Snapchat Introduces Screen Sharing Feature For its Web Users
With the inclusion of screen sharing, Snapchat, the multi-media messaging software has made a big advancement in its technological capabilities. The platform is historically only known for its messages that vanished. On the web version of its platform, the company has launched a new feature that enables users to screen share during calls. Snapchat had previously concentrated on image-based communication and brief video. It appears that the platform is attempting to expand its functionality with screen sharing, perhaps with an eye toward the industry that is now dominated by Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
Benefits of Screen Sharing on Snapchat
Convenient communication
The simplicity of screen sharing on Snapchat is one of its advantages. As they can see everything in real time, there is no need to provide screenshots or videos of what you want to communicate with someone. When demonstrating a new program or game or teaching a hard concept, this can be helpful. Utilizing this tool, nevertheless, requires caution since it raises potential privacy issues.
Sharing a screen facilitates more efficient conversation. It can be difficult to successfully communicate some concepts when all that can be done through texting is transmit text messages or, at most, photos. However, one may quickly convey an idea graphically or tell the other person how something works through screen sharing.
Problem-solving
Second, screen sharing facilitates learning and problem-solving. It’s especially helpful when attempting to solve computer-related issues, such as diagnosing software problems or instructing someone on how to properly utilize a specific program.
Collaboration
Last but not least, employing Snapchat’s screen-sharing feature encourages interaction among team members who are digitally working together across multiple locations at the same time, making life easier for everyone concerned.
In conclusion, Snapchat’s screen-sharing function offers a variety of advantages that enhance communication effectiveness and foster deeper interpersonal engagement.
Screen Sharing with Snapchat
Screen sharing has long been a standard feature of business-oriented digital communication tools. It is now also accessible for private use on social media sites like Snapchat.
How to share a Snapchat online screen
- Users must sign into their Snapchat account via the mobile app or the website at web.snapchat.com in order to enjoy the new screen-sharing feature.
- The next step is to start a call with a friend or a group after logging in.
- The share button is located at the bottom of the screen near the video and microphone controls. Users may share their screen by clicking it.
- Users can collaborate more fluidly online by sharing from their PCs and seeing from their phones.
Users can share their screen with other Snapchat users when using the iPhone app. However, users must be using the online interface.
The most recent changes for Snap users
The function may alter how common users collaborate online. Whether it be students working on group projects or families attending online activities. Businesses and marketers may also use Snapchat in novel ways to connect with target clients on the well-liked site. Overall, it’s evident that Snapchat always aspires to enhance its user experience through the introduction of creative updates designed to raise the caliber of our online discussions while integrating some entertaining components into it. This social media platform is one to keep an eye on because of its enhanced screen-sharing capabilities, which create limitless opportunities for interaction among friends across diverse geographic areas and give users access to a large variety of third-party programs via Mini-apps.
Read More: Lemon8, TikTok’s sister app struggles in the US, users cite inorganic feel and influencer bias
McCann Content Studios Unites Social and Creator Capabilities
McCann has announced McCann Content Studios. It intends to offer businesses worldwide the capability of integrated social commerce, influencer marketing, and social media marketing. This new studio will include performance monitoring, audience development, creator relationships, and creative services. It will include comprehensive social and creator strategy and execution in a single organization. It will help streamline the process for customers working on social and creator-led campaigns. The network’s social and influencer strategy skills, as well as those for social creative ideation and content creation, social audience, connection tactics, and activation, influencer content co-creation and production, performance measurement, and optimization, will all be housed at McCann Content Studios. The addition of expertise from ITB and McCann LIVE should help the unit get off to a solid start.
McCann Content Studios
McCann Content Studios will implement the innovative influencer agency ITB from IPG. It was established in 2006 and has offices in London, New York, and Los Angeles. For clients like Unilever and Mastercard, the agency has a proven track record of success in leveraging influencers to promote brand platforms. The studio will also incorporate the global social practice, McCann LIVE. It has influenced the social policy of businesses like Converse in the US and Aldi in the UK.
As the distinctions between social media and the creator economy become more hazy, the new content studio is positioned as a full-service provider. The expected expenditure on influencer marketing would increase 3.5 times faster than spending on traditional social media ads. The ongoing Hollywood strikes may also encourage more creators to look for endorsement deals when productions come to a standstill. Customers, however, continue to rely on creative and engagement trends generated from popular Gen Z apps such as TikTok.
Read More: Red Havas ME Launches Influencer Marketing Initiative “SWAY”
The new unit leadership
The agency has chosen Amit Sutha to lead McCann Content Studios as president and global chief client officer. He will report to Daryl Lee (CEO). Sutha has had a global career spanning continents. Most recently, he served as Global Chief Client Officer and Global President of Performance & Campaign Content at Mediabrands Content Studios. Sutha has built both creative and media firms into leadership positions in their industry. His work at Mediabrands, which combined the best in media, storytelling, talent, data, and collaboration, significantly changed the concept of creative media content.
McCann and McCann Content Studio have promoted Monica Tailor, formerly the Global Director of McCann LIVE, to Chief Social Marketing Officer. Under Tailor’s direction, McCann LIVE swiftly established itself as an essential component of McCann’s core client offering, fusing brands with culture in exciting and unique ways. She developed a brand voice and brand storytelling that maximized social attention and conversions, assisting McCann’s integrated Aldi team in becoming internationally known.
Crystal Malachias, who was previously SVP of Global Growth & Innovation at ITB, has been named Global Head of Influencer at McCann Content Studios. She has extensive experience in influencer marketing and has worked with Hearst, and Say Media, and helped launch Refinery29 in the UK.
Here’s what they said
McCann global CEO Daryl Lee said in a statement,
Brands are increasingly interacting today in social communities in dialogue with fans, creators, and influencers. McCann Content Studios will provide our clients with a way to participate in the creator economy and co-create with them without losing their brand’s unique perspective and social voice, getting the best of both worlds.
He further added,
We have some of the industry’s very best leading McCann Content Studios. Amit is a content entrepreneur with a proven track record of commercial success. Monica is a pioneer of brand-driven social marketing for some of the world’s most socially impactful brands. Crystal is a trailblazing influencer marketing talent who understands the power of creators to shape culture and advocate for brands. Together, they represent a powerhouse of expertise that will help guide brands to new frontiers of co-creativity
Read more: 10 Game-Changing AI Tools for Digital Marketing in 2023
Red Havas ME Launches Influencer Marketing Initiative “SWAY”
Red Havas Middle East, the Havas Group’s public relations branch in the Middle East, has announced the beginning of SWAY, a global influencer marketing program. The information was released on all of the PR firm’s social media channels. The influencer marketing effort, which had just been introduced in the area, became global on July 17, 2023. SWAY by Red Havas is a complete solution to an influencer marketing platform. It intends to assist companies in generating effective, entertaining, and realistic brand discussions via influencers.
SWAY for Influencer Marketing
SWAY by Red Havas combines PR, social media, and experiential marketing teams to create social media-first marketing campaigns with influencers that have a real impact on the bottom line. Influencer marketing is becoming more recognized as a performance channel. This led to the creation of an international practice. Through yearly market-leading insights and patterns, in-house specialist-led creative workshops, and panels with partner talent agents, the SWAY specialists will also push the influencer agenda at an industry level. Additionally, it includes premier centers in the Middle East, Australia, Asia, Europe, and North America.
Through a five-step recommended framework from recognition through measurement, the project provides an end-to-end solution for influencer marketing.
- A roadmap for a strategic cadence with a focus on genuine, long-lasting connections.
- Defined channel roles across all social media outlets.
- Provide guidance and brand reputation management for novel and developing technology trends.
- Close interactions with industry partners, and access to the best data and social media technologies.
- Tailored proxy metrics for thorough campaign assessment and reporting.
Read More: Havas Invests in Uncommon Studios in A Bold Pledge to Creativity
Here’s what they said
James Wright, global CEO of the Red Havas Group, and global chairman of the Havas PR Global Collective said in the announcement,
More brands than ever before are adapting their broader strategy and communications to include significant influencer activity. Some even put influencer marketing front and center, recognizing it as a full-funnel marketing channel. It’s no longer just a paid transaction. Brands are building long-term relationships with influencers who advocate their messages and experiences.
He continued by saying that the Red Havas Group has worked in this area for years. The next logical step would be to explicitly focus on this as a worldwide practice as they are now working with more than 100 businesses and organizations on their influencer activities.
Dana Tahir, Managing Director, Red Havas Middle East added,
SWAY empowers us to leverage the technical prowess of the Red Havas network, combined with deep local understanding, to guarantee unparalleled influencer campaigns to our clients, both at a regional and worldwide scale. The role of influencers, particularly in the Middle East, holds paramount significance as they hold the ability to bridge connections and foster authentic engagement, establishing a profound impact on the audiences they reach.
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Facebook Changes Counting Policy For Ad Planning And Measurement
Facebook outlined a significant change in a new update to how it counts user accounts when planning and measuring ads. The tech giant will treat users who do not have their Facebook and Instagram accounts linked in Accounts Center separately for ad metrics. Whereas, accounts that are connected in the Accounts Center will be counted as one person. The new update will roll out in the next few weeks. The privacy-centric course correction is likely to help advertisers to reach more accounts.
Interesting Read: Facebook Advertisers Battle Ad Results After Apple’s Privacy Changes
Graham Mudd, Vice president of product marketing for ads explained in a blog post that before Facebook counted users with multiple accounts as a single person for ad purposes. They counted them only once if their Facebook and Instagram accounts were linked via those apps or believed that the same person used both. For instance, people who accessed Facebook and Instagram via the same device or shared the same email address across the two platforms were counted as one person when they interacted with ads.
It makes sense for Facebook to honor this choice for ad purposes proactively. As a result, it will not get called out later for linking accounts without the user’s knowledge. Graham Mudd wrote in the blog,
“This update aligns with trends of offering people more control over how their information is used for ads and is consistent with evolving advertising, privacy and regulatory environments.”
Interesting Read: Why Facebook thinks Apple’s iOS 14 privacy push will have a severe impact on business
How Will This Affect The Advertisers?
Earlier in June, Facebook informed advertisers of how users will be counted, which includes in-product notifications. With this new update, Facebook will rely on preferences from the Accounts Center – like whether accounts are linked or unlinked – to inform advertisers’ planning and campaign measurement.
In the blog post, Graham Mudd said that advertisers won’t see a substantial impact on reported campaign reach. However, noted that keeping unlinked account holders separate for advertising purposes, advertisers may see an impact on campaign planning estimates and performance reporting for unique metrics. Advertisers can see increases in their pre-campaign estimates, including estimated audience size.
Facebook has recently retitled the ‘potential reach’ metric as ‘estimated audience size’. It will now display a range of numbers to advertisers for their marketing campaigns instead of a specific number. In this way, Facebook is responding to ongoing lawsuits over how it calculates potential reach.
Interesting Read: The New World Of TikTok Marketing, Everything You Need To Know!
Facebook Debuts Shops In Its Mobile App, Instagram Expands Checkout Feature
Facebook rolled out a shopping section ‘Facebook Shops’ to its main app across the U.S and expanded Instagram’s checkout feature.
The new section Facebook Shops allows users to browse product catalogs from businesses they like, discover new businesses and make purchases, all-in-one place, and without leaving the app. A similar feature ‘ Instagram Shops’ was introduced on its photo-sharing app last month.
The news follows the launch of Facebook Shops in May and on Tuesday it announced a couple of new e-commerce features within its flagship mobile app and Instagram. Businesses were already able to add product catalogs to their Facebook pages but there was no dedicated section inside the app for browsing the selections.
The company explained the rapid shift toward online shopping as a reason to foray into eCommerce.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, the shift to online shopping has rapidly accelerated, with an estimated 85% of people worldwide now shopping online.
We want to make shopping easier for people and empower anyone, from an entrepreneur to the largest brand, to use our apps to connect with customers and grow their business.”
Here are the details that will help people to shop on the apps and tools to help businesses sell online.
Shop Till You Drop!
A new ‘Shop’ tab is introduced in the mobile app where businesses can showcase their products and customers can shop them in the app.
“Facebook Shop makes it easy for people to find products from businesses they love, discover new ones and make purchases, all in one place.”
It’s a significant step for Facebook’s eCommerce push, helping users to browse and purchase from shop-enabled Pages directly in the app. Presently, being tested in the US but Facebook said in the coming weeks it will be available to all eligible businesses.
New customization features will also be added to Facebook Shops that includes:
- New design layouts for featuring single products or groups of products in Shops
- Real-time preview of collections as they are designed
- The ability to automatically create Shops for new sellers
- New insights to measure results in Commerce Manager
Expanding Instagram CheckOut
Checkout allows users to pay for items directly inside the app and will soon be available to all businesses in the U.S after keeping the feature exclusive to certain partners for almost 18 months. Though there is a limitation,
To use checkout, businesses must have Shops and use Facebook Commerce Manager or our partners Shopify and BigCommerce. We’ll support more platform partners soon.
It will also provide an incentive by waiving the selling fees for businesses through the end of the year due to the current economic crisis.
Shop Using Messaging
Facebook added a new message option to the shop in order to connect the customers directly to the seller through Messenger, WhatsApp, or Instagram Direct.
“Messaging through Shops combines the in-store experience of being able to ask a salesperson questions with the convenience of online shopping.”
Customers can view the products in the chat and can easily share with friends and family for feedback before any purchase. This feature is now being tested on Messenger and Instagram Direct and will start testing on WhatsApp soon.
This will definitely boost Facebook’s dominant presence in messaging with its eCommerce capacity, providing compelling business opportunities as people are regular users of these messaging apps.
Live Facebook and Instagram Shopping
Another promotional option is Facebook and Instagram live shopping. This means businesses can sell products during a live stream.
“Facebook Live Shopping includes new features to help businesses easily set up a live experience featuring products from their Shop and sell directly from the video.”
Instagram Live Shopping is available to all businesses and creators using checkout in the US.
Video is the most engaging type of content and during the lockdown during the pandemic, the viewership of Facebook live streams had risen 50% since January as people looked for various ways to stay connected and entertained.
The global lockdown has provided a significant opportunity to Facebook’s eCommerce business as more people shifted to online shopping. The social network will soon become an essential part of our day-to-day lives as it prepares to build a commerce eco-system within its own network.
Minis Are Here, Miniature Third-Party Apps In Snapchat
Snapchat Minis, bite-sized third party-apps built within Snapchat rolled out on Monday. Snapchat first previewed Minis, a lightweight, built on HTML at the 2020 Partner Summit back last month.
Four out of seven Minis debuts across the platform. These mini-apps are going live:
Meditation tool Headspace, studying collaboration tool by Tembo, an interactive messaging tool Prediction Master and Let’s do it, a mini-app by Snap.
Other minis apps -festival trip planning by Coachella, Atom’s movie ticketing, and student’s schedule planner Saturn are yet to go live.
The Easiest Way To Meditate Is With Headspace Mini
Headspace mini is a part of the initiative “to help support the mental health and emotional wellbeing of SnapChatters, said a Snap spokesperson.
Why it matters
The user base of Snapchat is one of the youngest on the social. Media as it reaches more under 30 years old who are coping up with missed schools, job loss, and socialization in the pandemic.
Details
Users can access minis within the chat and can also check-in the sessions with friends. Users can choose from the six meditation sessions of three-four minutes. According to research conducted by Snapchat, late last year reveals that young audience consults friends first about mental health issues over parents. This new tool is even more crucial at present as it will help users (especially the young audience) to deal with a range of mental challenges in the pandemic. A Headspace spokesperson said in an email to The Verge,
“By putting these useful resources front and center where friends already meet and share, we believe Snapchat can play a unique role in empowering friends to help each other through difficult times.”
Will It Replicate WeChat Success?
Even though it’s a new and fresh concept in the U.K and the U.S, this mini-App model is famous in Asian Markets. For instance, Tencent’s WeChat has over 1 million mini-app programs that allow users to perform various tasks. Also, mobile payment services Paytm and PhonePe in India has rolled out several services like flight booking, movie tickets, or ordering a cab.
Snapchat has said previously that Tencent, an investor app in L.A influenced it to replicate the WeChat-style super app. It is a win-win situation for both parties-Snapchat and developers who are making the mini-apps. Snapchat can boost user engagement and developers can access a whole new set of audiences. Facebook, last month, had a little success over replication of the WeChat model through chatbots on Messengers.
Now, it remains to be seen, what is the audience response to the mini-app model as Snapchat gains inroads to the U.S, U.K, and other markets.
Twitter Introduces Fleets – The 24-Hour Disappearing Posts
- After its first launch in Brazil in March, followed by Italy in April, Twitter has rolled out its version of Stories’Fleets’ for users to post ephemeral content in India.
- Fleets are self-deleting tweets which will disappear after 24 hours without likes, retweets or replies. People can only react with DMs to the Fleets.
Nearly, 7 years ago Snapchat introduced a feature ‘Stories’ to their platform that enabled users to share content with friends and followers that would disappear after 24 hours. Soon, a similar feature was added to Instagram and WhatsApp as Stories and Status respectively by Facebook.
Now, its Twitter’s turn.
How does it matter
India is the 8th largest market for Twitter based on usage and has around 13 million users. Twitter users in India can now have access to the feature ‘Fleets’ and in the coming days, it will be available on iOS and Apple.
Namaste! Starting today, Fleets are coming to India. If you’re in India, check it out and let us know what you think! #FleetsFeedback 🇮🇳 pic.twitter.com/U6QiHynm1U
— Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) June 9, 2020
Testing, testing…
We’re testing a way for you to think out loud without the Likes, Retweets, or replies, called Fleets! Best part? They disappear after 24 hours. pic.twitter.com/r14VWUoF6p— Twitter India (@TwitterIndia) June 9, 2020
Twitter is taking a staged approach similar to LinkedIn who rolled out its Stories feature in the UAE market, after the launch in Brazil and Netherlands.
Why, so important
The company said in a statement,
“We learned from research that people don’t Tweet because Tweets are public, feel permanent, and display the number of Retweets and Likes. We hope Fleets will empower many more people to express themselves more freely.”
By far the feedback received is optimistic and following are Twitter findings from the launch of Fleets in the two markets:
- Fleets make it easier for people to share thoughts.
- People are finding Twitter Fleets simpler to start convos and the number of tweets/DM is also increasing.
- People are expressing their thoughts freely after using Twitter Fleet.
- Though it is early to say, only a small percentage of abuse is reported each day after using Twitter Fleets. This was a key point that Twitter was looking to focus to make the platform toxic-free that had become a part and parcel over time.
How does it work:
“Fleets are fast and familiar. People can tap on their own avatar to start, add text or media, and hit send. That’s it, that’s how one Fleets.”
Fleets, as seen in the images are similar to Stories that appear at the top of users’ Twitter home feed. Users can choose to make a post in a text (still 280 characters) or photos, GIF’s or videos. Users can tap on someone’s avatar to see what the person has posted which will eventually disappear after 24 hours.
Although Fleets doesn’t have additional visual presentation tools and AR functionality at this stage like most other Stories options but Twitter will gradually develop on this front as it had acquired Chrome Labs, a company focused on Advanced Stories presentation.
Lastly, Twitter Fleets is still in experiment mode and with access to more than 30 million users for a test pool, it could be the starting point for the global rollout.
So be ready with your Twitter Fleets strategy!