Facebook
FB
owned Instagram, will soon allow a small group of random users to decide whether or not they want to see the number of likes on their posts and those of others, per
Reuters Report
.
The company is likely to expand the experiment to international customers within the coming weeks. Other than Instagram, the company might explore implementing a similar opt-out test on Facebook’s main site in the future.
Instagram had previously started testing the feature to hide the like count for a selected group of people, but a bug hid the like counts from the accounts of many users across the globe including countries like Canada, Brazil, Australia, Ireland, Italy and Japan.
Facebook has been working with experts to understand how design tweaks such as the one being tested at Instagram can support well-being of users as well as provide control over how they engage with the service.
It is aimed to cut back the extraordinary competition for likes in an attempt to reduce stress or embarrassment about posting content on social media. Hiding likes might encourage users to express themselves more authentically and with less anxiety about how their posts stacked up against others.
While many users have welcomed the feature, others, including some influencers, worry that it might hamper their reach as likes are used as a metric by them in order to communicate their value to partners, like brands and advertisers besides using it as a medium to translate a trend and popularity.
Instagram Emerges as an Engine to Boost Ad Revenues for Facebook
Facebook continues to witness significant traction in online and mobile advertising spending. The company intends to capitalize on the opportunity presented by ever-increasing video viewing on social media platforms.
Instagram has emerged as an important cash cow for Facebook after introducing its ad platform to worldwide advertisers. To attract more advertisers (over 3 million and counting), Facebook has unveiled tools to promote posts and evaluate business performance directly on Instagram.
Moreover, Facebook is looking for ways to monetize Instagram Stories, and adding the Checkout feature to the platform is a step toward that direction. The feature enables Instagram users to browse and purchase products from 23 top brands in the United States, all within Facebook’s app.
Further, solid adoption of the Explore tab, which is used by more than 50% of Instagram users every month, increases the platform’s monetization opportunities. Recently, the company started placing ads on the Explore tab that is expected to drive the top line.
Moreover, a recovery in ad demand on an improving spending scenario and momentum in Facebook for Business, is expected to drive the top line of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company. Facebook Business Suite enables businesses to post on Facebook and Instagram at the same time, as well as manage and receive messages, notifications and alerts in one place. You can see
the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here
.
Small businesses and “Direct-to-consumer” brands, alike, have increasingly embraced the use of social media platforms including
Pinterest
PINS
,
Twitter
TWTR
,
Snap
SNAP
owned Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram, driven by stay-at-home trend. This, in turn, opened up new business avenues for companies in the digital marketing and advertising domain including Facebook.
Per an
eMarketer update
, increasing investments in mobile, video ads, connected TV (CTV) and programmatic transactions are expected to facilitate a recovery in 2021, with U.S. programmatic digital display spending set to hit $79.61 billion.
The company’s monthly active user base of more than 2.74 billion (including its Family of services — Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger — presents a large canvas for advertisers and makes the platform highly attractive.
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