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Instagram playing tag

Instagram have just announced a new tagging feature for photos. Titled “Photos of You”, the feature allows Instagram users to tag one another, as well as products in photos uploaded to Instagram.com.

What’s new?

The tagging feature allows the creation of an archive of Instagram photos outside of the profiles which have created them. Although there has been trouble with tagging features on Instagram’s parent company Facebook, controls have been put in place on the photo-sharing site to allow users have a full handle over who can and cannot view tagged pictures of them.

Benefiting Marketers

The ability to archive photos looks like it may become a useful tool for marketers hoping to push their products on the Instagram platform. At the moment, no official paid adverts currently appear on the platform. Although products have been promoted by celebrities on the photo sharing application, Instagram receives no income from these activities.

“Photos of You” allows for brands to tag celebrities, athletes and even fans into gallery’s helping to increase exposure. The ability of users to now peruse photos all in the same place makes life easier for the casual Instagram member to engage with a brand.

Summary

Although not a huge leap forward, “Photos of You” does signal Instagram’s ambitions to become a leading social and marketing platform in its own right.

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Facebook turn a new page on mobile

Last week saw the launch of Facebook’s new Page layout for mobile. As nearly half of all Page views are now coming from mobile, Facebook have set about improving their Page profile UI to give both users and administrators a more streamlined and engaging experience.

New Look

Pages now have a cleaner and much simpler look. Relevant information is placed up front, making it easier to view on a mobile device. Prominent actions such as Like, Call and Share all now appear on the top of the page.

For page owners and administrators, new management capabilities have been added. Pinned posts created on desktop now appear higher on a page on mobile. Owners can also now switch between public and admin views directly from their mobile Page or by using the Pages Manager app (available for iPhone and Android).

The new mobile Page layout updates automatically and will be rolled out globally over the coming weeks.

Facebook’s focus is now “mobile first” and this new feature highlights Facebook’s commitment to mobile as their primary platform in the future.

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Musical Tweets

Last Friday saw the launch of Twitter’s new music app. Announced in a blog post on the official site, Twitter ‘#music’ is a free app and service which allows users to follow musicians and discover new music more easily than ever before.

The App(earance)

The #Music app is divided into four sections; popular, emerging, suggested and #nowplaying. Users can search for bands and songs under these headings and post straight to their own timelines. The app integrates with Spotify, iTunes and Rdio enabling users to stream full length songs from premium accounts.

The application has been released on both desktop and iOS but, unfortunately, not on Android (yet).

Why is makes sense

The launch of the new music app has caused quite a bit of a stir online. Social media commentators have been asking, why would Twitter launch its own music application?

The answer is – engagement. If you are discovering and listening to music on Twitter then you are not spending time on other social media platforms doing the same thing.

Twitter #music draws more people to the site and keeps them there. In the ongoing war between the social media giants for the continued attention of users and the advertising revenue that this brings, the introduction of the #music app could be a very important step for Twitter.

Impact

Although in its very early stages, #music app looks to have amazing possibilities for musicians. For a large established artists the app allows them to tweet their new singles to all of their followers (Lady Gaga – 36 million/ Rihanna – 29 million), who in turn can listen and retweet the single without ever leaving Twitter.

For an unknown artist, the right number of mentions and/or retweets could see their songs propelled onto the ‘emerging’ page, placing them in front of the eyes and ears of millions of users.

Twitter may soon become the go-to site for the release of new music, with many artists and their fans bypassing the usual channels. Although great for Twitter, this may prove detrimental to other sites such as the newly relaunched MySpace (who wanted to tap into the ‘music discovery’ field) and possibly Pandora, who have not yet signed up as a music streaming partner for the #music app.

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