Platform Push: How Big Changes From Facebook, Snapchat, and Pinterest Will Affect Marketers. One of the biggest trends in content marketing over the past couple years has been a move away from the open web to the closed walls of platforms. We’ve seen this change with Facebook Instant Articles, Google AMP, and Snapchat’s Discover, each of which, to varying degrees, lets publishers run content right on the platform. If you click an Instant Articles link instead of a referral link, Facebook has more control over the experience and data collection. Facebook beefs up its pages When people use the cliché that Facebook is “eating the internet,”1 they’re really saying that Facebook, with its vast portfolio of apps, is in many ways recreating the open web within its own walls. But it’s now following the lead of the big players and building a native media channel for brands and publishers, according to a report from Ad Age. The feature is still in its early stages, though publishers will apparently be able to run a variety of media types while Pinterest places ads against the content. For publishers, deciding whether to jump on the natively hosted platform depends more on whether Pinterest will share ad revenues, which is unclear thus far. Put simply, Snapchat is going in a completely different direction than platforms like Facebook or Twitter. For any brands still trying to make content work on Snapchat, it may be time to give up and look elsewhere.
One of the biggest trends in content marketing over the past
couple years has been a move away from the open web to the closed
walls of platforms. That’s a lot of jargon packed into one
sentence, so let me break down what that means.
Previously, publishers would post content on a website and then
push out a link to distribution platforms like Facebook or Twitter.
But now, those platforms don’t want to be middlemen for links; they
want to host the content directly.
We’ve seen this change with Facebook Instant Articles, Google
AMP, and Snapchat’s Discover, each of which, to varying degrees,
lets publishers run content right on the platform. The same switch
has also happened in digital video, thanks to Facebook’s native
video player (Instagram and Twitter recently allowed users to host
videos natively in the platform as well).
The switch has huge consequences on the power dynamics of the
publishing world. If you click an Instant Articles link instead of
a referral link, Facebook has more control over the experience and
data collection.
This trend doesn’t just affect journalistic publishers like The
New York Times or BuzzFeed. If a brand produces an infographic, it
needs to know the nuances of different publishing platforms,
especially as more people adapt to the incredibly fast speeds and
superior user experience of Instant Articles and Google AMP.
It’s more important than ever to understand how content flows
across the digital landscape. Let’s start with Facebook.
Facebook beefs up its pages
When people use the cliché
that Facebook is “eating the internet,”1 they’re really saying that
Facebook, with its vast portfolio of apps, is in many ways
recreating the open web within its own walls. The native video
player (designed to kill YouTube), Instant Articles (built to
colonize publishing), and new marketplace tab (modeled to recreate
Craigslist) are just a few examples. Now, an under-the-radar change
is reshaping one of Facebook’s oldest features: Pages.
As I covered in
my Facebook e-book, Pages are the glue that holds Facebook’s
News Feed together. It’s where companies and people pump out their
content. Now, Facebook is positioning Pages as a replacement for
the open web homepage.
According to an
October 19 press release, Facebook offers four new features for
Pages. You can order food, request an appointment, get a quote, and
buy tickets through a company’s Facebook Page.1
It’s a minor but important adjustment. Pages can now perform
core sales functions for companies, particularly small businesses.
Instead of sending…
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