time period.
Additionally, Instagram went on to disclose information about their algorithm and how it ranks content. You can find a whole list of this if you go to my post recent post here on LinkedIn. The one item that stood out to me... is how reels, you know the copycats of TikTok are ranked. The main quality they look for? Is the content funny or entertaining. How do they know? Based on surveys. They also use the soundtrack of reels to determine popularity as well as a proxy for how much that reel entices you to create your own. 

TWITTER
Launched Twitter Blue a subscription service, in Canada and Australia. They’ll collect feedback and will improve the product because launching it elsewhere. With Blue you can undo a tweet within 30 seconds of posting it, create collections and consolidate long Twitter threads into consolidated text for easier reading. You can also change the color of the Twitter app icon. I know you’ve all been dying to be able to do that. Is it all worth three and a half Canadian dollars a month? Drop your answer in the comments. 

Twitter is also testing a Super Follow option which will give creators ways to monetize their content, with options to charge a monthly fee or members-only features such as newsletters, discount codes etc. Think of Patreon for Twitter.