This month in social media (December 2019)

As we head towards the end of the year and decade, social channels are releasing their end of year lists of the best tweets, TikTok videos and memes to celebrate a successful year in the industry. Who remembers the world record egg? The growth in popularity of twitter threads? ‘Old Town Road’ taking over our timelines? There was more to social media than just news and politics in 2019…

The key focus in the industry for December, however, was security, with channels such as Facebook and Instagram adding new features to ensure the social networks are as secure as possible for both consumers and businesses.

Instagram warnings for “potentially offensive” captions

Following on from the announcement that Instagram is now enforcing age restrictions on the app, asking people to input their date of birth before signing up, it has also announced that it is testing a feature for businesses to have an age limit on who can follow the account (18+ for alcohol brands etc.).

With this in mind, it seems like security is what they are focusing on to finish up the decade in which it launched. To go along with this, they have released an AI-powered tool that analyses captions in real-time, ensuring that offensive comments are less likely to be posted across accounts. The tool will notify the user who is about to post the offensive comment, asking them to edit before posting, whether they want to learn more about why it is offensive, or it gives them an option to share it anyway (however, this is the last option and not what Instagram recommends). The way the AI-powered tool works is it works off other comments that people have reported in the past.

Automatic approvals for Facebook Group members

This is an update specifically for those businesses who utilise Facebook’s Group feature, which has grown in popularity across the year. Again, focused around security, there is now a feature to pick and choose exactly who is a member of the group, but without the hassle of doing this manually, taking up a lot of social media manager’s time.

So what filters can you set for automatic approvals? You can filter it to your own bespoke questionnaire that potential members need to fill in before being accepted, which would allow you to set answers as correct answers for approval. You can also automatically approve the accounts of the city or location they are based, and set a certain mile radius for this, along with anyone who is friends with members who are already in the group, and new Facebook accounts. Pretty handy right?

An insight into Pinterest’s top search trends

Finally, for December, is the recent update from the popular photo based social channel, Pinterest, who have now made it easier than ever to see the top search terms on the platform. This is very handy, as the main focus of Pinterest is to discover and get inspired, so it seems a right fit for them to have a top search terms feature.

They’ve called it “Pinterest Trends” and it is currently being rolled out across a select few countries before it potentially becomes available worldwide. It gives users and businesses a better understanding of how certain content may perform on Pinterest. This can be set across a 12-month timespan, letting you compare certain trends across seasons to know the best time to post about a certain subject. An example of this would be “grilling recipes” being more popular in summer, compared to “slow cooker recipes” in winter. Search queries will also have auto-complete suggestions for those who don’t know where to start.

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