The social media world is always full of new updates.
What’s new for this week? Here’s a summary of the latest updates in your favourite applications.
FACEBOOK NEW ENGAGEMENT AND ANTI-BULLYING TOOLS
Content creators now have a new way to engage their fans on Facebook. The platform has introduced Premieres, which lets channels live stream pre-recorded video, allowing them to make an event out of their edited content, and enabling the interactive features that are usually restricted to live videos, like real-time comments and reactions. This is similar to something YouTube rolled out in June (which also happens to be called Premieres), although it has been in testing since early in the year.
Facebook has also announced a new set of anti-bullying tools where users will be able to hide or delete multiple comments at once from the options menu of posts. This feature is available on desktops and Androids already, but it will not be on iOS until the next few months. And Facebook is going to be testing ways to easily block offensive words from appearing in comments.
Facebook also launched new features that use AI for price range suggestions and auto-categorization. And the company is testing camera features that could use AI for recommending products that you might be interested in. So if you take a photo of a product you like, Facebook could show you listings of that same product or a similar one that is available through Marketplace.
SCANNABLE PROFILE CODES COME TO INSTAGRAM
Instagram has introduced a new way to follow accounts, called Nametags. If you’ve seen a Snapcode on Snapchat, this will all be very familiar: users can generate their own digital ID card, and when scanned by other users, a ‘follow’ prompt will appear. Like Snapcodes, Nametags can be personalized, with Instagram letting people customize their cards with colours, photos, and emoji.
In addition to that, Instagram has announced that it has named Adam Mosseri, the Vice President of Product of the photo social network, as the head of the company. The promotion became effective on October 1st.
YOUTUBE MAKES ADS MORE ACTIONABLE
New ad extensions are on their way to YouTube, aiming to make video ads on the platform more useful and get viewers deeper into the conversion funnel. Soon, advertisers will be able to prompt users to download an app, book a trip, or select a movie session from within YouTube, and other functions are set to be on offer. Brands including 20th Century Fox, Headspace, and Maybelline are already testing the new features.
TWITTER UPDATES ITS RULES
Twitter has announced several new updates across three areas of its election integrity efforts, which include updates to its rules, detection and enforcement and product improvements.
For example, Twitter heard feedback that people think its rules about spam and fake accounts only cover common spam tactics like selling fake goods. So Twitter is updating and expanding its rules to better reflect how it identifies fake accounts and the types of inauthentic activity violate its guidelines.
As a result, Twitter may remove fake accounts engaged in a variety of malicious behaviours such as the use of stock or stolen avatar photos, the use of stolen or copied profile bios and the use of intentionally misleading profile information such as profile locations.
If Twitter is able to reliably attribute an account to an entity known to violate the Twitter Rules, action will be taken on additional accounts associated with it. This is especially the case for accounts that deliberately mimic or are intended to replace accounts previously suspended for violating the rules. And the Twitter Rules prohibit the distribution of hacked material that contains private information or trade secrets.
Stay tuned to #SocialSpeak for more on the latest social media trends, and for the inside scoop on what’s happening in 2018.
