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By 2014, “Facebook the big news machine” was in full swing with Trending, hashtags and news outlets pouring resources into growing their Pages. Emphasizing the “news” in News Feed retrained users to wait for the big world-changing headlines to come to them rather than crisscrossing the home pages of various publishers. Many don’t even click-through, getting the gist of the news just from the headline and preview blurb. Advertisers followed the eyeballs, moving their spend from the publisher sites to Facebook.

In 2015, Facebook realized users hated waiting for slow mobile websites to load, so it launched Instant Articles to host publisher content within its own app. Instant Articles trained users not to even visit news sites when they clicked their links, instead only having the patience for a fast-loading native page stripped of the publisher’s identity and many of their recirculation and monetization opportunities. Advertisers followed, as publishers allowed Facebook to sell the ads on Instant Articles for them and thereby surrendered their advertiser relationships at the same time as their reader relationships.

This is how Facebook turns publishers into ghostwriters, a problem I blew the whistle on in 2015. Publishers are pitted against each other as they make interchangeable “dumb content” for Facebook’s “smart pipes.”

Hundreds of thousands of Twitter accounts that amplified fake news and disinformation in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election are still active on the site, tweeting about other fake news and conspiracies more than a million times every day, according to a report released Thursday by the Knight Foundation.

Twitter hasn’t cracked down on many of its fake news amplifiers. Eighty percent of Twitter accounts that were spreading false information during the campaign were still active on the platform, researchers found.

The study found that most of the fake and conspiracy tweets on Twitter linked to only about 1o websites, including The Gateway Pundit and Truthfeed. That trend was largely unchanged from 2016. Additionally, about 60 percent of the accounts that shared and amplified fake news were estimated by researchers to have been automated accounts. Those accounts were densely connected, following each other at high rates and retweeting each other frequently, intensifying the impact and reach of each post.

advertiser interest in Snapchat is flat to dwindling, as many opt to move toward Instagram

Issues with Snap include continued issues over measurement, difficulty in finding content, influencers moving to other platforms and lack of outreach to agencies and brands from Snap

Some brands "think Snapchat is dying, and they want their brand associated with a platform that is growing,"

Anthony Noto, COO of Twitter, and former Goldman Sachs banker, is leading the company

He's betting the company on a risky strategy: to turn the social network, famous for celebrity feuds, trolls and Donald Trump, into a destination for live video — from sports to financial news to political debates.

Noto, a Silicon Valley outsider known for his hard-charging style, has struggled to convince investors or Valley insiders that his plan can really fix the company.

Facebook will focus on improving visual features in Messenger. In his post, Marcus says “people will expect a super fast and intuitive camera, video, images, GIFs, and stickers with almost every conversation.”

Messenger bet big on bots in 2017. Last year the company worked with small businesses and global brands to create more than 200,000 bots for Messenger. Marcus writes, “Look for investment in rich messaging experiences not only from global brands, but small businesses who need to be creative and nimble to stay competitive.” Since many of these bots provide very rudimentary features, we would expect to see improvements in overall user experience this year. We also expect larger brands to follow the lead of brands like Apple Music and Lego in creating marketing solutions made for the Messenger platform. 

Expect to see more businesses transitioning at least some of their customer service resources to Messenger. A recent study, commissioned by Facebook found that “56 percent of people surveyed would rather message a business than call customer service, and 67 percent expect to message businesses even more over the next two years.”