Written by
Mackenzie TaylorPosted last year
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Social Media News: October
Week of October 31
All the updates from Instagram (there’s a lot) 😳
Well, it seems like Instagram is dropping new features left, right, and center. From updating Notes to creating new icons in Stories, here are all the features Instagram has released … that absolutely no one asked for:
- Nearby Feed: Stories is getting an update with a new “Nearby” Story, which highlights content from users that are close to you. Sounds a bit like Snapchat and TikTok, if you ask us.
- Video Notes: Notes have become a huuuuuge hit with younger users and IG is focusing hard on them. You can now add a selfie video to your Notes to increase engagement.
- Polls In Comments: You can officially add polls to your comment section on your feed and Reels posts.
- Sticker Creation: Cut, copy, paste! You can now create stickers from your very own photos with IG’s new Story option.
- Notes Reactions: Show off your love (or dislike—we’re not here to judge!) of your friend’s latest Notes.
While none of the features are life-altering, it is fascinating to see how much effort IG is putting behind Notes (a feature that my friends, nor I, ever use … but I could also just be too much of a millennial for this). Let us know over on IG what feature you’re most excited to about.
Week of October 23
What the X? 🫠
When Musk spoke about eliminating bots on X and having users pay to join, I didn’t think he meant this soon.
New users in the Philippines and New Zealand officially have to pay $1 per year to join the platform. While that doesn’t sound like much money, it is a strange turn of events to have a platform that was once free to join to now ask new users to cough up a small fee.
The new “Not A Bot” program is to help “bolster our already significant effort to reduce spam, manipulation or our platform and bot activity,” X explained.
Will anyone be willing to pay money to post on X or will the platform see an even greater decline in users? I’m willing to bet the latter… 😬
Week of October 16
Meta’s AIs are creepy AF 👻
Well, it seems like Meta’s AI celebrities aren’t quite what people were expecting. It’s kind of … creepy? And feels very much like we’re in another episode of Black Mirror.
Meta announced last month that it will now offer chatbots that mimic celebrities. However, the celebrities won’t be themselves, but someone else who only looks like them.
Confused yet? Same.
Snoop Dogg has become a Dungeons and Dragons Master. Kendall Jenner is now “Billie,” your fellow fighter to the death. And there are many more that also … don’t quite make sense.
If Meta thought the AI chatbots were going to be something everyone was going to love, they seriously misjudged how slightly (VERY!) creepy the chatbots are. Especially as no one can tell if the videos are actually of the celebrities, or if AI created the videos.
It seems that Meta paid five million dollars for something that no one really likes … or wants. 😬
Week of October 9
X removes all headlines. Chaos ensues. 🙃
It’s an interesting move for sure. And one Elon Musk believes to be “more aesthetically pleasing.” X has officially removed headlines from all of the URLs that are shared on the platform.
Now, when you scroll, you’ll see the main image of the article with a small domain link to indicate it’s an article … but nothing else.
And of course, once this was announced and implemented, chaos ensued on the platform with people making up their own headlines for articles. Because … why not?
Not only that, but for those who use screen readers and VoiceOver on the platform, it limits the accessibility for them which isn’t a good look for X.
While casually scrolling X the past week, it’s been hard to distinguish which is an article and which is just a photo (IMHO!). Will this change make people want to post more often like Musk hopes, or will it annoy people more and cause them to leave the platform for good? 🤔
“How do you do, fellow kids?” —IG (probably)
Instagram is trying really, really (really) hard to be cool again — especially to Gen Z.
The app has officially launched four new features that are aimed specifically at the younger demographic on the app who seem to be spending less and less time on IG and more and more time on TikTok.
After getting various feedback from users, Instagram has released these cool, funky, happenin’ features on the app:
👉 Multiple close-friend groups: You can now create multiple different groups of friends to share stories to. And if you’re Kim Kardashian, you could probably name one of the groups “NOT KOURTNEY.”
👉 Birthday shout-outs: According to IG, Gen Z loves to shout and hype each other. You can now shout out your friend’s birthday more easily and be reminded of their birthday all within the app.
👉 Audio snippets on Notes: Voice notes will soon be a thing on Instagram Notes. As the music feature was so much a hit, IG believes voice notes will be the next big thing.
👉 Selfie videos on Notes: Don’t want to share an update in Stories? You can now add a video inside Notes. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.
While I’m excited about multiple close-friend groups, I can’t personally see myself using the other options. Let us know over on Instagram what you think!
Week of October 2
Meta goes all in on AI
While other platforms are working on releasing different versions of AI chatbots, Meta has quietly been plotting away at its own AI programs and, boy oh boy, it is A LOT. Let’s get into them:
🤖 Meta AI: Meta AI is similar to other chatbots that are on the market currently, where you can ask it questions and use it for recommendations, information on things nearby, and, honestly, whatever questions that might pop into your head.
🤖 Celebrity AI characters: If you want your AI chatbot to look like a celebrity, you can.
🤖 AI image editing: You’ll soon be able to edit your images inside Instagram with a new AI tool. You’ll be able to change the style of your photos, change the background, and more. And Meta said all AI images will have a label to indicate that it’s AI.
🤖 AI stickers: We’ve already been seeing a version of this being tested on Instagram recently and it seems like it’s finally almost here: AI stickers. Now, you can make your own stickers by describing what you want, and Instagram’s AI will create it for you.
🤖 AI studio: The studio will be a way for people to train AI models in their businesses for customer service and communication. Or, for creators to build their own AI persona to help build up their brand and online presence.
And it sounds like this is only just the beginning. With Meta working on a redesign for WhatsApp and the Metaverse getting further and further into being … somewhat cool (?), it seems like Zuckerberg is really flipping the script on Meta being relevant again.
Social Media News: September
Week of September 25
YouTube steals from TikTok — again 🙃
Last week, YouTube announced a new app it has been developing that will make editing videos quicker than ever all from your phone called YouTube Create.
And yes, if this sounds familiar, it’s because it is almost identical to CapCut.
The app, currently in Beta, will give people access to editing tools like “precision editing and trimming, automatic captioning, VoiceOver capabilities, and access to a library of filters, effects, transitions, and royalty-free music with beat matching technology.”
YouTube is hoping this will make creating Shorts even easier for creators and help increase the amount of people creating Shorts on the platform.
While I personally won’t be downloading another app to my phone as I already have about 50 unused apps currently, it will be interesting to see if YouTube Create actually takes off or if it will be dead in the water like Meta’s Threads. 😬
X announces … stuff 👀
This past week, X has been doing a lot of announcing the future of the app. And if you’re wondering if the app will become the place for “Everything,” the team at X sure seems to think so.
At least they believe in themselves!
X held its first Client Council where CEO Linda Yaccarino went into detail on what’s coming next for X, and if I’m being honest, none of them seem like major game-changers.
The new features being released are:
- Long-form blog posts
- Video calls
- Money transfers between users
- Creator subscriptions
- Product listings
- Creator ad revenue share
- Job Listings
While some of these have already been released (hello, Job Listings, and ad revenue share), the money transfer and product listings seem to be the biggest push to turning X into an Everything App.
The company still has a ways to go with getting payment licenses and in-app shopping seems to be a struggle for most social media apps, so only time will tell if these features will be a turning point for X.
Week of September 18
TikTok Shop launches in the USA
Well, it’s finally here. TikTok Shop has officially launched in the USA.
Sweet, what the heck does that mean?
US users can now buy items directly within the app, so brands, businesses, and creators can now sell you items directly from their videos.
How does the new Shop work? When you search on the platform now, you’ll see a new Shop tab appear that has related items that will populate.
You’ll also start noticing videos that have a new and shiny “Shop” button above the account name. Once you click on the Shop link, you’ll be directed to anything that the video is trying to sell.
And the best part for you content creators? TikTok is launching a new affiliate program where you can now get a commission on any products you sell in your videos and livestreams.
Will the TikTok Shop actually be beneficial to TikTok, or will it crash and burn like Instagram’s Shop?
It’s time to verify your biz ✅
Whoop! Business owners, it’s time to celebrate! You can now get your business verified on Meta through Meta Verified.
For those of you (like us!) who might have struggled with getting your Instagram or Facebook pages verified, this is the perfect solution … but it will cost you.
Each month, you’ll have to pay $21.99 for verification on either your Instagram or Facebook page or $27.99 for each via mobile sign-up.
If you want both your Instagram and Facebook verified, you can certainly do so by paying $34.99 each month for the accounts.
How many businesses and brands will jump on board remains to be seen, but it does lend credibility to those brands and businesses that might not have been able to get verified in the past.
Week of September 11
No more ads on Meta 🚫
Well, only if you decide to pay for it. It seems like Meta might be testing a new feature in the EU where you can pay for a monthly subscription to Meta that is completely free of ads.
Yes, free.
Let’s all take a moment to reflect on the old days in 2006 as we scrolled Facebook and there were no ads. That could be our new future once more. Or, at least the test is going to experiment to see how many people:
- Want to pay for an ad-free experience
- Actually, care about seeing ads and want to avoid being tracked online
While it’s going to be a while to see if the test is effective (and/or if it’ll even happen at all!), it is a nice thought that we might be able to soon casually scroll and not see a single company trying to sell us anything we don’t really, really need (except those Chelsea boots that I keep getting targeted — I do really need those).
Is this the end of X?
It very well could be if the download count is anything to go by. X has hit the lowest amount of downloads in over a decade — plus the amount of active users has massively declined in the past year.
That doesn’t bode well at all for the company.
Since the rebrand from Twitter to X, downloads have taken a nose dive. X (FKA Twitter) used to get 15-30 million users a month for the past 12 years and now it’s only gained 10 million for the month of August.
Eeek.
Earlier this year, Elon Musk claimed that he will get X to 1 billion users a month by 2024, and with the lack of new downloads coming in, he has a long way to go for that to happen.
Week of September 4
10-minute Instagram Reels are here!
Instagram announced a new feature last week, and … for most people, it seems like another one no one actually wants:
✨ 10 minute Reels ✨
While TikTok has had 10-minute videos for a while on its platform, Instagram is trying to compete.
My question is: why did Instagram even get rid of IGTV if it was going to do this?
I’m sure people will watch and use the long-form Reels as they do on TikTok (I mean, who actually wants to watch multiple parts of a story when you can watch it all in one go?), it will be intriguing to see how often it’s actually used and if people really wanted this in the first place. 🙃
Threads keep trying new features
Mosseri was back on his Reels this past week talking about a new feature Instagram is bringing to Threads: keyword search.
And if you read any of the comments under the Reel, you’ll quickly realize how little people care about Threads being a thing.
Fair enough.
However, if you’re one of the few who do love Threading, keyword search will allow you the ability to search for words that will then pull up posts with those words.
At the moment, the feature is only being tested in New Zealand and Australia and I’m sure will quickly start being released elsewhere in the world soon.
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