Twitter head of global K-pop partnerships YeonJeong Kim said in a blog post, “While K-pop gained popularity in South Korea 25 years ago, it is only in recent times through the power of millennial fans worldwide that K-pop-related conversations have gained traction across the world on Twitter.”

Kim pointed out that the Golden Tweet for 2019, or the year’s most-retweeted tweet, was BTS member Jungkook’s video of him dancing to Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy.”

Twitter hosted 76 #TwitterBlueroom sessions with K-pop bands and artists in 2019, featuring exclusive interviews and question-and-answer sessions.

Kim said K-pop supergroup SuperM broke the record for the most-watched K-pop #TwitterBlueroom, topping 2 million viewers, adding that Twitter co-founders CEO Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone joined GOT7 during their #TwitterBlueroom session, which tallied more than 1.1 million views.

K-pop awards shows and events made their mark on Twitter, as well, with 40 million tweets related to KCON 2019, as well as 28 million views of videos generated during the event, topped by 102 million tweets from Oct. 24, when voting for the MAMAs started, through Dec. 4, the day of the event.

The three countries behind the most K-pop-related tweets in 2019 were Thailand, South Korea and Indonesia.

The most-discussed accounts last year belonged to BTS, EXO and GOT7.

Finally, Kim said the fastest-rising K-pop accounts on the platform last year were Blackpink, SuperM and Tomorrow X Together.

Six-time Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton, the newest 5G ambassador for mobile carrier Vodafone UK, is featured in two films as part of the company’s #5Gamechanger campaign, developed by global creative agency We Are Social.

The first film depicts Hamilton trying to fly drones alongside some of the U.K.’s top drone racing stars, while the second sees him take part in mixed reality gaming. A third film will be added in March or April.

The films and a set of shorter cutdown videos—which aim to demonstrate the impact of 5G—will be released across Vodafone UK’s accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and YouTube, and Hamilton will share them on his social channels, as well.

The wireless carrier will also use the film assets on its website, in email marketing campaigns and in other public relations activity.

Vodafone UK head of social media and content Jordan Stone said in a release, “We’re delighted to have Lewis Hamilton on board as an ambassador and to be able to work with him to show what a huge impact 5G will have in the future. The real benefits of 5G will be realized beyond our phones and what we can imagine today. Our challenge was to create content that starts to explain this to our consumers. Lewis’ true passion for gaming and racing made mixed reality gaming and drone racing the obvious starting point to tell this story.”

We Are Social associate editorial director Rhiain Morgan added, “The potential of 5G isn’t always easy to relate to. We hope that with this campaign, we’ve helped Vodafone tell a compelling story when it comes to the future of wireless technology. Lewis was brilliant to work with throughout this project. He really brings 5G’s potential to life, and his passion for racing and gaming clearly shines through in the films.”

CREDITS:

Agency: We Are Social

Kelly Cross, business director

Mary Malone, account director

Richard Burgess, senior account manager

Rhiain Morgan, associate editorial director

Rudhraigh McGrath, associate creative director

Mark Daw, associate creative director

Clare Ferguson, art director

Simone Verza, senior designer

Sam Cox, senior creative technologist

Jennifer Lawlor, senior producer, We Are Social Studios

Annabel Heath, production manager, We Are Social Studios

Client: Vodafone UK

Maria Koutsoudakis, brand and marketing director

Jordan Stone, head of social media and content

Pia Neave, social media manager

Panda Express said the Celebration of Good Fortune AR experience enables guests to enjoy and share five distinct Lunar New Year traditions with their friends and family.

The company added in a release, “Each AR filter brings to life a sense of childlike wonder and provides an interactive way to engage with the rich culture and symbolism behind Lunar New Year: a game to snack on lucky foods and throw firecrackers to ward off evil spirits, join the parade as a lion dancer, swipe up to unlock the lucky red envelope surprise and bask in the beautiful glow of the Lantern Festival.”

The restaurant chain is also running a contest through Feb. 8, in which the grand-prize winner will receive a three-day trip to Universal Studios Hollywood in 2021, including VIP experiences, to celebrate Lunar New Year next year.

Panda Express chief marketing officer Andrea Cherng said in the release, “Every year, we at Panda celebrate the first day of Lunar New Year by gifting lucky red envelopes to all of our guests, and this year, we are thrilled to further invite them into this wonder-filled celebration through our themed AR experience. The Lunar New Year holiday is at heart about coming together to bring and share joy and good fortune. As a holiday that is deeply rooted in our culture, we are honored to bring millions of people together to celebrate Lunar New Year through our crave-worthy food and our new digital experience.”

Joe Tidy of BBC News reported that the BBC was able to use keyword targeting to serve ads on Twitter to people who showed interest in keywords related to hate groups or discriminatory terms, and the ads were approved and went live on Twitter.

A Twitter spokesperson told Tidy policies are in place to avoid keyword targeting abuse, but they were not applied properly.

The social network said in a statement, “Our preventative measures include banning certain sensitive or discriminatory terms, which we update on a continuous basis. In this instance, some of these terms were permitted for targeting purposes. This was an error. We’re very sorry this happened and, as soon as we were made aware of the issue, we rectified it. We continue to enforce our ads policies, including restricting the promotion of content in a wide range of areas, including inappropriate content targeting minors.”

According to Tidy, the BBC created an ad from an anonymous Twitter account, simply saying, “Happy New Year.” It then chose three different U.K. audiences to target, based on potentially sensitive keywords.

The ad moved to a pending state during Twitter’s review stage, and it was subsequently approved and live on the platform for a few hours before being removed by the BBC.

Tidy reported that 37 Twitter users saw the post and two clicked on a link that was included, which directed them to a news article about memes. The ad cost £3.84 ($5.02) to run.

The BBC also shared data on the potential audience that could be reached via those keywords.

For comparison’s sake, Tidy said the potential audience for an automotive website seeking to use the term petrolhead—meaning a person who is overly reliant on his or her car—was estimated by Twitter at between 140,000 and 172,000 in the U.K.

The BBC found that targeting via the term neo-Nazi generated a potential audience of 67,000 to 81,000, and those figures rose to 92,900 to 114,000 for a campaign using the keywords Islamophobes, Islamaphobia, Islamophobic and #islamophobic.

Potentially vulnerable groups were at risk, as well, as the BBC ran the same ad in the test described above, targeted to people between the ages of 13 and 24 via the keywords anorexia, anorexic, bulimia and bulimic.

The estimated audience was 20,000, and the ad was seen by 255 users and clicked on by 14 of them before being pulled by the BBC.

The ability to target Facebook users with ads based on their interest in neo-Nazi terminology was uncovered on Facebook in the U.S. last February, following a similar investigation by the Los Angeles Times, and that social network took steps to rectify the situation.

The Facebook-owned photo- and video-sharing network now enables people to upload videos to IGTV the same way they already upload videos and photos to the main feed.

After clicking on the plus sign in the bottom navigation area of the Instagram feed, users can choose between short video and long video.

Short videos are less than 60 seconds and can be uploaded to feed, while long videos of 60 seconds and up can be earmarked for IGTV.

An Instagram spokesperson said in an email, “Our goal is to create a central place for video uploads that will simplify the experience for creators, who can now leverage the feed upload button for both short and long video uploads.”

Instagram also said it is removing the IGTV icon from the top-right corner of the home screen on its mobile applications, adding that its users are discovering IGTV content via feed, the Explore tab, creators’ profiles and the stand-alone IGTV app, and very few of them are clicking on the icon.

The spokesperson said, “We always aim to keep Instagram as simple as possible, so we’re removing this icon based on these learnings and feedback from our community.”

In related news, Instagram used the @creators account it started last September to share a tips video detailing three ways to control cropping for videos on IGTV.

eMarketer—which uses its own methodology to arrive at its forecasts and estimates, explaining why its user totals differ from those released by the social platforms themselves—said this week that Pinterest edged Snapchat for the No. 3 spot on the list of social media applications by U.S. users, trailing Facebook and Instagram.

According to eMarketer, Pinterest finished 2019 with 82.4 million U.S. users, up from 75.5 million at the end of 2018, while Snapchat ended the year with 80.2 million users, up from 75.8 million. The research firm added that Pinterest posted growth of 9.1% in 2019, more than doubling its estimate of 4.3%.

eMarketer projects that Pinterest will have 86 million users at the end of 2020, while Snapchat will come in at 83.1 million, adding that the gap between the two platforms will continue expanding through 2023.

Junior forecasting analyst Nazmul Islam said in a blog post, “While Snapchat has a young core audience that it caters to, Pinterest has a more universal appeal, and it’s made significant gains in a wide range of age groups.”

eMarketer’s data backed up that point, showing Pinterest users in the U.S. more evenly represented across all age groups, while Snapchat skewed younger.

The company said Pinterest users will make up 41.1% of all U.S. social network users in 2020, while Snapchat tallies 39.7%. It expects Snapchat to remain flat in 2021 while Pinterest experiences a slight gain.

Chief human resources officer Jo Dennis said in a blog post Thursday that Pinterest boosted its hiring rate for full-time female engineers to 27% in 2019, topping its goal of 25%.

The company aimed to hike its hiring rate of underrepresented minority engineers by 8%, and it exceeded that number, tallying a 9% jump. Underrepresented minorities are defined as employees of Native-American and Pacific Islander, Latinx and African-American descent.

And across the company—business and product—Pinterest increased hiring rates for underrepresented minority employees by 14% last year, surpassing its 12% target.

Dennis wrote, “As one of the first companies to set annual public hiring goals in 2015, we want to hold ourselves accountable to tackling this societal issue. Meaningful and sustainable progress takes time, and while we are far from where we’d like, we can see considerable change in our workforce since we started.”

She added that women now account for 25% of the total number of engineers at Pinterest, up from 24% in 2018 and 19% in 2015.

And underrepresented minorities now make up 10% of total employees, up from 9% the previous year and 3% in 2015, along with 7% of engineers, versus 6% in 2018 and less than 1 percent in 2015.

Dennis also highlighted some of the company’s relevant initiatives in 2019.

Pinterest added skin tone ranges to its platform last January, helping to ensure that Pinners saw search results on topics such as makeup and hair ideas that were relevant to their respective skin tones.

Emotional well-being activities were introduced for its search experience in the U.S. last July, and Pinners who search for terms indicating that they may be struggling—such as “stress quotes” and “work anxiety”—now see well-being activities that they can partake in directly via the Pinterest application.

Last November, Pinterest released a public guide to support employee gender transition.

And the company revealed last December that it would limit the distribution of content on wedding venues that were formerly slave plantations.

Dennis wrote, “While we’ve made several changes that we’re proud of, we can see a few areas where we need to improve and where, frankly, our progress has not improved quickly enough. We recognize that leadership diversity is our biggest area for opportunity and focus. Despite exceeding our hiring goals, the overall representation of underrepresented talent could increase more quickly.”

She also outlined three steps Pinterest will take in 2020 and beyond:

• Ensure business leader ownership of inclusion and diversity outcomes: Diversity at Pinterest is not a human resources initiative—it’s something we all own. This year, the leadership and inclusion and diversity teams partnered closely in co-creating a multiyear strategy to guide us through the next several years. We also designated business representatives to champion I&D in every business unit.
• Build a laser focus on specific efforts to diversify Pinterest leadership: Our executive team is partnering on leadership diversity through a variety of tactics. This starts with building relationships with internal and external talent proactively, including “reverse mentorship” relationships. We also require at least two underrepresented candidates at the final onsite stage for any leadership role with our diverse slate approach. In addition, we internally track specific leadership hiring aspirations and metrics, rather than simply an aggregated hiring goal.
• Don’t neglect retention: We learned that if we want to create a working environment where people can do their best work, we need to invest further in understanding what drives retention. We’ve expanded accountability metrics for inclusion and diversity to include retention and engagement parity, alongside hiring. These are reviewed with the executive team, as well as each business unit, on a quarterly basis at a minimum.

Dennis concluded, “Inclusion and diversity is not only a value: It’s foundational to making the best decisions and building the strongest teams over time, and we recognize that we still have work to do. We are committed to building, developing and nurturing a balanced team for Pinterest, evolving our strategies as we learn and holding ourselves accountable to driving the changes we all want to see. In 2020, we will continue to infuse inclusion and diversity into Pinterest rewards, values and expectations, and we will continue to hold ourselves accountable publicly with all of you.”

The company said in a blog post, “Today, more than 50 million organizations around the world rely on LinkedIn pages to help them engage with their customers, prospects and employees. We’re constantly investing in pages and have recently introduced features like employee notifications, kudos and team moments and community hashtags to bring that to life.

Admins can now invite first-degree profile connections to follow their pages, so that they can grow their organizations’ communities and reach relevant followers.

LinkedIn said in its blog post, “You’ve shared that one of the biggest pain points of building a brand is increasing your numbers of engaged and relevant followers.”

The professional network also added the option for members to opt out of receiving invites, and admins are limited to sending 50 invites per day.

Livestreaming via LinkedIn Live is coming to all pages, with the professional network saying it will roll out a stream targeting feature with third-party tools—including Restream, Wirecast and Socialive—to help pages reach the right audiences across different languages and locations.

Private testing capabilities will also enable admins to ensure that their livestreams are ready to go.

LinkedIn said brands already using LinkedIn Live have seen seven times more reactions and 24 times more comments on those videos than on standard video posts on the professional network.

Finally, admins can share updates from their profiles or pages directly via the homepage.

LinkedIn said in its blog post, “Our new toggle switch on the homepage share box reduces friction and allows you to post from the same place you already post on LinkedIn so that you can promote your organization’s brand in the way that works for you.”

The top seven on this year’s list were tech jobs: front-end engineer (No. 1), Java developer (2), data scientist (3), product manager (4), development operations engineer (5), data engineer (6) and software engineer (7).

Glassdoor said tech positions accounted for 20 of the top 50 jobs on its 2020 list, adding that there are job openings at a variety of companies, and not just tech firms.

Other tech roles to crack the top 50 were: Salesforce developer (No. 14), applications engineer (18), systems engineer (27), scrum master (29), software developer (32), cloud engineer (33), product designer (34), user experience designer (38), quality assurance engineer (39), sales engineer (42), data analyst (44), automation engineer (46) and network engineer (49).

Glassdoor said, “Front-end engineer is the No. 1 Best Job in America, replacing data scientist, which held the No. 1 spot for the past four years. While data scientist remains a thriving role, we’re seeing high demand for front-end engineers, with over 13,000 open roles, nearly double the number of data scientist open jobs. In addition to numerous open jobs, front-end engineers report competitive salaries and high job satisfaction.”

The median base salary for front-end engineers was $105,240.

Outside of the tech realm, the top position in terms of job satisfaction was corporate recruiter, while the top-paying job on the list was strategy manager (No. 9 overall, median base salary of $133,067).

Instagram said Tuesday that long-lived access tokens are now available for the Instagram Basic Display API (application-programming interface).

Software engineer Muyuan Liu said in a blog post that when the Instagram Basic Display API debuted last October, user access tokens were only valid for one hour, but developers can now exchange them for long-lived access tokens that are valid for 60 days.

More information is available here.

Liu also reminded developers that, as initially revealed last October, the final permission from the Instagram Legacy API Platform, Basic Permission, will be disabled March 2, and all developers are encouraged to apply for permissions to the Instagram Basic Display API via the Instagram Graph API Platform, as well as to migrate Legacy API calls prior to March 2.

He wrote, “Instagram Basic Display API is not an authentication tool. Data returned by the API cannot be used to authenticate your application users or log them into your app. If your app uses API data to authenticate users, it will be rejected during App Review. If you need an authentication solution, please use Facebook Login instead.”