So-Called Social: Week of April 23 – Info UI

Happy Friday, y’all! Buckle up, because this week‘s newsletter is a doozy. As in, there’s a lot of good stuff in here. So, grab a cup of coffee and get cozy. From pre-roll ads to Q1 results. Adobe Think Tank to Adidas. Let’s do this.

Social nets update stuff

Facebook is testing a new video format called “Premieres,” that will let publishers post pre-recorded video as live footage. The pre-recorded videos will play similar to a livestream, allowing viewers the chance to interact with the video as it is broadcast on the site. Comments, reactions, and interactions will happen in real-time, too.

Facebook is expanding its pre-roll ads to more areas of the platform — like Timeline and search results. The platform is also clarifying its monetization policies to spell out additional kinds of videos that aren’t eligible for ads (primarily low-quality vids or videos from publishers that participate in “sharing and distribution schemes”).

Reddit is making big moves to woo advertisers (and has officially crossed over to the “dark side”). The self-proclaimed “front page of the Internet” is hoping brand marketers will take it and its 330 million monthly users more seriously — and is investing in its sales team to make that happen. The platform is planning to grow their brand partnerships team by 50 percent this year, with a key selling point being its largely millennial audience.

Pinterest’s business profile redesign is in full swing. Now, brands can have dynamic cover images which enables them to showcase the content they want people to see first (a specific board, your latest Pins, or recent Pinterest activity. The platform also added a monthly viewers statistic to the top of business profiles, displaying the total number of people who saw that profile’s Pins over the past 30 days.

Q1 earnings are out. Here’s a quick recap for Facebook and Twitter. Twitter reported its second straight profitable quarter — and the second profitable quarter in company history. And FB is up 49% from the same period last year with ad revenue growing 50% year over year. Better than expected is the theme here.

Facebook has also launched its biggest-ever US branding push, which includes an apology from the platform for data breaches and promises to strengthen the data privacy and safety of its users.

Adobe does stuff

We’re hosting a Think Tank event on the Future of AI in the Enterprise next Monday, April 30 at 1 pm ET. The Think Tank will include luminaries and thought leaders driving AI forward with folks from PwC, Honeywell, and of course, Adobe – with the discussion moderated by Altimeter analyst, Susan Etlinger. Help spread the word (and tune in!). There is also a blog post and CMO.com article with more info about the event.

Our first Lightroom CC Coffee Break video episode premiered this week! From now on, we’ll be releasing one Lightroom Classic episode and one Lightroom CC episode in the Coffee Break series each month. Check it out!

Andddd an Adobe Remix project kicked off today at the Mumbai Symposium, where we invited Indian industrial designer turned visual artist, Siddhant Jaokar, to bring his perspective to our logo. He celebrates the Indian culture and architecture through a reimagined design filled with colors and textures.

Other brands do stuff

Baskin-Robbins “got me like” whoa. The ice cream brand is leveraging the popular “Got Me Like” meme to capture the joy of ice cream. It’s a strategic shift for the brand — away from product-focused advertising to a more emotion-driven brand campaign. And AdWeek calls it “the twerkiest, GIFiest, Meme-iest ad campaign.” Pretty spot on.

Alexander Wang + Adidas = heart eyes. The designer his new collection for Adidas Originals by taking a road trip from Los Angeles to Coachella with campaign stars, including Issa Lish, Binx Walton and Lexi Boling. Along the way, they stopped off at several locations and had to trade pieces from the collection for things they needed—like gas and food—to get from point A to point B. Adidas captured the journey as it unfolded, in their Instagram story. Love this creative, behind-the-scenes perspective. It looked like quite the adventure.

Interesting stuff

It’s almost summer (can you believe it?!) and we all know what that means. Vacation! So, how do you use social media to bring customers closer to to your brand when they’re vacationing? There’s some research (and a lot of opinion) that suggests people use their mobile devices a little more than usual while they’re sitting by the pool. Here are some tips to catch them in-between mai tais.

A new survey conducted by Creative Strategies indicates that most people don’t actually expect privacy on Facebook. And if they do, they don’t have a Facebook account. 20 percent of people surveyed aren’t actually on FB (because of privacy concerns). But the people who do use the platform don’t mind ads, but are worried about how Facebook is tracking the rest of their browsing history. The findings are fascinating (and intentionally well-timed) but not unsurprising, tbh.

Fun stuff