Welcome to Social Media Buzz Weekly, your weekly bulletin of the latest social media updates. With the social media landscape evolving with each passing day, it can be challenging to keep a tab on the rapid developments. Well, not anymore, as we have taken it upon ourselves to keep you abreast of every happening in the social media space.
So, without any further ado, let’s take a look at some of the most significant developments from the last week in the world of social media.
1. LinkedIn Looks to Boost Newsletter Discovery by Showcasing Which Newsletters Users are Subscribed to
https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/LinkedIn-Adds-Newsletter-Subscription-Info-on-Profiles/640992/
LinkedIn’s looking to make it easier to find relevant newsletters in your niche, by adding a new option that will enable members to view what newsletters another member is subscribed to in the app.
LinkedIn newsletters are part of its Creator Mode option, with users that switch on Creator Mode able to create their own newsletters in the app, which are then shared to subscribers via in-app and email notifications. LinkedIn also added the capacity for Company Pages to create their own newsletters early last year.
2. Meta Moves to Next Stage of Full Messaging Encryption, With Expanded E2E on Messenger
Meta’s pushing ahead with its full messaging encryption plan, which is part of its broader process to integrate its messaging tools, and enable users to engage in DM chats across Messenger, Instagram Direct, and WhatsApp from any of the three apps.
Meta’s latest advance will see the expanded testing of encrypted messages on Messenger, building on Meta’s initial Messenger encryption project, which kicked off last year. Some users will soon see their Messenger chats migrated to full encryption – whether they want that or not.
3. Twitter Expands Community Notes to More Regions
Twitter continues to expand its Community Notes feature, with users in more regions now able to apply to add notes to contextual notes and reference links to questionable claims in tweets.
As per the announcement, selected users in the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand will now be admitted into the Community Notes program, which will greatly expand the amount of local knowledge and input feeding into the Notes system.
4. Twitter Updates Bookmarks UI, Counts Bookmarks as Partial Likes
Twitter has updated the display of the ‘Bookmark’ option in the app, which is one of several key fixes that Elon Musk had requested in recent weeks, as a means to help boost in-app engagement.
The Bookmark button has been added to the lower function display when you expand a tweet. That, ideally, will get more people using the option, which Elon personally views as a ‘silent Like’, and another measure of engagement with tweets.
5. Meta’s Updating the Terminology for Accounts Reached within Ad Campaigns
Meta has announced an update to the terminology that it uses to display performance metrics, with the term ‘people’ being updated to ‘Accounts Center accounts’ within Ads Manager, Ads Reporting, Ads Help Center, Commerce Insights and Instagram Insights.
According to Meta, their calculation methodology for these metrics is not changing. The numbers you see in your reporting are the same as before; the only difference is the name. For example, if a person has one Facebook account and one Instagram account that are linked, they will be counted as one Accounts Center account. However, if those same accounts are not linked, they will be counted as two separate Accounts Center accounts for ads planning and measurement purposes.
6. Twitter Expands Display of Community Notes, Flags Coming Improvements
Twitter has rolled out another update for Community Notes, with community-contributed contextual pointers now also being shown on quote tweets in the app.
Now even if a post has been re-shared via the ‘Quote tweet’ option, any Community Note will still be displayed, ensuring more users get the additional context added by users. Moreover, users will soon also be notified whenever anything that they’ve replied to, liked, or retweeted gets a Community Note added. That’ll help to expand awareness, and keep people more informed in the app, which could go some way towards reducing the spread of misinformation in tweets.
7. Meta Launches Centralized Data Privacy and Ad Targeting Controls for Facebook, IG and Messenger
Meta has announced a new update for its Accounts Center tool, which will make it much easier to manage your privacy settings across Facebook, Messenger and Instagram in one place.
The updated Accounts Center will include all of your info from all three apps - including personal details, passwords and security, and ad preferences – in a single place, which will better enable you to review and update your preferences without having to go to separate elements within each.
8. YouTube Tests New Location Tagging Element in the Shorts Upload Process
YouTube’s rolling out a new ‘Location’ field in the Shorts upload process, which will make it easier for users to add location to their Shorts clips.
Location data can add important contextual info to uploads, and better enable YouTube’s systems to highlight more relevant clips to each user. TikTok, for example, uses location info to show you more localized clips and updates, which often prove to be more engaging, especially those within your immediate local area.
9. Instagram Adds New ‘Quiet Mode’ to Help Users Take Breaks
https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/giving-people-control-over-what-they-see-on-instagram
Instagram’s adding a new ‘Quiet Mode’, which will switch off all notifications, add a ‘Quiet Mode’ notifier to your profile status, and implement an auto-responder on your DMs.
The latest upgrade will help you manually set your Quiet Mode time in the app, which adds relevant alerts to let your contacts know that you’re off-grid. Instagram also noted that anybody can use the new Quiet Mode tools, but it’ll be prompting teens specifically to do so if it detects that they’re spending a significant amount of time on Instagram late at night.
10. Indian Government Seeks to Exert New Controls Over Online Speech
The Indian Government is taking more overt action to control what can and cannot be discussed online in the nation, with proposed new rules that would enable the government itself to dictate what’s true and what’s not, and force social platforms to remove false claims or risk fines or bans.
Indian authorities have been pushing social platforms to enforce their agendas for some time, with the government repeatedly calling on social apps to remove anti-government sentiment, in order to manipulate public opinion on several key fronts.
11. Twitter Adds Annual Payment Option for Twitter Blue
https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/18/twitter-now-offers-an-annual-blue-subscription-for-hardcore-users/
Twitters users can now lock in their paid-for checkmark for a year at a time, with Twitter adding new annual payment tiers for its misguided ‘verification’ scheme.
Under Twitter’s new annual payment scheme for Twitter Blue, you can save around 13% per annum for your blue tick, which also comes with tweet editing, the ability to post longer videos, priority ranking of replies (maybe), half the ads (probably), etc.
12. TikTok Expands State-Affiliated Media Labels to 40 Regions
TikTok has announced an expansion of its state-affiliated media labels, with the profile indicators now set to be applied in 40 markets to any media outlets that TikTok assesses as being influenced by their local government.
Given TikTok’s links to the Chinese Government, and the ongoing speculation about the platform being used to spy on foreign citizens, the timing of this update seems significant. All Chinese apps, technically, are required to share information with the Chinese Government on request, and it’s interesting, within this broader context, to see TikTok running deflection, by flagging that it’s now going to better label state-associated media in the app.
13. Twitter Launches Updated Tweet View Count Display
Twitter has updated its new view count display on tweets, which Twitter chief Elon Musk believes could be a good way to encourage more Twitter users to engage in the tweet conversation.
Twitter has actually tried showing view counts several times in the past, including in September last year, just prior Elon’s takeover at the app. However, those experiments didn’t yield great results, or help to improve tweet engagement.
14. Meta’s Oversight Board Calls for Changes in its Rules Around Displays of Nudity
Meta’s independent Oversight Board has called on the company to update its rules around the presentation of nudity, particularly as it relates to transgender and non-binary people, as part of a new ruling over the removal of two Instagram posts that depicted models with bare chests.
The case relates to two separate posts, made by the same Instagram user, which both featured images of a transgender/non-binary couple bare-chested with the nipples covered.
15. Google Parent Alphabet to Lay Off 12,000 Employees or 6% of Workforce Worldwide
Google parent Alphabet has announced that it is planning to cut roughly 12,000 jobs or 6 percent of the workforce worldwide.
The job cuts affect teams across the company including recruiting and some corporate functions, as well as some engineering and products teams. The layoffs are global and impact US staff immediately, Google said.
Google will also offer a severance package starting at 16 weeks' salary plus two weeks for every additional year at Google, and accelerate at least 16 weeks of GSU vesting.
16. LinkedIn Shares New Data on Engagement and Ad Performance
LinkedIn has shared a range of data points on ad performance, usage, and specific engagement stats in a new infographic.
According to the infographic, LinkedIn members viewed 22% more feed updates in 2022 YoY and had 25% more public conversations on LinkedIn YoY. Also, between June 2020 and June 2022, LinkedIn members shared 25% more public content. LinkedIn also noted that 2.7 million company pages post at least weekly, while over 11 million users have turned on LinkedIn’s Creator Mode since its launch in March 2021.
Wrapping Up
And that was a wrap of this week’s Social Media Buzz. We’ll be back next Monday with more news and updates for you from the social media world. Till then, stay tuned!
If you want to read more on the latest developments taking place in the social media space, take a look at ClickInsights’ Social Media Buzz, wherein we bring to you monthly reports on everything going on in social media, ranging from platform updates to policy changes that influence the way we market.