Welcome to this week’s edition of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a news show for marketers who want to stay on the leading edge of social media.
On this week’s Social Media Marketing Talk Show, we explore the Instagram co-founders’ departure from Facebook and updates from the fifth-annual Oculus Connect Conference. Our special guests this week are Tyler J. McCall and Cathy Hackl.
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If you’re new to the show, click on the green “Watch replay” button below and sign in or register to watch our latest episode from Friday, October 5, 2018. For this week’s top stories, you’ll find timestamps below that allow you to fast-forward in the replay above.
Instagram Founders Leave Facebook: Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom and Chief Technology Officer Mike Krieger resigned and plan to leave the company “in the coming weeks.” While the two founders didn’t give a reason for their departure other than saying they’re “now ready for our next chapter” and hinting that they might be working on something new, Bloomberg News reports that the split is due to tension with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg over the direction of Instagram. (7:12)
On Monday, Instagram named long-time executive Adam Mosseri to take over from Systrom as CEO. Mosseri was previously the head of Newsfeed for Facebook and was most recently the vice president of product for Instagram.
Instagram Launches Scannable Nametags and Tests School Communities: Instagram announced it’s globally launching Nametag, a tool that provides an easy way to “add friends in person” and is “uniquely yours.” (21:10)
In the same announcement, Instagram announced it’s currently testing School Communities, which “let you show off your school spirit and connect with other students and recent grads from your university in a common space.” School Communities is being tested “in a variety of schools across the US.” If you choose to join, you can add a line to your profile listing your university, class year, and any relevant groups such as major, sports team, and sorority.
Instagram Enables GIFs in Direct: Giphy and Instagram have teamed up to let users insert GIFs into their Instagram Direct messages. The feature is available for the latest versions of Instagram on both Android and iOS. (25:25)
Instagram Experiments With Hashtag-Free Posts: The Next Web reports that Instagram is testing the ability to add hashtags to posts without including them in the caption. Screenshots suggest that hashtags might appear as blocks beneath a post but will be separate from the caption. This possible new feature hasn’t been confirmed by Instagram. (26:41)
Instagram Experiments With Audio Messaging: It appears that Instagram is testing a new audio messaging feature. This upcoming feature was shared by Matt Navarra, but hasn’t yet been confirmed by Instagram. (30:52)
Here’s a new screenshot of Instagram’s audio messaging feature coming soon
h/t @WABetaInfo pic.twitter.com/SeOKU9Iebn
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) September 14, 2018
Oculus Announces New Updates and Products at OC5: At the fifth-annual Oculus Connect conference, the company unveiled the new Oculus Quest, the first all-in-one VR system, and rolled out some powerful updates for the Oculus Rift. These updates include new dev tools like the Hybrid App SDK and more social features “to more easily connect people with games and each other in VR.” (35:20)
Oculus also announced that the YouTube VR app is coming soon to Oculus Go and will include more than 800,000 VR videos. This means that YouTube will be available on Oculus’ entire mobile ecosystem.
YouTube is finally coming to all Oculus mobile VR headsets https://t.co/1j9juYfGJM pic.twitter.com/eqFjVdUTyb
— The Verge (@verge) September 27, 2018
At OC5, the company also debuted the Manifold camera by RED with Facebook 360, a professional-grade, set-ready 3D/360° camera created in partnership with RED. Other updates include custom developer items that will allow companies to bring their IP into Oculus Home as trophies and décor; new avatars that are more expressive, stylish, and realistic than ever before; and more technical updates.