December in Social (Yule Log Edition!)

Each month we take a look at the big changes in the ever-evolving world of social media and how both consumers and businesses are using social. Everyone seems to wind down at the end of the year and brace for the impact of the holidays, but there were a few big announcements in December:

Instagram Direct

This month, Instagram founder Kevin Systrom introduced the world to Instagram Direct (above), which essentially allows users to be more selective about who sees certain photos. It definitely seems to take cues from Facebook’s Groups, Google+ Circles and the more privacy-centric Path. It’s not a huge update, but it does give users a nice option for who sees certain photos.

Twitter Ads’ Broad Keyword Matching

New broad matching for Twitter Ads

Twitter’s latest update to its advertising platform expands on the ability to target users based on keywords that they tweet. In the past, you could show your ad to a user that tweeted the words “love” and “coffee” (the example Twitter uses on their blog). Now marketers can select broad matching so an ad will show to users who tweet related terms, synonyms, misspellings and more, as shown above. It’s a trend we discussed a few months back called “semantic search” or the semantic web, a more intuitive search that relies less on exact matches and more on the way people actually talk.

Facebook Adds “Donate” Button for Non-Profits

19 non-profit partners now have access to a new “Donate Now” feature on Facebook that allows users to donate without having to navigate away from the site. TechCrunch weighs the intentions of this move: “Connecting people to their friends and non-profits just so happens to make it easier to connect them to advertisers as well.”

Snapchat Update: Replays, Filters, Best Friends

Ever since declining Facebook’s $3 billion offer, we’ve been waiting to find out how Snapchat intends to make money and possibly involve businesses moving forward to justify declining such an offer. They’re not quite there yet. On Friday, Snapchat released an update with new features like the ability to replay a message once a day, add filters and more, though according to The Next Web, the update is meant as a holiday gift for users, as the app is in between major updates. Hopefully we’ll find out soon how Snapchat plans to produce that $3 billion on their own…

Just For Fun: Yule Log 2.0

This post will go up just in time for Christmas, so if you find yourself in need of a Yule Log but don’t have access to a fireplace (or the fireplace channel on Netflix) Yule Log 2.0 has an eclectic collection of Yule Logs from artists around the world. Here are just a few:

Happy Holidays!