Heraclitus famously said that the only constant is change, and that’s never been truer than in today’s fast-paced and ever-evolving digital world. Social media platforms seem to enjoy changing things up more than most, resulting in sometimes frustrating but sometimes fun new developments. In the case of two of Facebook’s latest updates, we’re leaning toward the latter.
Facebook GIF Creator
For the last several weeks you’ve probably noticed all your friends playing around with the fun Graphics Interchange Formats (GIFs) that Facebook recently introduced, allowing users to post the small animated creations in their comments. Now, they’re kicking things up a notch and adding a built-in GIF creator to the Facebook camera app. While the GIFs only last a few seconds, you still get access to the full range of special effects and frames in the camera app and can share them in your Facebook stories or on your wall.
The down side is that you can only share it on Facebook. You can’t save it and send it via any other social media sources. And it seems like, as of the date of this blog post, only some iOS users have access, meaning Android folks are out of luck…at least for now. Likely, Facebook is rolling this new program out gradually, and if the popularity of GIF users on the platform is any indication, we wouldn’t be surprised if they open up to Android users as well.
Facebook Cover Videos
Facebook is making it easier to grab your customers’ attention with new cover videos. They have been rolled out to business pages on desktop only. Engagement is one of Facebook’s driving factors, and recognizing that most people prefer to consume their content via video, they seem to be providing new ways for businesses to tell their brand story on this platform.
For those trying out this new format, Facebook gives easy-to-follow instructions and a few guidelines and recommendations. An important note to pay attention to is the suggested dimensions for best viewing results – 820 x 456 pixels and between 20 and 90 seconds in length. Also, make sure your cover video follows Facebook’s page terms. You don’t want any dings against you that would cause your business page to get locked out of Facebook.
This is a new development that will be gradually rolled out to more and more pages. So, keep your eyes peeled for more businesses adding cover videos to their pages. It will be interesting to see how this changes the way users engage with Facebook pages. If you’ve used the cover video feature, let us know how it’s worked out for you!
