This week’s trending headlines were dominated by changes in the social media world. The tug of war between Facebook and the ad blocking community continued. What started when Facebook decided to intervene ad blocking softwares, in an effort to increase viewership of ads, continues to be a case of one-upmanship. Ad blockers are fighting back with updated blockers for Facebook’s force field and the social media platform continues to create stronger force fields.
Moving on from Facebook to Twitter — Twitter has taken hashtagging visual. It has introduced #Stickers for people to better express themselves in a ‘fun’ way. Various brands can now create and promote the use of custom stickers for their customers. A brand’s stickers will be featured in Twitter’s #Stickers library and offer a form of creative expression that makes a person’s photos more fun and engaging. Promoted #Stickers will give a huge opportunity for brands to drive brand affinity and raise awareness of their message at scale. Pepsi is the exclusive launch partner of Promoted #Stickers, marking the largest partnership between Twitter and Pepsi till date.
In sports, despite the beginning of the English Premier League over the weekend, the week’s highlight has been the Olympics. Several athletes from MENA have made the region proud. Egypt, Tunisia and UAE won Bronze for the region while Kuwaiti shooter Fehaid al-Deehani won the men’s double trap gold though his participation was as an independent athlete because of Kuwait’s ban from the Games. International soccer matches at the Olympics will also see a mouth-watering finale, where the hosts Brazil will battle for the Gold against the Germans. Given how the score line turned out to be in their last encounter, a 7-1 thrashing of the Brazilians at the hand of the Germans, this final would mean much more than just the Olympic Gold for most of the Brazilians.
That is all in the trending section of AM this week. More trending news and stories to follow soon. Until then, Happy Weekend.
