Summer vacations are a good time to “disconnect”… in every sense of the word! Except that the news did not stop this summer. Here is a small selection of news that should not be missed by marketing and communications professionals.
1 – An updated algorithm at Google…
The first news is about Google and its famous algorithm, which SEO managers all over the world are watching for any change. The latest one just happened a few days ago and it is described as major by many specialized media.
Called Helpful Content Update on the internal blog of the Mountain View company, this update aims to prioritize the most original and useful content written “by people for people”. In other words, pages that were built mainly to rank well in search engines and not to be relevant to Internet users will see their position in search engines plummet.
2 – … and the postponement of the end of third-party cookies (again)
Another important news for Google this summer: the postponement of the deletion of third-party cookies by one year. The latter were supposed to end in 2022 but this deadline had been postponed to the end of 2023. Finally, we will have to wait one more year since Google is now counting on the middle of the year 2024.
The reason: the new targeting methods proposed, which are more respectful of users’ privacy, are far from being agreed upon.
Many of these stakeholders have indicated that they need more time to evaluate and test the new Privacy Sandbox APIs before the deletion of third-party cookies in Chrome,” explains the multinational.
A case to follow for digital marketing pros!
3 – Elon Musk doesn’t buy Twitter (finally)
It was one of the stories of this summer: Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla or Space X, will he buy the social network Twitter? After having considered the operation (at 44 billion dollars), the billionaire finally backed out arguing that Twitter’s figures on fake accounts were not verifiable.
This was quite a blow for the little blue bird service, which retaliated by filing a complaint against Elon Musk. The beginning of a long legal battle. The whimsical entrepreneur had planned to make Twitter a space of absolute freedom of expression.
4 – A new news feed for Instagram…
The followers of Instagram this summer could not miss THE controversy: the new news feed of the famous application. The latter featured more suggestions of Reels, the format of short videos of Instagram, copy of its rival, TikTok. A strategy that aimed precisely to counteract the expansion of the Chinese application, especially among the younger generation.
The troops of Mark Zuckerberg had to review their plan in front of the rebellion caused by users. In particular, celebrities Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner who signed the online petition calling on Instagram to “become Instagram again and stop being Tiktok”. On July 28, its boss, Adam Mosseri, announced that he was temporarily suspending the changes.
I’m glad we took a risk – if we don’t fail from time to time, we’re not bold enough,” he had said.
5 – … And Facebook
In the Meta group, Facebook also revamped its news feed this summer. From now on, a new tab “Feeds” is reserved for the latest publications of its friends, groups and pages classified in chronological order. The home page is still dedicated to “personalized content chosen by a ranking system based on artificial intelligence”.
Once again, this is a way for the world’s most popular social network (2.8 billion users) to attract the new generations who increasingly prefer Instagram, Snapchat or Tiktok. Moreover, in the middle of the summer, the Meta group announced for the first time in its history a drop in its quarterly turnover (by 1%). The latter is betting big on the success of its metavers, Horizon Worlds, launched at the beginning of the year.
