Every two weeks, Vanguard distills hundreds of digital media headlines into the best “byte”- sized pieces of useful information. Each edition has news ranging from the latest Facebook algorithm changes to best practices for email marketing. Share Digital Bytes with your organization to keep your digital strategies ahead of the pack.

Digital Bytes

Twitter users declined by nine million over the past three months, according to its third quarter reporting. However, the service notes that the decline partly stems from its removal of fake and misleading accounts. I’ve found Twitter incredibly helpful for nonprofits, but only within niche communities. Without a paid campaign, you aren’t going to necessarily attract thousands of new people to your cause on Twitter, but you will engage its existing communities around health and the environment, for example.

In other news …

• Facebook Messenger launched a “back to the basics” type redesign that reduces the numbers of tabs and hides less popular features within the service.
• In “news I can’t believe isn’t bigger news,” a BuzzFeed investigation found that millions of Android devices might have been used in an ad fraud scheme.
• If you have a teenager, perhaps you know about TikTok, the singing and music app that recently required Musical.ly. Facebook has now entered the market by creating a TikTok competitor called Lasso.
• The Atlantic reports that Facebook’s inaccurate data reporting on video metrics is costing hundreds of journalists their jobs.
• A new report about teen social media use says that Snapchat is still the most popular platform, followed by Instagram. Facebook? Not so much.

Fun Resource

Don’t know the different between CRM and CMS? You’re in luck! HubSpot has a marketing dictionary with a ton of acronym definitions and explanations of content marketing terms.

Finally …

I’ve been pretty impressed with @Twitter’s content strategy lately — lots of fun and light-hearted messaging about the golden rule that others mimic and repurpose on their own. It has to get better eventually, right?