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. Report Shows Publisher Referrals From Facebook Have Declined by 50%
A new report from Chartbeat and Similarweb has revealed that Facebook referral traffic to publisher websites has declined by 50% over the past year.
The report analyzed traffic to 792 news and media websites, using third-party tracking data to provide an indicative measure of Facebook referral traffic. The data also suggests that, in terms of total referrals, Facebook now drives less than a quarter of the visits than it had been back in 2018, down from 30% in March 2018 to 7% in March 2024. Smaller players have been hit especially hard, with their Facebook referrals declining significantly over the past year.
2. Meta Adds More Elements to Its Verification for Business Subscription Package
Meta Is expanding access to its Verification for Business subscription package for brands, which enables you to buy a blue checkmark for your brand’s Facebook and/or Instagram profile, while it’s also adding new elements, and higher-priced tiers for its business verification packages, to cater to more use cases.
Up till now, Meta’s Verification for Business option has only been available to brands in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, but now businesses in Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Peru, France, and Italy will also be able to buy a verification tick in each app. Meta hasn’t shared any data on Meta Verified take-up as yet, but the expansion would suggest that Meta is seeing positive signs and solid interest in the option.
3. Meta Adds Enhanced AI Creation Tools for Facebook and Instagram Ads
Meta is adding more generative AI tools for advertisers, including enhanced text and image generation, creative expansion, text overlays, a centralized collection of AI tools within Ads Manager, and more.
Meta has been experimenting with AI image generation for ad campaigns over the past year, and now, it’s looking to provide enhanced variations of these tools to facilitate broader ad creation in-stream. The first updated element is image generation, which will now enable you to generate full image variations based on your original ad creative.
Meta is also expanding its ad text variation feature, which will now also be able to create variations for ad headlines. That could help you come up with better hooks for your ads, based on formats that work for other brands. Meta says that it’s also testing the ability for the generated text “to reflect your brand’s voice and tone, by highlighting key selling points based on your previous campaigns and text input.”
4. TikTok Launches Legal Challenge Against US Sell-Off Bill
TikTok has launched a legal challenge against the U.S. government, saying that the recently approved bill that will force it to be sold to a U.S.-based owner is unconstitutional, unfounded, and is actually designed to ban the app in the nation.
The full filing outlines TikTok’s case against the “Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” which they claim is designed to specifically target TikTok and parent company ByteDance, for no reason outside of the “hypothetical possibility” that the app poses an actual threat. TikTok has been pushing the “total ban” angle for the last few months, which has angered some U.S. politicians who’ve claimed that this is deliberately misleading, in that the bill is not a ban, as such. But TikTok says that, in effect, the bill is a ban, because it simply won’t be able to divest itself to the degree required to meet the bill’s specifications.
5. Instagram Expands Access to Creator Marketplace to 10 New Countries
Instagram has announced that it is expanding its creator marketplace to 10 new countries including South Korea, Germany, Netherlands, France, Spain, Israel, Turkey, Mexico, Argentina, and Indonesia.
Instagram’s creator marketplace enables brands to search for creator collaborators based on a range of elements, including audience size, location, common topics, etc. Back in February, Instagram expanded access to creator marketplace, which is now available in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Japan, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Brazil. Instagram also recently added the capacity for Chinese export brands to collaborate with creators in countries outside of China, adding another way to use creator marketplace to facilitate more business.
6. Threads Adds View Counts on Posts
Threads has taken inspiration from Elon Musk’s X project, with the addition of view counts on individual Threads, to help users understand broader reach and engagement.
Threads users are now able to see how many times their posts have been viewed in the app, with a count displayed at the top of the expanded display when you tap on an individual thread. Instagram and Threads chief Adam Mosseri said that this is important contextual info to help people understand their Threads reach, beyond the basic engagement stats.
7. Meta Tests Instagram To Threads Cross-Posting
Meta has confirmed that it’s testing a new option that will enable Instagram users to crosspost their updates to Threads, providing another way to feed your updates into its Twitter-like app.
Some Instagram users are now able to switch on Instagram cross-posting, which can be activated for all posts, or on each update. It is not available for Reels as yet. Meta also added the capacity to cross-post from Facebook to Threads back in February, so Instagram cross-posting was probably an inevitability, as it makes it easier for Meta to funnel more content into its various apps.
8. Pinterest Adds Media Buyer Certification Course
Pinterest has added another certification within its Pinterest Academy education element, with a new “Media Buyer” certification course now available to all users.
Pinterest’s Media Buyer certification will enable media pros to showcase their Pin expertise and is available for free to all Pinterest Academy subscribers. To get certified, participants will need to pass a 60-question multiple choice exam, covering a range of topics including campaign activation, optimization, and ads reporting. Participants will need to get a score of 70% or higher on the exam to achieve the certification. And if you fail, you’ll need to wait two weeks to attempt the exam again. Pinterest says that the exam is intended for media buyers with two to five years of experience, including one to two years specifically using Pinterest advertising tools.
9. X Says That Over 500K Users Now Contribute to Community Notes
X (formerly Twitter) has reached another milestone with its crowd-sourced fact-checking Community Notes feature, with over 500,000 contributors now feeding notes into the system.
Community Notes, originally called Birdwatch, was an initiative spearheaded by Jack Dorsey when he was in charge of Twitter back in 2021. The program enables X users to contribute fact-checks and corrections, with citations and references then displayed in-stream. The idea is that this will expand the platform’s capacity to counter misinformation and limit its spread, and studies have shown that it can be an effective deterrent in helping to reduce the amplification of false reports.
10. X Will Soon Enable Advertisers To Create Ad Audiences With AI
X is adding another AI element, with advertisers to soon be given the capacity to create ad audiences for their X campaigns via conversational descriptions.
Soon, you’ll be able to simply describe the audience that you want to reach, like “users who are leaders in technology,” and X’s AI matching system will then provide you with an ad audience based on that description. You’ll be able to see an overview of top users in the generated audience, their related interests, locations, etc. And if it’s not exactly who you’re looking to reach, you’ll then be able to add more to your description, and refine your targeting further, without needing in-depth knowledge of the specific targeting and audience terms.
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.
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