It’s that time again! We’re back with all the latest social media updates in February 2020! We love to keep you updated with all the latest changes so you can stay as best connected with customers as possible and so you know exactly what’s going on in the world of social media.
One of the biggest updates this month is that IGTV is testing monitisation. IGTV didn’t initially have much popularity, so it should now begin to gain more traction. As influencers can make money from it, they will post more content on there which will bring their large audiences.
Also in its testing stage is a new trimming tool for Instagram Stories clips. This would make it easier to edit and upload Stories within the app. The update will provide a video slider trimming tool, which would work in the same way as similar video editing tools on other platforms. For businesses, this will help to create more focused and polished Stories.
Instagram also launched a new feature that enables users to appeal disabled account decisions, meaning users can add a reason why they think Instagram has made a mistake which will be reviewed in 24 hours.
Lastly, Instagram has added a new listing of ‘least interacted with’ and ‘most shown in feed’ under the following tab. Essentially you’ll be able to unfollow those in your ‘least interacted with’ list, which will give more control over your feed. As we’ve mentioned many times, the ‘follow-for-follow’ method just doesn’t work anymore. It’s all about creating an authentic audience of people who will frequently engage with your content.
Twitter has rolled out an element of it’s ‘conversational threads’ which clearly defines replies from people you know to any given Tweet. Your replies will now have a new look which make it easier to engage in conversations with those you know. It’s not a massive update but it could spark a lot more conversations! There is also now an option to add new tweets into old tweet threads. This will make it far easier to create threads, and add on to your previous notes. This could be very useful in referring customers to previous support notes and providing updates on previously tweeted situations.
We’re really excited about this update and you may have already seen it on our Twitter account: Facebook has launched a new app via its new product experimentation team, which is similar to Pinterest. It’s called Hobbi and is for collecting images of hobbies and interests and sorting them into boards to track your progress. Users will be able to track their progress to see how well they’re developing and can create highlight videos of their efforts to share with others.
Facebook has also been working on some minor changes to its main platform. Firstly, it’s testing new colour highlighting for hashtags and profile tags within post text, which will be shown in the Facebook blue shade. The benefit of this is that when they’re more clearly highlighted, they’ll hopefully be more click-throughs, leading to more traffic and engagement. As well as this, Facebook is testing easier access to a chronological news feed. If Facebook decides to roll it out to the public, there would be a toggle at the top of the feed enabling users to switch across to different variations of the news feed.
Lastly, Facebook has published new documents on standardised online content regulation. Through updating their rules, they can preserve the freedom for people to express their feelings, whilst protecting society from wider harm.
LinkedIn has launched a new ‘featured’ section on the top right of users’ profiles which highlights their key achievements and any relevant links. User’s top posts, images, and documents to highlight achievements will also be shown in the new section. The option isn’t widely available yet but LinkedIn is in the process of rolling it out to all users.
In other LinkedIn news, the platform is shutting down its Sales Navigator for Gmail extension, which provides LinkedIn bio information for anyone who gets in contact with you (with the same email address used for the LinkedIn profile). The extension was originally used as a marketing tool, giving marketers a quick overview of who each contact is and confirming their legitimacy based on their LinkedIn profile.
Snapchat is trying out a major redesign of the app to simplify its navigation. This would expand the app from three to five clearly separated sections, with a black navigation bar along the bottom of the screen. The five sections would include the Snap Map, the chat section, the main camera, the Snap Discover section (renamed as ‘Community’) and the new ‘Discover’ page.
TikTok has provided an option for users to upload content via desktop, meaning it won’t all have to be done via the app. This could be useful for many digital marketers who are looking to make use of the new platform, as they can then manage multiple social media platforms from their desktop.
We have a blog post coming out all about TikTok on Wednesday, so if you’re unsure what it is or how it can be used, keep your eyes peeled for that! We’ll be sending out a link to it in our upcoming newsletter, so if you’re not already signed up, do so now.
Google is working on chatbots that will engage in a more genuine, human conversation. Currently, chatbots don’t always make sense, can be inconsistent with what they say, and lack basic knowledge about what’s going on in the world. To fix this, Google has built a new chatbot called Meena, which has a 2.6 billion parameter conversation model. Meena will be able to conduct conversations that are more sensible and specific than existing bots. This could mean great things for both consumers and businesses.
We hope you’ve found our ‘Social Media Updates in February 2020’ blog post useful and will be able to spot some of the changes when you’re next on a social platform. If you have, every month we also send out an e-newsletter with loads more handy social media tips and tricks. Our latest blog post was on one of our favourite and most used work hacks, so make sure you give that a read!
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