Social shorts: Shopify joins Facebook’s Libra, Snapchat’s advanced AR capabilities, TikTok tests bio URLs

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This collection of social media marketing and new hire announcements is a compilation of the past week’s briefs from our daily Marketing Land newsletter. Click here to subscribe and get more news like this delivered to your inbox every morning.

Facebook offers best practices for designing Messenger Experiences

In a few weeks, Facebook will be rolling out updates to Messenger designed to improve the messaging experience between people and businesses. The company listed five best practices that businesses should consider when building Messaging Experiences:

Respond quickly and set customer expectations on response times.
Make it short and sweet. Communicate your key points succinctly and early on in your message.
Leverage Messenger features – like Message tags, one-time notifications, and sponsored messages – to send high-value messages outside the 24-hour standard messaging window.
Ensure your messages clearly communicate customer value – especially notifications sent outside the standard messaging window.
Provide audiences with options to choose from, allowing them to opt-in to the types of messages they receive.

Facebook acquires Sanzaru Games, Twitter opens new feature to developers, TikTok tries to catch up with its rivals

Facebook gets deeper into AR. On Tuesday, Facebook announced it has acquired Sanzaru Games – the VR studio behind the development of “Asgard’s Wrath” (an all-time fan-favorite on the Oculus Rift). Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, TechCrunch reports, but the studio will continue to operate its offices in the U.S. and Canada. Facebook has been readying its AR capabilities by snapping up a handful of AR gaming companies (namely, Oculus in 2014) and launching its own platform – Spark AR – in 2019. At this rate, Facebook could quickly creep in as the market leader in the AR space given its never-ending supply of developer resources and technical reserves.

Twitter opens ‘Hide Replies’ to developers. Twitter is making Hide Replies available to its developer community, giving developers the ability to create tools that make it easier and more efficient for users to hide replies to their tweets. The feature first started rolling out for users last September but wasn’t available to developers at the time.

TikTok’s new sticker feature. The video-sharing app beloved by Gen Z is out with a new sticker pinning option that gives users more creative options in their videos, Social Media Today reports. It enables you to attach a sticker to an object in the clip, which will stay in place relative to its size and location in the video. Sound familiar? That’s because Instagram and Snapchat already do this. TikTok is likely just playing catch up. Give the people what they want, right?

Snapchat’s latest AR effect, Facebook Creator Studio gets a mobile app

Snapchat shows off advanced AR capabilities. Snapchat has launched a new ‘Ground Transformation’ AR effect, which changes the ground in your Snap camera view into water, lava, or other creative variations. The visual effect is powered by Snapchat’s evolving AR tools, which leverage machine learning models to understand and isolate objects from contrasting backgrounds. While the practical applications of a feature like this seem fairly limited, they demonstrate Snap’s advancing capacity in this respect, which is already extending to advertising through logo identification.

Facebook’s new Creator Studio mobile app. Last week, Facebook rolled out a mobile app version of its Creator Studio, the desktop hub dedicated to helping creators and publishers manage their content, track performance, and connect with audiences on Facebook. According to Facebook, the new app experience offers the same actionable insights and meaningful engagement metrics all from the ease of a mobile device. The app is available for both Android and iOS devices.

Twitter’s messy verification process is a headache for candidates. In 2019, Twitter said it would work to verify candidate accounts ahead of the 2020 elections. Now, nearly two months into 2020, the process meant to help non-incumbents grow their social presence is making candidates wait around for the blue badge, reports The Verge. Jeff Sites, a challenger to Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, didn’t have a blue verification badge on his official Twitter page. Sites had announced his campaign months earlier, so he should have been verified months ago. It wasn’t until The Verge contacted Twitter that the badge appeared for Sites. While Twitter says it’s already verified 822 candidates since it unveiled the plan in December, it seems the platform continues to rely on third-party feedback to spark verification action.

Shopify partners up with Facebook’s Libra, TikTok tests bio URLs

Shopify joins Facebook’s cryptocurrency group. Following a string of regulatory concerns last October, eBay, Visa, Stripe and other partners backed out of partnerships with Facebook’s digital currency collection. Last Friday, however, Libra finally sealed a deal with a major commerce partner. Shopify will become a member of Libra Association, contributing at least $10 million and operating a node that processes transactions for the Facebook-originated stable coin, TechCrunch reports. Shopify stressed that helping merchants reduce fees and bringing commerce opportunities to developing nations as reasons it’s joining the Libra Association.

Bio URLs coming to TikTok? TikTok is reportedly looking to add a new URL field into its profile bios, which would provide a means to drive traffic back to your website directly from the app, according to Social Media Today. The new option could give brands and creators another way to drive direct traffic from their TikTok presence, which could prompt more brands to establish a presence, knowing that they can use it to link into their broader traffic goals and track such in their analytics.

On the move

New marketing leads for TickPick, Resulticks and Ekos

Jim Halliday has been named chief marketing officer at TickPick. His hiring marks the first CMO-role for the online ticketing marketplace. Prior to joining TickPick, Halliday was the CMO for Plated, a subscription food service. “Jim’s success in introducing a new pricing strategy at Plated stood out as our initial conversations progressed,” said TickPick co-CEO Brett Goldbert. Halliday is the third C-level executive to join the company since it received $40 million in funding last year: Vince David came on board as Chief Data Officer and Michelle Rusnak as Chief Financial Officer.

The real-time conversational marketing provider Resulticks has appointed Dinesh Menon as its new global chief marketing officer. The announcement follows Resulticks’ recent expansion of its North American headquarters in New York. Before joining Resulticks, Menon served as the CMO of State Bank of India and had held leadership roles at the National Bank of Oman and American Express. “His experience in market innovation, business transformation and global brand positioning will help strengthen our footprint worldwide,” said CEO Redickaa Subrammanian.

Ekos, a business management software for craft makers, has hired Christina Kyriazi as its new VP of marketing. She will report to CEO Josh McKinney and is tasked with expanding the company into new markets. “Christina is a data-driven marketer with a passion for putting the customer first,” said McKinney. Kyriazi comes to Ekos from Passport where she was the senior director of marketing. Chris Smith also joined Ekos as the VP of engineering. “Ekos had a banner year in 2019 with a game-changing Series A funding round,” said McKinney, referencing the $8 million Ekos raised in October of last year.

The post Social shorts: Shopify joins Facebook’s Libra, Snapchat’s advanced AR capabilities, TikTok tests bio URLs appeared first on Marketing Land.

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