This month in social (April 2023)

Wowee, what an April! There’s been a lot of news in the social media landscape, and I’ve cherry picked the very best snippets of information I could find, to bring to you here. Click the links below to be taken to the top news of the month per platform:

Meta

In a bid to get Facebook Stories on the Meta radar, they have started to use an automated Stories generation process that uses image recognition AI to create new Stories from shared content.

Facebook are calling them Advanced Stories, they (described by FB):

Allow Facebook to suggest high-quality, ready-made stories for you using advanced photo and video data, including image quality, location, the presence of people or animals.

The infamous “volume fumble”* dance will no longer be an issue with Meta’s latest update to Reels and Stories. Meta is working to address audio inconsistencies across short-form videos, so there’ll be no more dancing with your volume keys.

*When you’re scrolling through Reels/Stories and there is a huge discrepancy in volume

The latest updates from the Instasphere are designed to help Reels creators tap into the latest trends and shifts, in order to maximize viewer engagement, and build community around their content.

Creators will be able to see trending audio from their professional dashboard… as well as hashtag trends and usage insights. Although TikTok’s version is more in depth, these updates are similar to TikTok’s Creative Center tools, which provide the same insights across basically every element of TikTok’s trending clips.

Twitter

It’s not what you think!

However, there’s been yet another blow for Twitter’s ad business. In the form of Microsoft removing Twitter from its Digital Marketing Center management element, starting the week commencing 24th April 2023.

While there is no official reason for Microsoft’s decision, Elon Musk weighed in on his platform:

They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2023

For accounts with over a million followers, Twitter is reinstating their blue checkmarks. This comes after Musk tried to get those who wanted a blue checkmark to pay c.8$ per month for the privilege. So far, only 19K of the 407K legacy blue profiles have reinstated the checkmark… oh dear!

Many high-profile users publicly refused to pay, with some suggesting that it’s actually them that bring value to the app, not the other way around.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s looking to help businesses further showcase their alignment with causes, with a new expansion of its Company Commitments feature, which it initially launched back in September. They say it’s to help build like-minded staff that can identify with a brand. Creators will also be able to share their commitments on the company’s feed, which provides further opportunity to showcase the feature.

For many social platforms, verification is at the heart of privacy – amid rising concerns around identity theft, and realistic looking AI-driven profiles. LinkedIn is also looking to add more identity features, providing more ways for people to prove that they are who they claim, including ID verification, workplace confirmation, and more.

LinkedIn will be partnering with identity platform; CLEAR to provide a new way to identify yourself.

The latest platform to add algorithmically recommended posts from across its network, LinkedIn is supplying users’ with “suggested content” based on their interests and engagement activity. They hope to follow in the footsteps of TikTok where content is based on what you engage with, not just who you follow – this will (hopefully) lead to higher levels of engagement… and a more compelling feed for users.

In addition to this algorithmic update, LinkedIn has shared insights into how its feed algorithm works in the hopes to highlight its spam tackling efforts. While LinkedIn is more aligned with building a community and providing relevant content for its users – this overview could offer a helping hand to your strategic planning – or at the least, it’ll help you understand the factors that weigh into LinkedIn’s algorithmic flow, which ultimately dictates post reach.

Virality isn’t at the top of LinkedIn’s algorithm priorities, and I emphasize that it wants its members to post content to help others, not with the purpose of going viral.

Other

TikTok’s game is strong, but with the growth of short-form video advertising – will it’s reign soon come to an end? While this type of advertising may not necessarily be a bad thing either, the amount of competition that seems to be endlessly growing could prove harmful to the social media giant. Momentum for advertising on Reels is growing, with the gap closing (albeit slowly) between Meta Reels and TikTok.