This week, we give you Airbnb's Berlin Wall video, the latest updates to Facebook and Instagram, YouTube's latest creator strategy, which socnet is best for qualified leads (spoiler: It's not Facebook), and how to transform your data scientist into a storyteller. Skim for all the social cream!
Breaking walls, one ad at a time. This week marked the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Airbnb released a video illustrating the true story of a user whose father, a former West Germany border guard, met a former East Germany border guard when they rented his apartment in Berlin. (Here's a Q&A with the video creator by Ann Handley.) Airbnb CMO Jonathan Mildenhall saw this as a chance to "put our community front and center of any campaign," but for others it rang less well. We'll let you decide.
SoundCloud also commemorated the fall with the Berlin Wall of Sound, a project that gives users the soundscape of life around the wall. TNW points out that not only does the stream's shape reconstruct the wall's shape, it's also 7 minutes and 32 seconds long, the time it would have taken for a sound wave to travel the wall's length. The soundstream is also punctuated with markers highlighting civilians who fell around it. Welcome to history.
Unfollowing brand pages is easier than ever. Facebook's updated Newsfeed will now list the top people, pages, and groups that you've seen in your feed this week. Users can sort those items, see a summary, or unfollow—making your brand's relevance to users in every post more crucial than ever.
Your Facebook fans: Optimists, Explorers and Realists. Facebook and Crowd DNA divided young Facebook fans into three groups: Optimists who want to change the world (ages 13-15), Explorers who plan for the future (ages 16-19), and mobile-centric Realists (ages 20-24). Marketing advice: Personalize for each group's sensibility. Optimists want your posts to share their hopeful vision of the world, and Explorers want to discover and learn. Realists are more time-aware, so provide tools to create balance in their lives.
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YouTube's got ear candy for you. YouTube launched Music Key, a music-streaming service that provides on-demand access to songs users like, making it a bonafide Spotify challenger. Visitors on both desktop and mobile will see a separate section for music, enabling them to both stream playlists and view official videos from music channels.
Hey, why'd my app get rejected? At Facebook's F8 Developer Conference, Facebook revealed the top five reasons why apps get rejected, plus ways to ensure an app's approval. Some 26% of rejected apps often have broken logins or are misbranded, and 23% have permissions that can't be reproduced. Tidbits on scoring speedy approval: Provide detailed step-by-step instructions on how your reviewer can reproduce requested permissions, and ensure your app doesn't crash or break. Piece of cake, right?
You don't have to be WALL-E to be a beloved robot. This week marks the historic landing of spacebot Philae on a comet. A big part of the buzz? Its Twitter account, run by Karin Ranero, who's succeeded in humanizing the bot for followers. Mashable's got a great article on Ranero and her team, but here's the takeaway: Whatever you're selling, be it fresh science or five-bladed razors, give your brand a voice that matches both product and medium, and that draws users in. Pro-tip: Insider images help.
Now that I'm safely on the ground, here is what my new home #67P looks like from where I am. #CometLanding pic.twitter.com/gFmt8Ldvpa
— Philae Lander (@Philae2014) November 13, 2014
