Things in the Tank have been high-octane this week, fuelled by audience profiling and late night trips to McDonald’s. Safe to say, we’re glad to see Friday. But not before updating you on some key platform developments from the world of social media. Come with us, it’s the Squid Social Round-Up Episode V: everyone’s favourite of the franchise.
Instagram caused something of a stir in the Squid Tank this week, as their new look rolled out across the board. The black and white interface began appearing on some devices as early as late last month, but was accentuated somewhat by the app’s shiny new logo. Opinion is split here at Pink Squid, with Louise demanding they “leave my Instagram alone!”
It may look chic to some, and like the Sky app to others, but in any case, Instagram’s rationale behind the changes appeared in a blog post this week:
“The Instagram community has evolved over the past five years from a place to share filtered photos to so much more — a global community of interests sharing more than 80 million photos and videos every day. Our updated look reflects how vibrant and diverse your storytelling has become.”
What we’re really interested to see though, is the analytics and scheduling tools that are in the pipeline. Instagram has been the scourge of the community manager for years, with only Iconosquare providing very basic metrics on monthly activity or impact on reaching candidates.
Perhaps the biggest news to hit this week in terms of scope for employer branding, came from LinkedIn. Surprised? We weren’t. But we did get excited. LinkedIn are reportedly in talks with various publishers, to create an app that allows longer news or blog pieces to be published directly onto the platform. For LinkedIn this means audience stays on the site (rather than being directed to another site). For us, it means companies can publish articles without needing a personal profile (such as on Pulse, LinkedIn’s current blogging platform).
Though their purchase of Pulse three years ago asserted the platform’s ambition to position itself as a leader in business news, this development could give a voice directly to a brand, and put relevant content in front of the right audiences in a way LinkedIn never really has before. Bravo.
