2014 Will Be The Year Of Instagram And The Visual Social Web

Please note: The Social Media Insights morning email will no longer be free beginning January 2, 2014. It will be delivered exclusively to subscribers of Business Insider Intelligence. Non-subscribers will receive a shorter afternoon version. Sign up for a free two-week trial to BI Intelligence here.

---

INSTAGRAM IN 2014: Ross Simmonds has written a thoughtful take on why brands should pay special attention to Instagram in 2014. As time goes by, it becomes more clear that visual communication - from Snapchat photos, to Instagram and Vine videos, to Pinterest pins - rules the world of sharing and word-of-mouth buzz on the social Web. Marketing is all about storytelling, he writes. And visual canvases like Instagram offer brands the best opportunities to communicate with audiences. (Social Media Today)

Here is some subscriber-exclusive analysis about how marketers are rushing into Instagram ...

Instagram Is Now Used By Nearly Three-Fourths Of The World's Top 100 Brands [CHART]

Top Brands Prefer Instagram For Video Over Vine [CHART]

In other news ...

MURDOCH'S SOCIAL MEDIA PLAY: "On Friday, TV and publishing giant News Corp announced that it will pay $25 million for Storyful, an Ireland-based startup whose wire service curates social media content involving the new stories of the day, including photos and videos of protests and violent conflict. And this comes two weeks after another print news giant, Scripps, paid $35 million for video news aggregator Newsy." (Wired)

VIRAL TRUTH AND LIES: The manipulation of social media to spread viral news hoaxes has become a top preoccupation for observers of digital media. Felix Salmon of Reuters has written his take: "The reasons that people share basically have nothing to do with whether or not the thing being shared is true. If your company was built from day one to produce stuff which people want to share, then that will always end up including certain things which aren't true. That's not a problem if you're ViralNova, whose About page says 'We aren't a news source, we aren't professional journalists, and we don't care.' But it becomes a problem if you put yourself forward as practitioners of responsible journalism, as BuzzFeed does." (Nieman)

SACCO'S SHAME: Of course, another all-too common genre in the annals of social media controversies is the offensive tweet or post that gets someone fired. This weekend's edition of "What Was He/She Thinking?" starred Justine Sacco, communications director at About.com and Match.com owner IAC, who should have known better. She triggered a media firestorm by posting a tweet that made a flippant reference to AIDS in Africa. Sacco was fired. Here's her apology: "For being insensitive to this crisis - which does not discriminate by race, gender or sexual orientation, but which terrifies us all uniformly - and to the millions of people living with the virus, I am ashamed." (Business Insider)

Here's why investors keep handing money over to Foursquare (Techrunch)

iOS developer Ole Begemann reviews Apple's App Store privacy and data collections guidelines. As he takes us through the ins and outs of Apple's policy, he provides a useful guide and best practices advice on privacy in apps. Begemann's post should be required reading for all social-centric app developers. Here's one piece of advice, don't put all your privacy notices in the unreadable user agreement: " ... let's be honest: we all know nobody reads the fine print. Add a section to the settings screen in your app where you tell users in clear and candid language what stats you collect. Make clear where and by whom the data is stored if you use a third-party analytics service." (oleb.net)

---

What Else You May Have Missed On BI Intelligence …

[CHART] WhatsApp Blows Past Its Messaging Rivals With 400 Million Monthly Active Users

[REPORT] The Top Stats On Social Media Engagement

[CHART] LinkedIn's Desktop-Based Usage In The U.S. Is Frighteningly Low

[CHART] The Number Of Smart TV Devices On Earth Will Reach 400 Million In 2014, But They're Overlooked As App Platforms

[CHART] More People Use The Facebook App Than Google Search App On Smartphones In The U.S.

[CHART] Nearly Half The World's Internet Users Are Active On Facebook Each Month, One-Fifth Use YouTube

[CHART] Mobile Drives One In Four Visits To E-Commerce Sites, With Tablets Driving More Traffic Than Smartphones