Weekly Marketing Insights and News Digest (10-16 August)

What Happens on the Internet Every Minute; Twitter Rolls Out Tweet Reply Controls to All Users; YouTube Will Stop Sending Emails about the Latest Content; Facebook launches gaming app and adds promotion opportunities in Groups

How much data is generated every minute? How does global Internet growth change? Why did YouTube stop to send email notifications? Facebook launches a gaming app and adds promotion opportunities in Groups. This and much more from the world of digital marketing in our new episode of the RGray Weekly Marketing Insights and News Digest.

–   Today there are more and more data stored online. And the numbers continue to increase every day. The world had never seen such a reckless growth in network usage. Check out the infographic below for more detailed records.

–   Twitter has launched its new tweet reply control options today, which made tweeting more comfortable and safe. However, the update already turned out to have some drawbacks. Learn more about it in our digest.

–   There will not be any emails to YouTube channel subscribers regarding the upload of new content anymore. YouTube’s team is convinced that the change will have no impact on watch time as there already was an experiment with turning off these emails. Take a look at our article to see what caused the change.

–   The new app, Facebook Gaming, was successfully released this weekend on IOS, which, unfortunately, turned out to be not as impressive as expected. What is more, several new sponsored post options for Groups were launched, which might significantly change up things for both companies and marketers. Read more in our digest!

1. What Happens on the Internet Every Minute (2020 Version) [Infographic]

Nowadays, the vast majority of activities take place online. Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic situation, people adapted to the online life more than ever. The statistics of the usage of web-based apps and tools to keep in touch with each other has grown drastically, for instance:

  • Facebook users upload 147,000 photos
  • Twitter gains 319 new users
  • Instagram users post 347,222 Stories
  • YouTube creators upload 500 hours of video

Every minute. Every day.

You will be impressed with the seen numbers below, as there are so much information and insight being held by the major network giants.

That gives them tremendous strength and, what is more, the numbers are increasing daily.

Check out the infographic below for more shocking data!

What Happens on the Internet Every Minute

2. Twitter Rolls Out Tweet Reply Controls to All Users

After testing them out over the last few months, Twitter has today announced that its new tweet reply control options are being made available to all users on iOS, Android, and twitter.com.

On the 11th of August 2020, Twitter revealed a new tweet reply control option, which is now accessible to all users on IOS, Android, and twitter.com.

Twitter Rolls Out Tweet Reply Controls to All Users

How does it work?

When you Tweet, pick who can reply with three options:
1) everyone (original, default setting), 2) only people you follow, or 3) only people you mention. Tweets posted under the 2nd and 3rd options will be marked, and the reply icon will not be visible for people who can’t reply. But, those who can’t reply will still be able to view, Retweet, Retweet with Comment, share, and like.

Nevertheless, users who were taking part in the testing process, mentioned that it is still more convenient and safe to tweet, with these updates being implemented, and this will lead to more tweeting.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? However, even with such considerable advantages, there are some disadvantages. Firstly, by restricting who can reply to your tweets, politicians and brands could significantly benefit, as they can censor dissenting views, which might render their comment sound more accepted than they are.

Secondly, there will still be a possibility to ‘retweet with comment’, timeline on reply-restricted tweets is visited 4 times more frequently than on normal, unrestricted tweets.

Twitter is now trying to work out on those drawbacks.

example of who can reply to your messages

In addition, Twitter already started to improve its newest update, by including the option to invite people into the conversation after it begins, which may help users to participate in discussions over time, without making a new thread.

Now, by limiting replies, you could hold a more intimate discussion, which others would be able to more easily follow – in addition to the capacity to stop unwanted responses to your tweets. 

To sum up, you can have more private conversations, and you will be shielded from unwanted responses to your tweets.

The new tweet reply control option is already available to all users.

3. YouTube Will Stop Sending Email Notifications to Alert Channel Subscribers to New Content

Here’s an important notification for YouTube channel managers – the significant change was made on YouTube, since August 13th, 2020, no more emails to your channel subscribers regarding the upload of a new video.

What caused the change?

The vast majority of the users are unsatisfied with dozens of emails which they receive every day, and, according to YouTube’s statistics, more than 99% of them are not even open. However, you will still receive the notifications about any changes implemented to your account, service updates, etc.

YouTube is convinced that due to the miserable open rates, the viewing numbers of your videos are going to remain the same:

“We didn’t see any impact to watch time when we experimented with turning off these emails. Our tests showed that when we don’t send these emails, more people engage with mobile push notifications and their Subscription feed.”

The only altering will be in the way people will get informed about your latest content.

Reducing their email sends is quite uncommon for a digital platform. LinkedIn took a concerted decision to avoid sending too many email updates back in 2015, and after it reported a steady rise in interest with it. 

But don’t think that Facebook will quit giving you a random email warning now and then one of your friends will have ‘posted a link.’

All in all, I think we can all appreciate the time taken by YouTube to make some improvements, which will be implemented from the 13th of August as noted earlier, to stop bothering people with emails they don’t read.

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4. Facebook launches gaming app, adds promotion opportunities in Groups

The new app, Facebook Gaming, was successfully released this weekend on IOS, as well as several new sponsored post options for Groups, that might change up things for both companies and marketers.

Facebook launches gaming app, adds promotion opportunities in Groups

Here comes more information:  

·   Facebook Gaming turned out to be not as successful as was expected. Facebook’s gaming app was released on IOS Friday, and the company confirmed that Instant Games (the name for the mini-games designed to be in the app) had to be dropped after a long battle with Apple.

·   Facebook Group admins can now publish sponsored posts with or on behalf of advertisers. What it means is, that you, as a marketer, can now collaborate with admins in key FB groups to boost your products, or, if you’re a group admin it’s another opportunity to raise profits.

Even though Facebook Gaming is not as popular as marketers want it to be, everything may change and Instant Games could attract more attention to the app if Apple ever lightens the rules. Right now, let’s start exploring some sponsored promotions in Groups!