Social Media

What’s Buzzing: ‘Sharknado 2,’ Facebook Messenger & More

August 1, 2014

This week, brands joined the conversation around one of the most talkable TV events of the summer: the second installment of Syfy’s bizarre “Sharknado” franchise. In other news, Facebook made a push for all users to download Messenger as standalone app, while Instagram leaked a potential Snapchat competitor, called Bolt. Read the latest edition of What’s Buzzing for catch up on this week’s top stories in digital.

Brands Ride the ‘Sharknado 2’ Wave

Syfy’s “Sharknado 2: The Second One” took over social media this week, topping the Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings for the night with 581K tweets. Per Nielsen, 3.9 million people tuned in and many brands took to Twitter to join in on the conversation including Victoria’s Secret, the American Red Cross, Ritz Crackers, and DiGiorno. According to Ad Age, Subway (a 360i client) made the greatest impact with 17K tweets mentioning the brand.


Hilton Hotels Ramp Up Smartphone Capabilities

Travels can choose their airplane seats via their smartphones – and now, some people will also be able to book (and enter) their hotel rooms via an app. Hilton hotels recently launched “Choose Your Room,” a new feature that allows people to choose which room they’d like to occupy during their stay. Hilton is planning on incorporating the new technology into 4,000 of their hotels by the end of the year. The company is also exploring mobile-check out and smartphone activated room keys by 2016.

Facebook Migrates Users to the Messenger App

On the heels of Foursquare’s recent migration of users over to Swarm, Facebook announced that iPhone and Android users will soon be unable to access their messages through the Facebook app. Instead, they must download the standalone Messenger App. This change comes to US consumers after rolling out in Europe in April of this year, with Facebook reporting that “people on Messenger reply about 20 percent faster.” Users who have migrated to the Messenger app have been confused by the clunky navigation, but Facebook is working towards making Messenger “the best mobile messaging experience possible.”

TD Bank Launches the Automated Thanking Machine

TD Bank Canada customers were recently treated to a lot more than a withdrawal at the ATM. As part of their “TD Thanks You” marketing campaign, TD Bank turned their ATMs into “Automated Thank You Machines.” Twenty customers were secretly selected by their local branch employees to use the ATMs. When the customers put in their card, a friendly voice thanked them for being a customer and presented with gifts personalized to their needs and interests including cash, tickets to Disney for a mom who hadn’t been able to take her kids before and plane tickets for a mom to visit her daughter in Trinidad, who is seeking treatment for cancer. The video has already amassed more than 5 million views on YouTube. This isn’t the first time a Canadian company has warmed hearts by thanking their customers. In December of 2013, WestJet Airlines set up a Santa Claus kiosk and delivered gifts to customers at their final airline destinations.

Twitter Allows Users to Embed Tweets in Tweets

In a true “Inception” style, Twitter users can now embed tweets within tweets on web, iOS and Android. Users can copy and paste the link of the tweet they want to include in the new tweet, and voila – a tweet in a tweet is born. The embedded tweet is clickable and brands like Oreo have already been experiment with some #tbt fun. If you want to add even more layers to your tweets, you can embed a tweet that already contains an embedded tweet.

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