Even though the summer is the time for people to relax and unwind, social media has not. Platforms such as YouTube, Pinterest, and TikTok have not slowed down in terms of updates and new features. Here is all you need to know about the latest in digital marketing and industry news from this past month!
Social Media Updates
Instagram’s Chief Says It Will Halt Its Full-Screen Format Test, Scale Back AI-Recommended Posts
After American media personality, socialite, model, and businesswoman, Kylie Jenner shared a post of a new trending petition to ‘Make Instagram, Instagram Again’, Instagram Chief Adam Mosseri and CEO Mark Zuckerberg put out a public response. The Change.org petition calls for reverting the app back to how it was before the platform began inserting much more video and recommended content into people’s home feeds. Mosseri and Zuckerberg came forward to explain the reasons behind these changes, including the need to keep up with trends, people’s interest, advertising potential, and to increase AI recommendations. However, Mosseri made a statement saying that Instagram will be taking a step back in recommended content and it’s experiments with a full screen format. Instagram will also back track to fix any ranking and recommend content issues before moving forward to new features.
YouTube Creators Can Now Quickly Make Shorts from Their Long-Form Videos
YouTube has recently launched its YouTube Shorts feature, which is no more than 60-second videos to compete with TikTok. YouTube, known for its long-form videos, has now made a tool for creators to extract clips from their long videos to easily create Shorts. Only the creator of the video will be able to access the footage to make a short clip. There is no need to use the full 60 seconds, but if creators have some time to spare, they can continue to add new footage to their shorts in addition to their reused footage. Another great feature to this is that YouTube will automatically insert a link to your long form video in your short. This new tool will only be available in the YouTube app.
TikTok Is Adding a Rating System to Prevent Children from Seeing ‘Mature’ Content
Like movies and video games, TikTok will be enacting a content maturity rating system to prevent younger audiences from seeing videos that are inappropriate. The rating system will be based on “thematic maturity” flagging videos that contain mature or complex themes and assigning them a maturity score to determine if these videos can or cannot appear in the feeds of those under 18. It is unclear how TikTok will verify whether a user is 18 since the full version of the app is available to those 13 and up. Currently TikTok, asks for a photo id of the user if they try to change their age, but not when they initially sign up.
Twitter Launches Initial Test of Collaborative Tweets
Since the rise of TikTok, it seems that other platforms continue to create features for co-creation. As Facebook and Instagram have already made efforts to do so, Twitter is now stepping up by creating collaborative Tweets. When posting a tweet, you can invite someone to collaborate with you and share the post from both of you rather than one. Collaborative Tweets can be great for cross-promotions, influencer collaborations, and help to give credit and bring awareness to original creators. This feature is currently in limited testing in parts of the US, Canada, and Korea.
Pinterest Launches Real-Time Analytics in Its Mobile App
Marketers can now view real-time data on their pins within Pin Analytics on mobile. This data is not available for audience metrics, like total engaged monthly audience, age, and gender filters. Just remember, these pins take time to show its effectiveness, so don’t over-think the data after a short period of time. This latest update could help marketers to maximize their holiday campaigns.
Meta Publishes First Ever Human Rights Report, Examining Key Policy Stances, and Evolution
Meta has released its first annual Human Rights Report. In its 83 pages, the report provides insight into how the company is working to address human rights concerns from its products, policies, and business practices. Their principles are for the right to freedom of expression, the right to privacy, the right to equality and non-discrimination, child protection, and more. These principles will also be integrated into the VR Metaverse. Meta’s mission statement is to build community and bring the world closer together.
Industry News
Google Analytics 4 Now Reports on Performance Max & Smart Shopping
Google has updated reports for GA4, which now counts traffic from Performance Max and Smart Shopping campaigns. This data is listed under a new channel group called “cross-network” which is listed alongside other channel groups such as Organic Search, Paid Search, Paid Social, and Display. This update will make it easier to determine where your traffic is generated from to best reach your marketing goals.
What’s the biggest news that stood out to you this month? Let us know in the comments below!