10 Yetis - Social Media Round-Up blog - Twitter Sports, getting Twitter Verified, Reddit sponsored posts, Facebook Live

This week's round-up comes from Billy!

With the ever changing world of social media it’s easy to miss updates, so here is our round up on the latest and greatest of Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Periscope.

Twitter and Sky Sports

After Twitter shocked the broadcasting world by winning the rights to show live Thursday night NFL games, we all started to wonder what on earth they were planning. Well it now it has set its sights on English football!

This week the social media platform partnered with Sky Sports to bring key goals and moments from every Premier League game broadcast during the next season, as well as the post-match expert analysis via the already popular Sky Football Twitter account.

Twitter hopes that by intentionally posting high quality shareable content on social media it will help to fight the ongoing issue of users capturing and sharing badly recorded videos of their favourite goals online.

It's likely that this collaboration information has been sent out to the press in order to combat Twitter's poor revenue figures, as they recently saw share prices drop 10 per cent.

Twitter Verified

Sticking with Twitter, in an attempt to get an increased level of quality content, anyone now can apply to get verified! It's now done via an online application one can apply to have a little blue tick next to their name.

It must be stressed that although it is easier to get verified, the criteria hasn’t changed, just the process.

Twitter explicitly notes that verified accounts are usually “of public interest”. Typically, this includes accounts maintained by public figures, and organisations in key interest areas such as:

• -Music
• -TV
• -Film
• -Fashion
• -Government
• -Politics
• -Religion
• -Journalism
• -Media
• -Sports
• -Business

When applying for verification, Twitter requests that users provide supporting links that demonstrate “the account holder’s newsworthiness or relevancy in their field”.

The whole process to get a blue tick should take no more than 30 days, and should accounts get rejected, they will be able to reapply.

Reddit Ads

Just like YouTube, Reddit have now released plans to let their users (Redditors) post sponsored content on behalf of brands.

Reddit overlord Starfishjenja, announced that they have been working on new ad products, without allowing brands to be intrusive to their users.

The issue that Reddit is trying to solve, is that Redditors often rally around brands and products that they genuinely like; and advertisers want to get a piece of the action. On the other hand, they often hate promotion being pushed on them and they want the platform to remain free and user-controlled. So it's a delicate road to tread.

Promoted User Posts are what the Reddit managers think are the solution. In short, this will allow brands to identify an organic post that they find relevant to their brand or product, and promote it so other users see it first.

No posts created by Redditors will be used as Promoted User Posts without specifically opting-in and in return for allowing their posts to be used by brands, users will get rewarded. If the user accepts the sponsorship they they will be rewarded with a lifetime subscription to Reddit Gold, the platform's premium account service.

Exciting times, but it remains to be seen how Redditors will respond to the news.

Facebook Live Audience Limitation

Since the introduction of Facebook Live, the social media platform's feature has gone from strength to strength. This week they're introducing the ability to target live videos to specific audiences, so you will soon have the capability to stream to viewers of certain ages, genders, languages, and locations.

Facebook announced that these audience restrictions are only available to people who post their live streams using the social platform's API, these users are most likely to be: media companies or digital agencies, who will be using professional cameras to stream with external software.

So unfortunately if you are only using the Facebook app to live stream, then you aren’t able to limit who sees your live streams.

Periscope Highlights

Facebook Live's main competitor, Periscope have announced a brand new featured called Highlights. As you can probably work out, this new feature will give users the chance to catch up on their missed broadcasts by watching the highlights reel in their main feed.

The app will automatically generate a short trailer for the video. The app have said that they look at a variety of different signals to determine what parts of the broadcast should be included in the highlight reel. Obviously, this will require some honing before being a flawless feature but it’s a pretty exciting new feature.

See you next week!