We (GSD&M’s Social Media Department) sat on the edge of our seats with baited breath as each announcement during the Facebook f8 Developers Conference rolled out. With racing hearts and sweaty palms—no we’re not exaggerating; yes, we love social media that much—we waited as the last announcement was unveiled. To no avail, we were left wondering how f8 failed to mention the product improvements we begged for on our Christmas lists to Zuckerberg. We even tried to call, but Santa must have changed his number.
In all seriousness, to create the most engaging content on behalf of our clients and to continuously evolve our practice, we have some hot-punch list items for Facebook:
- Full GIF integration. If a picture is worth 1,000 words and the average GIF is 60 frames, a GIF is worth 60,000 words. GIFs are an engaging and entertaining intersection between photos and video, and the rest of the internet communicates in them, so we want to on Facebook as well.
- More insights around engaged organic users—besides audience prioritization. All of our fans are special in their own way, and we want to create content tailored to the interests and needs of our most engaged fan segments, so let us see more about them.
- Facebook customer support for business pages via Messenger. 1-800-FLOWERS, CNN, Hyatt, KLM, but no Facebook? There’s a severe need for better customer support of small business pages on Facebook and bots on Messenger is a prime opportunity to up Facebook’s own customer service game.
- Breakdown of post engagements by reaction type in Insights. There’s a big difference between LOVE and ANGER. Let us understand how our content is being received by audiences.
- Give us a date. When will Instagram algorithm change and how it will differ from Facebook’s? We’re dying to know—literally dying—our clients are dying to know and we want to be ready. Hint?
And personally, here are a couple ways I believe Facebook could get us to spend even more of our time—outside of work—staring at our phones:
- News Feed keyword filter, similar to Tweetdeck. Maybe this election cycle has just gotten to us, but our Facebook News Feeds should be full of what we want to see and void of things we don’t—even if we just need a brief break from an annoying topic. The Bachelor? Politics? #NationalCatDay? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just mute them in your News Feed, even for just a couple of hours? Ahhh, relief.
- Algorithm off-switch, like Twitter. Because some of us actually DO want to see it all and not miss a thing from friends and brands we once chose to “like” or “add.” Shout out to Twitter for not forgetting about us when it joined the algorithm party.
So yes, f8 spiked our curiosity and had us at the edge of our seats waiting for what’s next in the world of social media. But like a kid who got socks in his stocking, we were kind of unimpressed with the lack of “shock” that Christmas brought this year. So come on Zuckerberg, turn off your algorithm switch and hear what we’re saying.
You probably haven’t thought about it since you posted it and you certainly don’t have enough patience to scroll down far enough to find it. It’s your first, awkward tweet as a less-social-media-savvy you who had no idea you’d still be Twitter-ing eight years later.
But, to celebrate its birthday, Twitter begged us to travel back in time with this – #FirstTweet. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but we’re not cats. And our curiosity led us to discover that the best way to feel better about our own silly and/or unremarkable first tweets was to find good company. There are several kinds of first tweeters:
1. The professional, business-minded type:
2. The March-ers, or people who went to SXSW for work and had to tweet about it
3. The oversharers (Before you call me on it, guilty as charged. In my defense… never mind… there’s no excuse.)
4. The fashionably late. People who joined (or became old enough to want to join) way after the rest of us
5. The very popular: Tweeters who tweeted about Twitter
6. The confused. But were they really? We’ll never know.
Twitter, next birthday, show us our first profile photos and bios!