The Stack is a weekly podcast where we share and discuss the latest trends, news, and content from the world of marketing, sales, and tech. In each episode, Sean, Tim, and Ryan sit down to chat about the hard-hitting questions related to sales, marketing, and tech. You can subscribe on iTunes and Soundcloud.
In this episode, we share updates from LinkedIn, Facebook and talk about Google news and updates.
We would love to hear your thoughts so make sure to comment or tweet us at @Sylvestrer1, @SeanHenri, and @Tendrecroppes or @PepperlandMKTG.
LinkedIn Launches It’s Own Snapchat Stories. Here’s why it shouldn’t have
Josh Constine for TechCrunch
LinkedIn launching its own version of SnapChat Stories. This almost comes across like a desperation move for the social platform to connect with the youth while simultaneously opening up more avenues for advertising.
“LinkedIn confirms to TechCrunch that it plans to build Stories for more sets of users, but first it’s launching “Student Voices” just for university students in the U.S. The feature appears atop the LinkedIn home screen and lets students post short videos to their Campus Playlist. The videos (no photos allowed) disappear from the playlist after a week while staying permanently visible on a user’s own profile in the Recent Activity section. Students can tap through their school’s own slideshow and watch the Campus Playlists of nearby universities.”
Key Takeaways:
- The Goal is to get students sharing academic experiences like internships, career fairs, and class projects.
- Unlikely to get students engaged
- Missing the concept that stories are meant to be quick experiences that disappear.
Facebook Filed A Patent To Predict Your Household’s Demographics Based On Family Photos
Nicole Nguyen BuzzFeed
Facebook is trying to get this patent so they can increase their advertising targeting for families under the same roof. This news comes at an interesting time because we are constantly let down by Facebooks security and they continue to give us all reasons not to trust them. Would you be okay with them having this information? I’m assuming that they already have an understanding of our families demographics because you are able to list your family members on your profile and tag them in your photos.
“Facebook has submitted a patent application for technology that would predict who your family and other household members are, based on images and captions posted to Facebook, as well as your device information, like shared IP addresses. The application, titled “Predicting household demographics based on image data,” was originally filed May 10, 2017, and made public today.”
Key Takeaways:
- This would allow Facebook to analyze messaging history, past tagging, and web browsing history.
- This allows Facebook to see if multiple people are sharing the same IP address.
- Another risk for platform users and more data for potential leaking.
Google to Let Users Leave Comments on Search Results
Matt Southern Search Engine Journal
Google recently posted a help document that discussed how users will soon be able to leace comments in search reults for sporting games.
Google is preparing to roll out a new feature that will allow users to leave comments on search results. This feature was revealed in an official Google help document that explains how users can leave comments and read comments from others. In addition, there is also a page dedicated to comments within the search contributions section of users’ Google profiles. According to that page, users will be able to add comments to sports games while they’re live.
Key Takeaways:
- Comments cannot be left anonymously
- You will be able to delete after publishing
- Everyone will be able to read each comment and rank them – like Reddit
If we know anything about Google’s testing, we will probably see this feature get rolled out for all search types in the near future. It’s interesting that they are starting to roll this out with sporting events. It could be because a lot of people are turning to the internet to stream these games and they account for a large number of views and searches.
The 7 Biggest SEO Lessons I Learned from a Google Employee
Neil Patel
Even though the title seems pretty vague (What Google employee are we talking about here??), there are a few tips that might help you with your SEO efforts. There is 7 total, but we took the liberty of highlighting the ones we thought had the most value.
Biggest takeaways:
Lesson #4 Google Ignores most guest post links
Google commented “If you want to build links through guest posts… especially obvious ones that clearly state the article was a guest post, don’t expect those links to have much of an impact on your search rankings.”
Lesson #6 The biggest search opportunity currently lies in Youtube
Here are some stats to back this up
- Monthly active users – 1.9 billion
- Daily active users – +30 million
- Paying subscribers – 300,000
- Number of videos shared to date – 5 billion
- Average viewing session – 40 minutes
Lesson #7 You’re not going to like the future
As newer generations grow up with newer technology i.e. voice-activated assistants, search will continue to change much like it already does. The key difference is here is that this won’t be a change for just SEO but for businesses as a whole.
Lighting Round
In this section, we quickly run through some other updates that we didn’t have enough time to deep-dive on, but we still felt were noteworthy.
- Sqoosh.app – Easily compress images to properly optimize webpages.
- Facebook Bug Let Websites Real ‘Likes’ and interests from a user’s profile
- Snap Inc. to make camera glasses
- Make sure Google can see lazy-loaded content
- 9 Tips for Creating Successful Instagram Marketing Campaigns
Listen or watch for new episodes each Friday, or check out the archives to watch past episodes on-demand. Like what you hear? Leave us a review or let us know in the comments!
