Social Media Updates

Instagram just updated Reels with new tools to help creators connect with their audiences and make it easier to create engaging content.

Reels Trends

Looking for inspiration? The new Reels Trends hub allows users to browse top trending songs, hashtags and topics.

Source: Instagram

This tool is great for research and planning. Instead of making an educated guess about the popularity of a song or trend you’re seeing all over your feed, you can now check out the actual numbers before deciding if you want to join the conversation.

You can view how many times an audio has been used and create a reel right away or save the audio for a later video. (TikTok has a similar feature.)

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Back in mid-March, Elon Musk promised to release Twitter’s source code for its recommendation algorithm — and now, he’s delivered on that and more.

Twitter will open source all code used to recommend tweets on March 31st

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 17, 2023

In addition to sharing its code on GitHub, Twitter has also published a short note on why the team has released the data, with more detail on how the algorithm works shared on the platform’s engineering blog.

According to Twitter, the recommendation algorithms work by attempting to “answer important questions…such as, ‘What is the probability you will interact with another user in the future?’ or, ‘What are the communities on Twitter and what are trending Tweets within them?’”

Twitter uses the information it extracts from tweet, user, and engagement data to source tweets, rank them, and filter out content you’re less likely to enjoy.

“Okay,” you’re thinking, “I kind of assumed that. But how does it actually work?” Buckle up — we’re going to get into it.

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LinkedIn just launched four new features to help companies level up their marketing efforts on the platform.

Schedule Page posts in advance

LinkedIn started rolling out post-scheduling capabilities back in November 2022, but only for individual users.

With this latest update, though, LinkedIn Page administrators can schedule Page posts up to three months in advance.

Source: LinkedIn

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Looks like Facebook and Instagram may be welcoming a new member to the Meta family. The social behemoth has just confirmed that they are working on a text-based social network app designed to compete with Twitter and Mastodon.

As a Meta spokesperson confirmed in statements to major news outlets like the BBC, ​​”We’re exploring a standalone decentralized social network for sharing text updates. We believe there’s an opportunity for a separate space where creators and public figures can share timely updates about their interests.”

The new app, apparently codenamed P92, will allow users to log in using their existing Instagram accounts.

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The tools in TikTok’s Creative Center are only getting better. The platform has just launched a Keyword Insights tool to help advertisers uncover top-performing keywords and phrases in TikTok ads.

Marketers can use the tool to explore “trending script keywords,” which may appear in voice-overs, text overlays, or ad captions.

Just enter a term in the search bar to start gathering information — you can narrow your search results by region, industry, ad objective, keyword type and timeframe.

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After shutting down Facebook Live Shopping back in October, it looks like Meta’s stepping back from live social commerce altogether.

Starting March 16, 2023, Instagram users will no longer be able to tag products during live broadcasts. Meta says this change will allow the platform to “focus on products and features that provide the most value to our users.”

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Instagram just launched a new feature that creators and brands may find appealing: One-way broadcast channels are coming to an inbox near you.

Meta head Mark Zuckerberg announced the update in his Instagram Story, calling channels a “broadcast chat feature” that will allow creators to share text, images, and more with followers.

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Is paid verification the latest social media trend?

According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Meta Verified is launching in Australia and New Zealand this week. The new subscription service will allow Facebook and Instagram users to pay to become verified (a.k.a. Get a blue checkmark on their profile).

A shiny verification badge isn’t the only benefit of the Meta Verified bundle, though. The service will also include the following:

• Proactive account monitoring to guard against impersonators,
• Increased reach in search, comments and the Explore Page,
• Live chat support,
• And “exclusive features to express yourself in unique ways.”

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If you’ve logged into Meta’s Creator Studio platform recently, you’ve probably noticed a big change.

Instead of the familiar dashboard, users are now greeted by a pop-up redirecting them to an updated Meta Business Suite.

Source: Meta

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TikTok virality can be a mystery, but apparently, it’s not all up to chance: A Forbes investigation has revealed that staff at TikTok and ByteDance can select individual videos for broader distribution in a practice known as “heating.”

According to an internal document, “The heating feature refers to boosting videos into the For You feed through operation intervention to achieve a certain number of video views. The total video views of heated videos accounts for a large portion of the daily total video views, around 1-2%, which can have a significant impact on overall core metrics.”

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Big news for Instagram fans: the app is making a major change to its navigation bar in February. Starting next month, the Create shortcut is moving from the top navigation to the center of the bottom bar, a spot currently occupied by the Reels button. The Reels shortcut will shift to the right, replacing the Shop button.

“But wait,” you’re thinking, “What does that mean for the Instagram Shop tab?” Don’t worry — Instagram shopping isn’t going away entirely.

Users will still be able to access all their favorite shops through Discover or other channels on Instagram (like ads, in-feed posts, Reels, and Stories). This means shoppable content will likely be spread throughout all aspects of the Instagram experience instead of in its own tab.

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TikTok is rolling out the TikTok Shop feature in the United States. So far, only a limited number of merchants have been invited to test the social commerce solution.

TikTok Shop is already available in the UK and a handful of Asian countries, including Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Phillippines.

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