Welcome to this week's episode of Social Chatter where we cover the latest social media news from this past week.
Each episode of Social Chatter is available as a blog post or video.
Let's see what's new in social media this week with your hosts, Christian Karasiewicz and Nick Rishwain.
We're also joined by special guest, Chelsea Peitz, who works with companies in the real estate industry to develop a digital presence.
Watch This Week's Social Media Updates
LinkedIn Introduces Profile Photo Filters and Editing
In LinkedIn news, they have added photo filters and editing to your profile.
Why LinkedIn Profile Photo Filters and Editing Matters
A few weeks ago, we discussed the new LinkedIn update.
Continuing with those updates, LinkedIn now gives you a way to improve your LinkedIn profile photo.
Previously, a lot of users would either not upload a profile photo or use one that didn't provide the best impression of them - it was off-center, cropped funny, etc.
To encourage users to use their smartphone to take a photo (something we've been saying for years whenever we provide social media training for Fortune 500 companies), LinkedIn now lets you add a photo or edit it right from your mobile device.
You can upload a new photo, apply filters, crop your photo - so that it focuses on you and more!
Here is a video shared by LinkedIn on uploading a new profile photo and adding filters.
To take advantage of this new feature from LinkedIn, download or update the LinkedIn app.
Now you have no excuse to have a LinkedIn Profile that looks like this since you have a smartphone and can add a photo in just a few minutes.
Better Ways to Monetize Facebook Instant Articles
Also this week, Facebook announced new updates to monetizing Instant Articles.
Why Monetizing Facebook Instant Articles Matters
Facebook wants users to create Facebook Instant Articles
At the same time, businesses want to be able to monetize their content.
Facebook has been listening.
As a result, they're "making improvements to our Automatic Ads Placement feature and introducing flexibility so that ads can be placed more frequently in articles, now up to every 250 words (previously every 350 words). Publishers can place ads manually within the article or choose between three options for automatic placement: ads every 250, 350 or 500 words. These updates will be available next week."
This is just the start of opportunities to monetize your Facebook Instant Articles.
They're also exploring additional opportunities, ads and formats to keep improving Facebook Instant Articles and to keep businesses optimizing their content for the Facebook platform.
To read the Facebook Instant Articles announcement, go here.
Search Objects In Videos With Google Cloud Video Inteligence
This week, Google also announced a new tool called Google cloud video intelligence.
With cloud video intelligence, you'll be able to search for objects within video clips.
Here is a demo.
Google just showed off a new Video Intelligence API that lets you search for objects within video clips, here's an bit of the demo pic.twitter.com/wOPwsmnAfe
— Karissa Bell (@karissabe) March 8, 2017
Why Google Cloud Video Intelligence Matters
With more and more people creating and sharing video content instead of blogging, this is the next iteration of search.
As a result, there has to be an easier way to search video - enter Google cloud video intelligence, an "API that makes videos searchable, and discoverable, by extracting metadata with an easy to use REST API."
Google had this to say about the cloud video intelligence tool.
"The Video Intelligence API allows developers to take advantage of Google video search capabilities even if they don't have a background in machine learning or computer vision."
Right now, Google Cloud Video Intelligence is in private beta.
You can sign-up for a private beta or try a demo here.
Upload 360 Video With Vimeo 360
Also this week, Vimeo announced Vimeo 360!
Why Vimeo 360
With this announcement, Vimeo jumps into 360 content along with Facebook and their 360 photo and video content.
A lot of video professional currently use Vimeo for sharing high-quality video content.
As 360 content becomes increasingly more popular, this move will position Vimeo ahead of their competitors.
One of the main reasons why we think this will happen is because Vimeo does a great job educating their users on creating 360 content and more.
Take a look at their blog for more tutorials, guides and of course, videos to see how they do it.
Users who get into uploading 360 content on Vimeo will also be excited to know that Vimeo also provides a marketplace for selling your videos.
To read more about Vimeo 360, check out this article.
German Official Wants $53 Million In Fines For Social Media Hate Posts
Another interesting piece of social media news this week comes from Germany where German Justice Minister Heiko Maas is proposing fines of up to $53 million for social networking sites that fail to swiftly remove hate speech or defamatory "fake news."
Why Social Media Fines Matter
Fake news is becoming a big issue, especially on social media channels.
Instead of investigating the content that is shared, people assume that everything they read is true.
As a result, German Justice Minister Heiko Maas is proposing $53 million in fines for social networking sites - this means Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and more, that don't quickly remove speech or defamatory "fake news."
While social media companies have started to crack down on hate crimes, he thinks there needs to me more work done.
According to Maas, "Twitter deletes just 1 percent of illegal content flagged by users, while Facebook deletes 39 percent."
Under this proposal, "companies would be required to provide a round-the-clock service for users to flag illegal content, which would have to be removed by the site within seven days. All copies of the content would also have to be deleted and social media companies would need to publish a quarterly report detailing how they have dealt with such material."
If a company fails to abide by mandatory standards, they risk a fine of 5 million euros.
Do you think that handing out fines is something that should move to other countries besides Germany?
If not, what else could be done to remove hate speech or defamatory "fake news?"
You can read more about this social media news here.
Tools
In addition to sharing the latest in social media news from this past week, we also highlighted some great tools and apps to check out.
Uptime
The first tool we have for you this week is called Uptime (iOS).
Uptime is an experimental app from YouTube for watching and sharing videos with friends.
What's great about Uptime is that it looks to take watching videos and to make them social.
You can watch videos with friends and have conversations at the same time through their chat interface.
This way you can focus while you're playing a video instead of watching a video, stopping what you're doing to switch applications, and then coming back to the video you were watching to catch-up.
Uptime is a free app. You can download it from the link below.
Download UptimeSERPStat
The last tool we wanted to share this week is called SERPStat (web).
When writing new content for your blog, do you spend time researching the proper keywords?
Sure, you can use the Google keyword planner; however, this tool is mainly for businesses who run Google AdWords.
With SERPStat, you can perform keyword research to see how popular a keyword is on Google, learn who is ranking for that keyword, perform backlink analysis along with referring domains perform a site audit and conduct competitor research.
Here is a short video on using SERPStat.
SERPStat is a great tool for your business to have in its digital toolbox.
We personally use it and find that it saves us hours of time performing keyword research when writing content and analyzing our site.
You can gain a lot of information to help you make an informed decision on which keywords to optimize your content for and see how your business is performing with one convenient tool.
You can try SERPStat for free from the link below.
Sign-up for SERPStatWrap-up
That's it for this week's episode of Social Chatter.
To watch next week's episode of Social Chatter, your weekly social media marketing talk show, tune-in to our Facebook Page to find out what's new in social media news!
If you have any questions about of the social media news or tools that were mentioned this week, please share them with us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or in the comments below.
