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 look at some of the most significant developments from the last week in the world of social media.
1. TikTok Launches New Ad Campaign to Oppose Sell-Off Bill
TikTok is pulling out all the stops to oppose the sell-off bill proposed in the U.S. and its latest effort on this front is a new, $2.1 million ad campaign, which aims to showcase the benefits that TikTok provides to U.S. users.
The campaign will be aired on T.V. in the U.S., with a specific focus on states that face tough battles in the upcoming election. The idea is that this will put more pressure on these senators to oppose the TikTok bill, which expands on TikTok’s broader effort to highlight the benefit of the app for U.S. businesses.
2. Instagram Tests Blend Feed for Private Content Sharing
Instagram continues to test out more private engagement options, this time via a new option called “Blend”, which is essentially a combined Reels feed, based on the Reels that you’ve shared with a friend.
In other words, Instagram is trying out a more integrated way to facilitate Reels sharing, by tapping into the user behavior of sharing Reels via DM. Instagram has been working on a range of new features to tap into private sharing in the app, including Inbox Notes, Channels, and Collections. Blend seems like a more targeted approach to link into the usage of Instagram as a content aggregator, with more and more people sharing their favorite memes and clips with friends, either via DM or in real life.
3. Instagram Tests Option To Comment on Specific Frames Within a Carousel Update
Instagram is testing out a new way to comment on specific images within a carousel post, with some users able to link their reply to a photo or video, based on its assigned number in the display.
The new option enables users to @mention the number of an image within a carousel to append their comment to that specific image or video. It could be another way to drive more focused engagement and encourage more interaction around each element, while also clearing up confusion when commenting on carousel posts. So, for example, if you wanted to comment on the second image in the display, you would write “@2” then enter your comment.
4. Snapchat Adds Generative AI Lenses, Longer Video Uploads and More
Snapchat is rolling out a range of new creative and collaborative options to provide more ways to connect in the app.
First off, Snap is rolling out new AI-powered Lenses, which will provide more capacity to edit and customize your visuals. Snap’s new AI Lenses will enable you to convert your images based on different themes. On another front, Snap is also adding new “Templates” which will make it easier to create highlight videos based on your shared Memories. The process brings together snapshots of your Memories, which you can set to music, providing another way to re-use your clips.
Snapchat is also looking to update its UI so that the Snap camera is easier to access throughout the app. And for paying users, Snap’s also got some Snapchat+ updates, with subscribers now able to create combined avatar displays in Friendship Profiles, and more realistic Bitmoji depictions of their pets.
5. Snap Announces Expanded Brand Safety Partnership With IAS
Snapchat is looking to provide more assurance for advertisers via a new partnership with Integral Ad Science (IAS), which will see Snap work with IAS on a new brand safety reporting solution that’ll provide detailed insight into ad placement in the app.
Although it is based on IAS’ initial assessment, it does seem like its safety thresholds may need to be ramped up as well. IAS uses this as a guide for its ad placement assessment, providing advertisers with more assurance that their content is not appearing next to material of this type, which could potentially lead to negative association and brand harm.
6. Pinterest Shares Insights Into Optimizing Social Platform Algorithms for Positive Engagement
Pinterest has shared a new overview of the “non-engagement signals” that it uses to refine its algorithms, and improve user experiences, to avoid going on direct engagement indicators alone, because focusing on explicit engagement signals, like Likes, comments, etc., can lead to negative outcomes.
This is a key challenge for social platforms, as the incentives of straight engagement, which will increase usage, can often lead to platforms prioritizing the wrong content, or inadvertently driving more people to post borderline rule-breaking material, designed to lure clicks. To help address this, Pinterest has partnered with UC Berkeley and the Integrity Institute to create a new “Field Guide to Non-Engagement Signals”, which provides an overview of how to build algorithmic approaches that are based on more beneficial signals than direct interaction alone.
7. xAI Plans to Launch Grok 1.5 This Week
Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI's latest Grok-1.5 chatbot will be available on his social media platform X this week, the billionaire said in a post on X on Friday.
Earlier this month, Musk said xAI would open-source Grok, days after the billionaire sued Microsoft (MSFT.O), -backed OpenAI for allegedly abandoning its original mission in favor of a for-profit model. Looking to compete against OpenAI and Alphabet's (GOOGL.O), Google, Musk launched xAI last year.
8. X Removes Pronoun Display Options on User Profiles
According to a new note on the back-end code of the app, X is removing all mentions of pronouns entirely from its systems.
Given Musk’s stance on the matter, this move is not surprising, but it’s another counter-progressive approach that’s unlikely to enhance the platform’s appeal with key ad partners. To be clear, the option to display your preferred pronouns was never made available to all users, as Twitter had been developing the option when the Elon takeover occurred. It was never actually launched, as such, but some users did have the option, and Twitter was planning to roll it out more broadly.
9. X Corp Takes on Legal Challenge Against Jack Dorsey’s Block Over Employee’s X Posts
Musk’s X Corp announced that it’s funding a lawsuit filed by a former employee of Block (former Square), the digital payments company owned by Dorsey, over comments made by said employee on X.
The employee, Chloe Happe, had shared various controversial opinions via her posts on X, across two separate X accounts. Block dismissed Happe in November last year due to violation of its company policy, though Happe’s defense team claims that there are no provisions within Block’s employee regulations relating to external, non-business communications. As part of Musk’s offer to fund the defense of anybody sacked because of their posts on X, X corp is now taking on the case, which will also put Musk at odds with Dorsey directly, and seemingly end any chance of the two rekindling their mutual admiration and respect.
10. Elon Musk Says Users With Over 2500 Verified Followers Will Get Free Checkmarks
It seems that X owner Elon Musk is trying yet another angle to boost X subscriptions, this time by giving them away to users with follower counts of over 2500 in the app.
As outlined by Musk, users with over 2,500 paying users following them will now get X Premium for free, while those with 5,000 blue tick accounts among their audience will get X Premium+ for free. Well, presumably Musk believes that more people will pay for X if they see that other users have a checkmark, while he’s also likely keen to see more people using Grok, his AI chatbot, which he also recently announced will be made available to all X Premium users, not just those on its highest priced X Premium tier.
11. X Loses Lawsuit Against the Center for Countering Digital Hate
A U.S. judge dismissed X Corp’s lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (C.C.D.H.), which X had initiated based on reports from the C.C.D.H. which suggested that hate speech has increased on the platform since Musk took over control.
Early last year, the C.C.D.H. published several reports that it claimed showed that hate speech had increased in the app since Musk’s purchase of the platform. The first report was published in December 2022, with the C.C.D.H. showing evidence that slurs against Black and transgender people had significantly increased in the months after Musk took over the app. Further reports also showed that X was not enforcing rule-breaking tweets posted by X Premium subscribers, while another also indicated that X had allowed tweets that reference the LGBTQ+ community alongside ‘grooming’ slurs to remain active.
12. LinkedIn Testing TikTok-Like Video Feed Feature
LinkedIn is testing out a new, dedicated video feed in the app, which displays content in a TikTok-style, full-screen format, leaning into the broader vertical video trend.
Although the company has not officially announced it, users have observed the feature in recent days. The new feature is expected to be housed within a separate "video" tab in the LinkedIn app. Users will have the ability to scroll vertically to navigate between video clips, mimicking the user experience of popular short-video platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels. This move follows LinkedIn's prior experimentation with a Stories feature, which allowed users to share disappearing posts. However, the Stories feature was discontinued after less than a year. Despite this, LinkedIn hinted at the time that it would continue to explore video-focused features.
13. LinkedIn’s Rolling out Company Page Messaging to All Brands
After initially launching the functionality with some company pages last June, LinkedIn has confirmed that Pages Messaging is now being rolled out to all businesses.
Company page messaging is enabled (or disabled) via your inbox settings, with admins able to see messages to pages in addition to their inbox. LinkedIn first started rolling out company page messaging last year, but it’s still not available to many brands. That’ll change with this new roll-out, which provides another consideration for connection in the professional social app.
Wrapping Up
And that was a wrap of this week’s Social Media Buzz. We’ll be back next week 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.