Twitter Bots

A new study suggests that almost 48 million twitter accounts are nothing more than bots. Twitter itself admits that approximately 27 million accounts are automated. Using over 1000 features to identify the bot accounts, the researchers from the University of Southern California and Indiana University estimated that between 9 and 15 percent of active monthly Twitter users are not good ol' humans. It's nothing a regular Twitter user wouldn't notice or realise, it also doesn't take much away from Twitter as a whole. However, we haven't heard much positivity around Twitter for a while now.

No-ones Favourite Game

A new forecast from eMarketer suggests that Google and Facebook will strengthen their dominating duopoly stance over the digital ad world this year. In fact, many analysts estimated that, discounting the big two, digital ad spend shrunk in Q1 and Q2 of 2016. Monica Peart of eMarketer noted, "Google's dominance in search, especially mobile search, is largely coming from the growing tendency of consumers to turn to their smartphones to look up everything from the details of a product to directions." The only companies in a position to upend Google are Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon, with the latter two unlikely to make an impact without a huge global uptake of physical products, especially mobile/wearable ones. Digital is expected to overtake television as the ad industry's biggest revenue driver this year, growing sixteen percent to $83 billion. Google's revenues are set to rise 15 percent, and Facebook's by 32 percent.

An Evolving Story

Facebook Messenger Day. Another week, another Snapchat clone. Facebook are desperately trying to find a way to make us post all about all the small things that light up our day. 566 million photos are shared on Facebook messenger every day, compared to 2.8 billion Snapchat photos. Making it simple to share more fun multimedia content with the people we already to chat to seems like a great idea. However, many people have felt like Messenger day has spilt itself over a clean and efficient user interface that has the potential to replace text messaging. The fun filters and calls-to-action to try and generate real world gatherings aren't for everyone, but just like many new features on established networks, it may gather support out of convenience and 'everyone else' using it.

A Little Bit Of Moji

All Snapchat need to do to continue being used so care-freely (is that a word?) is to create fun new ways for us to interact with our friends, with minimal clicks and layers between us. BitMojis make conversation on Snapchat more human than just words. They allow for a range of expressions to be conveyed without the need to find the right words or to say anything at all. That was the greatest thing about them, until now. You can now place them as widgets on your home screens to open up a chat instantly. No more opening the app and swiping and clicking. That's a small but crucial number of steps eliminated. The bonus of seeing your friend's face as a chat option, rather than an app, or even just a name will surely play a part in the seemingly inevitable success of this new feature. This is innovative. Facebook, take notes. 

Anti-Social - The bad side of social media.

Anti-social: A regular feature on the not-so-great things we spot in the world of social media. Caterpillar aka CAT is a brand we grew up with, one who's products and style we love, and who's products we have even borrowed for shoots in the past. These fond memories only serve to exacerbate our frustration when we see a brand doing all the right things in terms of style, PR, and branding but backing it up with terrible paid social. It smells of automation or a poorly managed third party tool, and only works because the image is so strong, or perhaps the audience is narrow. CAT, put your social hats on and think again.