June 29, 2015: Last week was full of good news for online marketers. Instagram announced updated features to its explore tool, making it easier to discover trending tags and posts. In addition, Google Trends introduced News Lab, which makes following real-time trends easier for journalists and marketers.
While Facebook and Twitter have trend discovery tools in place, tracking trends and joining conversations are now going to become much easier for Instagram users.
Marketers already understood that Instagram was an important tool in the social media arsenal. Previously, it was hard to track trends across the platform, making users more focused on building follower numbers instead of joining conversations. The introduction of “Trends” is the first step (of many, probably) that Instagram is taking to bring its platform to the “network” level. Now, users can join hashtag conversations that are happening in real-time. Instagram even has trending locations, taking advantage of its geotagging features. This will come into play during large-scale events (like festivals) that are sure to have Millennials excited. For a network such as Instagram that offers no “sharing” (retweeting, re-blogging, etc.) feature, this step is extremely important to the platform’s culture.
Google Trends, in recent times, seemed slightly outdated, since trends were only visible hours or days later. Social media trends move quickly, as any media story tends to do, so if brands aren’t paying attention, they may lose out. For example, “Dressgate” had the internet buzzing for 24 hours straight, but came to a quick halt. The new News Lab will allow users to view trending keywords in real-time. News Lab aims to help journalists aggregate data, programs, and resources using the tools that Google has in place. The updated Google Trends will play a big role, as well as new programs such as YouTube Newswire (a crowd sourced YouTube feed with daily newsworthy events) and WITNESS Media Lab (which will focus on in-depth projects about human rights issues). These developments aren’t necessarily new technology, but serve as a user-friendly guide for journalists on how to efficiently use Google tools to research.
These announcements are certainly a sign that Google is clamoring to remain a source for news and trends. With Facebook announcing its “Instant Articles” and Twitter acting as the real-time news hub of the world, this is an interesting play for Google.
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