Facebook’s Deep Text, Mary Meeker’s 2016 Report, Snapchat Discover Redesign, Measuring Social Media Engagement, TFP’s Infographic Pick of the Week
Welcome to Technology for Publishing’s roundup of news and tips for media industry pros! This week, we’re sharing stories about Facebook’s new Deep Text artificial intelligence engine, Mary Meeker’s 2016 Internet trends report, a redesign for Snapchat Discover publishers, ways to measure social media engagement from HuffPost blogger Kim Garst, and more.
- Some 400,000 new stories and 125,000 comments on posts are shared every minute on Facebook, according to TechCrunch, generating a ton of unstructured data that if categorized by meaning and sentiment could surface content people might find useful. That’s the aim of Facebook’s Deep Text, a new artificial intelligence engine announced Wednesday that stands to transform the social network into a powerful search engine the likes of Google, Quartz and others reported. The system, based on neural networks, can understand the meaning of thousands of posts per second, in 20 languages, with “near-human accuracy,” the article said. “If we can understand text, we can help people connect and share in a lot of different ways,” said Facebook’s Hussein Mehanna—and, of course, give users even more reason to never leave the walled garden.
- Mary Meeker’s annual Internet trends report was released, with several news outlets covering what The Washington Post called “a rite of summer.” This year, the report stands at 213 pages, providing an exhaustive volume of data on what media and other organizations can expect to see in terms of the Internet economy and related technologies in the coming months. The Post offered 15 highlights, the top focused on the untapped potential of mobile advertising, tech companies running brick-and-mortar stores, and explosive growth in photo sharing. For its part, Recode singled out three major takeaways: Internet growth is slowing, image and voice search will soon be on par with text-based search, and messaging apps are set to take on the mobile home screen. Forbes, TechCrunch, Quartz and others posted highlights as well.
- Snapchat Discover publishing partners are gearing up for a redesign that will better showcase their content and hopefully draw new viewers, according Digiday. One of those changes is simply switching out the current static media logos for actual magazine covers, making the user experience more magazine-like. While more than 100 million daily viewers are using Snapchat for messaging, Discover has had mixed results, with some publishers seeing phenomenal success—like Cosmopolitan, with more than 3 million viewers a day—and others languishing with just a few hundred thousand daily viewers. Boosting Discover is a priority because that’s where most of the advertising is, the article said.
- When it comes to measuring social media results, Kim Garst argues in her latest Huffington Post blog that one metric matters most: engagement. “Tracking page likes and followers is important too, but if your fans aren’t interacting with you, what’s the point?” she says. Garst offers some simple ways to monitor and track social media engagement, covering cross-channel engagement as well as how to measure the metric on specific platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Also check out her earlier post highlighting ways to boost engagement and conversions.
On the Technology for Publishing Blog
- TFP Infographic Pick of the Week: 2,488,887 emails sent, 3 million Google searches, 122,373 YouTube videos viewed. . .that and much more happens on the Internet every second of every day. Check out our latest infographic pick for more facts and stats on what we do when we’re connected.
- And don’t miss Monica Murphy’s latest Adobe Experience Manager Mobile Tip! Learn how easy it is to create Content Maps and sort content using filters.
Image: TechCrunch
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Posted by: Monica Sambataro
