The social network is now in the process of creating its first application compatible with smartwatches.
Instagram has now announced that it is developing a new Apple Watch app that would provide its users with an alert as soon as there is a picture posted by someone that they know.
The Facebook owned image based social network will now be providing a simpler alert system for users.
The idea is to make it possible for the wearers of the smartwatch to use this Apple Watch app to keep up with what their closest friends are doing. It will let them know when a picture has been posted so that they can view it and respond as they’d like. This represents the first time that Instagram has ever made an entry into the world of wearable technology. Until now, it has kept itself well away from wearables, including the number of other smartwatches that are already on the market, and headsets such as Google Glass.
That said, due to the image based nature of Instagram, the Apple Watch app had to be created with care.
After all, the social network is meant for pictures and the Apple Watch has a tiny little screen. This caused the developers of the app to have to completely rethink the way that it would function. According to Ian Silber, a designer at Instagram, it was key for them to come up with “the simplest feed we could think of.” He also went on to add that “I think the watch is really about quick information and notifications. With the Watch, it’s about thinking about interactions in terms of seconds.”
Apple has established very solid rules with regards to the way that it will allow apps to be created for its smartwatch. For example, it has restricted the types of tools that third party developers can come up with through the use of its tools (the Watchkit). For example, the developers at Instagram attempted to transfer the double-tapping an image feature from its smartphone application in order to “like” that image through the Apple Watch app. However, that is not a feature that the Watchkit has to offer.
Some of eMarketer’s latest stats are now showing that this year will already reach $15.5 billion in SMM ad revenue.
It is no great surprise that social media marketing is increasing in its use, but according to research from eMarketer, this form of advertising is also consistently breaking spending records and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Advertising over SMM is expected to reach a tremendous $36 billion by the year 2017.
This represents a tremendous amount of growth from what is predicted for this year. The research from eMarketer also indicates that the social network that will be experiencing the greatest benefit from this advertising trend will be Facebook. As the popularity of these networks continues its increases among consumers, advertisers are catching on to the potential at a growing rate. This is causing them to spent more in order to be able to make contact with their target market in a more meaningful and effective way.
This year, advertisers around the globe wills spend nearly $24 billion on social media marketing.
The eMarketer research has predicted that this will represent an increase of 33.5 percent over the spending for social media advertising, last year. In only two years from now, the use of social media for ads and marketing will make up 16 percent of the worldwide digital ad spend.
The top spenders on SMM will be located in the United States and Canada, where it is anticipated that marketers will be boosting their payments to the various social networks by a whopping 31 percent in 2015, alone. This will bring the amount of spending on that medium up and beyond the $10 billion mark for the first time in history.
When looking at it from the perspective of the breakdown for individual users, this actually represents a spend of over $50 per user throughout the social networking universe. That amount has been predicted to rise to reach $71.37 per user within the span of the next couple of years, said the data and forecasts in the eMarketer report.
The market that will come in second for social media marketing spending in that time will be the Asia-Pacific region, where there will be a predicted spend of $7.4 billion. Third place will belong to Europe, where they will spend $4.74 billion.
