The Week in Digital 01.07.16

This week, find out more about Facebook’s bots, why Refinery29 is building a Facebook Live team and what Rimmel’s ‘Shazam for make-up’ app does.

FACEBOOK NOW HAS OVER 11,000 BOTS

In less than three months since Facebook announced a platform for building bots on Messenger, 11,000 bots have been created. Today they have announced a few more developments to the platform, including the ability for bots to send GIFs, audio and video files. Users can make use of bots that help them with anything from searching for flights, to translating text or finding out what kind of cat they are. These bots open up a whole new way for brands to interact with their customers on Facebook.

REFINERY29 BUILDS 10-PERSON FACEBOOK LIVE TEAM

Refinery29 started experimenting with Facebook Live three months ago and currently has five people from social teams working on its live video content. To ensure high quality of content, it wants to grow staff numbers so that they have producers, assistants and managers for tech, social and analytics. They currently publish 15 live videos per week across eight Facebook pages. They also plan to create a multi-purpose studio specifically for shooting live video.

RIMMEL CREATES SHAZAM FOR MAKE UP

Yesterday, Rimmel released an app called ‘Get The Look’ to help their customers match influencers’ make-up styles. Users can take a photo of a blogger, celebrity or even a friend and the app will scan the face for the make-up colour and style. They can then ‘try it on’ their own face, which works in a similar way to Snapchat’s lenses. The app will then, of course, suggest Rimmel products to help the user get that look.

TWITTER UNVEILS EMOJI TARGETING

Twitter has announced that advertisers will be able to target consumers according to the emojis they use. This can be executed through one of Twitter’s ad partners (AdParlor, Amobee, HYFN, Perion, SocialCode and 4C). According to Twitter product manager Neil Shah, ‘This new feature uses emoji activity as a signal of a person’s mood or mindset — unlocking unique opportunities for marketers.’

CHANGES TO FACEBOOK’S ALGORITHM

This week, Facebook announced more changes to its News Feed, which could lead to a drop in reach and referral traffic. They plan to prioritise posts from users’ family and friends, meaning that posts from other Facebook pages will be lower down in the feed. According to Lars Backstrom (Facebook engineering director, ‘if a lot of your referral traffic is the result of people sharing your content and their friends liking and commenting on it, there will be less of an impact than if the majority of your traffic comes directly through page posts’.

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