Every two weeks, Vanguard distills hundreds of digital media headlines into the best “byte”- sized pieces of useful information. Each edition has news ranging from the latest Facebook algorithm changes to best practices for email marketing. Share Digital Bytes with your organization to keep your digital strategies ahead of the pack.

Digital Bytes

The words “fire,” “finished” and “RIP” have been used to describe Facebook this week as the fallout continues from its Cambridge Analytica scandal. Nonprofits should continue to monitor and use Facebook until there is a noticeable drop in use or engagement, but they should keep the following in mind:

• To tighten control on its data, Facebook restricted API use, meaning third-party apps and developers have much less access to Facebook Events, Groups and even Pages. If you have a Facebook-linked app in development, now is the time to reassess your strategy. Hint: Don’t be like Tinder!
  • While Facebook-owned Instagram and WhatsApp have been relatively spared from the public backlash, these API changes will affect them too.
  • It will be interesting to see if and how the API changes affect common social listening and monitoring tools (think Sprout Social or Sysomos) and if nonprofits will have to rethink social listening on Facebook. Crimson Hexagon just released a statement to address these uncertain times.
• Facebook also announced this week that about 37 million more profiles were compromised than they originally thought, meaning a total of 87 million people were impacted by the data leak. Between this leak and others, you really should just assume your Facebook data aren’t private. Is government regulation the only next logical step to help fix this?

In other news …

Twitter has suspended 1.2 million terrorism-related accounts since 2015. From Recode: “It’s not really the kind of ‘one million user’ milestone anyone likes to celebrate.” For further reading on Twitter’s sometimes toxic landscape, Fast Company has a great long read, “Did We Create This Monster?” How Twitter Turned Toxic.

Pinterest is expanding its advertising network, which is now up to 1.5 million accounts. While Pinterest is a smaller and more niche network than, say, Facebook, it does reach more people than LinkedIn or Twitter.

Spotify went public this week with little fanfare. I guess I’m one of the only people who prefers Apple Music!?

Fun ResourceS

• Don’t let Instagram photo sizes intimidate you! Sprout Social has a handy list of the 2018 specs.
• Don’t know much about social listening? Read an overview of the topic and get a few implementation tips.

Finally …

“Plain-text emails are still in vogue.” Yes, that’s one of several tips about email marketing from Kevan Lee, Director of Marketing at Buffer!