Facebook AKA Metaverse?
Have you heard the news? Facebook is planning to rename itself according to a report from The Verge. This social media giant turned tech company intends to rebrand to focus on “building the metaverse.” No one is sure if it’ll be an Alphabet-Google sort of name change or something more extensive.
They selected a time for this rebrand when many users and advertisers are not huge fans of Facebook’s social media platform and as the tech company continues to come across regulatory cases from countries all around the world.
Could it be a business case for separating entities? Could it be marketing to grow the brand beyond the social media origins? Or is it possibly an attempt at a rebrand to keep our minds off all the bad Facebook-related news headlines? I suppose we’ll find out when the official name is announced.
Microsoft Partners with Shopify
Example of the Buy now offering on a product ad.
A partnership has been established – to help retailers expand their reach with the updated Microsoft Channel app. Shopify merchants can easily connect with shoppers on the Microsoft Search Network and Microsoft Audience Network with just a few clicks according to the latest announcement from the company.
Now, users in the U.S. and Canada utilizing the Microsoft Channel app within Shopify can show up automatically in the Microsoft Bing Shopping tab and the Microsoft Start Shopping tab for free as product listings.
Why you should care. This union plus its updates to the Microsoft Channel app are an additional way to help small businesses, retail and e-commerce have visibility online. Now, just in time for the holidays, online shoppers will be visible to those that had no visibility to them previously.
Google Extends Shopping Integrations to Include BigCommerce
Google has rolled out an integration with BigCommerce recently. Similar to Google’s integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, GoDaddy and Square, which were announced earlier this year.This partnership will allow BigCommerce merchants to display their products for free on Google, create ad campaigns and review performance metrics from their BigCommerce store.
Why you should care. The new integration delivers BigCommerce retailers an easy way to make their listings easier to discover across Google properties, which can improve traffic to their products. This may be particularly helpful for merchants that are not able to dedicate extra staff or enlist the help of an agency.
Google’s Word of the Day Feature
This month, Google announced a “Word of the Day” feature that texts the definition of a new word every day. When participants sign up, they will receive a daily notification via their phone to check out a term they may not have heard before and fun facts about the etymology of each.
Look familiar? That’s because definition sites like Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster have already done this for years.
Google started showing definitions right in the search results around 2004. In 2010, Google redesigned the in-SERP definition box but linked to the different dictionary sites as sources to their meanings. Upgrades to the definitions box in search results from 2013 include even more information (including origins, translations and use over time) and stopped attributing to individual sources.
This word of the day feature appears to be another small step towards conquering dictionary sites’ small sliver of real estate in search results. We know that no one “owns” the actual definition of a word and people don’t want to click through to find it, but one has to wonder how else these sites can innovate to stay ahead of Google’s rising tide.