Umpf / Blog / Friday Social: Insta-checkout, News UK launches The Fifth and new platform alert!

Friday Social: Insta-checkout, News UK launches The Fifth and new platform alert!

  • Social Media

Our #FridaySocial is a weekly round-up of the key social media news stories from the previous seven days.  Let us know your thoughts in the comments or via Twitter – @Umpf

Instagram introduces Checkout

This week, Instagram launched Checkout which means now, as you’re scrolling down your feed, if you spot something you like, you can buy it without leaving the app.

When you tap to view a product from a brand’s shopping post, you’ll now see a ‘Checkout on Instagram’ button where you can select from options like size or colour, and then pay without leaving Instagram.

What’s more, you’ll only need to enter your name, email, billing and shipping information the first time you check out – the info will be securely stored for convenience the next time you shop. Notifications about shipment and delivery will also be available on the app so that customers can keep track of their purchases.

Instagram is kicking off by rolling out among certain high-profile brands over the next few weeks, with more be announced soon.

Vuelio UK Bloggers Survey 2019

Ever wondered how much influencers actually charge for posts? Fear not! Vuelio’s UK Bloggers Survey 2019 revealed all of the answers this week – allow us to fill you in.

It turns out the most popular price range is £101-£250 per post, as that’s what 30% of bloggers surveyed stated as their average price. The second most-popular range was up to £100 (27%), followed by £251-£500 (11%) and £501-£1,000 (6%). Two per cent of bloggers stated that they exceeded £1,000 on average, and 8% of bloggers surveyed said that they charge nothing.

PR Week states that some of the other results in the survey point to a stark decline in fashion and beauty blogging, with the percentage of blogs in this category falling from 22% in 2016, to just 8% in 2018. Whereas parenting, food & drink, and travel blogs have increased in popularity over the two years.

New social platform – Basement

Ever find yourself thinking about how you need more social media in your life? No, us neither. But those of you who can’t get enough will be thrilled to hear of the launch of new social network – Basement.

Basement is a YC-backed startup, aiming to give users a simpler social network, and only allows you to add up to 20 friends. There are no filters or influencers allowed, and the hope is that users will just share their content with the people they actually want to share it with.

It sticks to the system that we know and love by having a main feed, as well as a meme feed, giving users the choice of the internet’s top trending memes to share with their friend group.

Users can share to an even smaller group of friends on the platform by tagging them in a certain post, which limits the viewership to only mutual friends of those tagged. Users who are friends can see one another’s comments on a mutual friend’s post, however comments left by non-friends will always appear anonymous. It also promises to never run ads on the platform.

We’re looking forward to seeing if this takes off!

News UK launches The Fifth

The influencer game is only getting bigger, and big corporations want in.

News UK announced this week that it’s launching its own independent influencer agency to create a new revenue stream beyond traditional advertising.

The agency is called The Fifth and the goal is to match the most suitable influencer talent to the needs of brand advertisers directly, according to audience, style, background etc.

Rather than define as micro and macro influencers, the Fifth will categorise talent through a new concept called ‘the nine faces of influence’, designed to define the tone and format of each influencer rather than just their audience scale.

More details here.

Instagram introduces Checkout

This week, Instagram launched Checkout which means now, as you’re scrolling down your feed, if you spot something you like, you can buy it without leaving the app.

When you tap to view a product from a brand’s shopping post, you’ll now see a ‘Checkout on Instagram’ button where you can select from options like size or colour, and then pay without leaving Instagram.

What’s more, you’ll only need to enter your name, email, billing and shipping information the first time you check out – the info will be securely stored for convenience the next time you shop. Notifications about shipment and delivery will also be available on the app so that customers can keep track of their purchases.

Instagram is kicking off by rolling out among certain high-profile brands over the next few weeks, with more be announced soon.

Vuelio UK Bloggers Survey 2019

Ever wondered how much influencers actually charge for posts? Fear not! Vuelio’s UK Bloggers Survey 2019 revealed all of the answers this week – allow us to fill you in.

It turns out the most popular price range is £101-£250 per post, as that’s what 30% of bloggers surveyed stated as their average price. The second most-popular range was up to £100 (27%), followed by £251-£500 (11%) and £501-£1,000 (6%). Two per cent of bloggers stated that they exceeded £1,000 on average, and 8% of bloggers surveyed said that they charge nothing.

PR Week states that some of the other results in the survey point to a stark decline in fashion and beauty blogging, with the percentage of blogs in this category falling from 22% in 2016, to just 8% in 2018. Whereas parenting, food & drink, and travel blogs have increased in popularity over the two years.

New social platform – Basement

Ever find yourself thinking about how you need more social media in your life? No, us neither. But those of you who can’t get enough will be thrilled to hear of the launch of new social network – Basement.

Basement is a YC-backed startup, aiming to give users a simpler social network, and only allows you to add up to 20 friends. There are no filters or influencers allowed, and the hope is that users will just share their content with the people they actually want to share it with.

It sticks to the system that we know and love by having a main feed, as well as a meme feed, giving users the choice of the internet’s top trending memes to share with their friend group.

Users can share to an even smaller group of friends on the platform by tagging them in a certain post, which limits the viewership to only mutual friends of those tagged. Users who are friends can see one another’s comments on a mutual friend’s post, however comments left by non-friends will always appear anonymous. It also promises to never run ads on the platform.

We’re looking forward to seeing if this takes off!

News UK launches The Fifth

The influencer game is only getting bigger, and big corporations want in.

News UK announced this week that it’s launching its own independent influencer agency to create a new revenue stream beyond traditional advertising.

The agency is called The Fifth and the goal is to match the most suitable influencer talent to the needs of brand advertisers directly, according to audience, style, background etc.

Rather than define as micro and macro influencers, the Fifth will categorise talent through a new concept called ‘the nine faces of influence’, designed to define the tone and format of each influencer rather than just their audience scale.

More details here.