Welcome to Social Media Buzz Weekly, your weekly bulletin of the latest social media updates. With the social media landscape evolving with each passing day, it can be challenging to keep a tab on the rapid developments. Well, not anymore, as we have taken it upon ourselves to keep you abreast of every happening in the social media space.
So, without any further ado, let’s look at some of the most significant developments from the last week in the world of social media.
1. Meta Experiments With Facial Recognition for Security Purposes
Meta is testing a new facial matching process to help identify “celeb-bait,” which is where scammers use images of public figures in order to bait people into engaging with ads that then lead to scam websites.
In this new process, Meta is matching the faces used in ads to high profile users, and where there’s a match, confirming with the users’ official profile as to whether it’s a legitimate, endorsed promotion. Meta has faced various challenges in utilizing facial recognition in the past, with privacy advocates raising concerns that such data could be used for malicious purpose, if it were to fall into the wrong hands.
Back in 2021, Meta shut down its face recognition processes on Facebook entirely, amid a broader shift in policy designed to distance the platform from the controversies of its past.
2. Meta May Make It Easier to Customize AI Chats
Meta could soon let you refine its AI chatbot responses based on your personal preferences, with a new AI “Memory” option discovered in the back-end code of the latest version of WhatsApp.
Meta’s new AI Memory element could soon be available within the Meta AI chat info overview. You could ask Meta AI to remember to refer to you by a different name, or to remember your dietary preferences when recommending food ideas, or to apply certain rules or restrictions to its responses. Which would effectively enable you to customize your AI chatbot experience, within certain parameters, ensuring personalized, tailored responses fit for your own purpose.
3. Meta Announces a New Round of Job Cuts
Despite the company’s strong financial performance, Meta’s undertaking another round of job cuts, impacting various roles and teams within the group.
The changes appear to be spread across various teams, rather than targeting one specific aspect, with Meta trimming down its labor outlay across the board. Around 100 roles, in total, are being made redundant. Among those impacted is reverse engineering legend Jane Manchun Wong, who’s been a key source of info for SMT over the years. Wong has only worked at Meta for a relatively short time, primarily focused on Threads.
Last year, Meta culled around 20,000 roles, as part of its “Year of Efficiency” push, with the justification being that Meta has become too bloated, particularly in the wake of the COVID downturn, and therefore needed to refocus and realign itself with modern market requirements.
4. Meta Announces New Measures to Combat Sextortion Scammers
Meta has announced some new measures to combat the rise of sextortion scams, which is the fastest-growing cybercrime, now impacting thousands of Facebook and IG users. Indeed, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), sextortion cases have risen by 300% over the past three years.
Meta is increasing its detection measures to highlight potential sextortion accounts, with new elements displayed on connection requests that highlight possible elements of concern. Now, Instagram connection requests sent to teen users will include notes on how long the account has been active, whether it’s based in another country, and if you don’t have any mutual followers. The new signals will help young users make more informed choices about who they connect with, which could stop sextortion scammers in their tracks.
5. TikTok Partners With MLS on Exclusive Live Stream Event
TikTok is looking to make a bigger push into sports, this time via a live-stream of Inter Miami’s upcoming finals match in the MLS, though with a catch that leans more into how Twitter has sought to integrate live sports coverage.
In Inter Miami’s upcoming final, fans will be able to watch a live-stream focused specifically on Miami captain Lionel Messi, with a player spotlight cam dedicated to Messi during play. TikTok has become a key hub for sports-related content, particularly among younger users. Indeed, TikTok says that its users have posted over 7 million soccer-related posts in 2024 alone, while MLS has the largest international audience across North American sports leagues on the platform.
6. TikTok Partners With British Beauty Council To Boost Live Sales
TikTok continues to push its in-stream shopping options, this time via a new partnership with the British Beauty Council, which will see TikTok offering platform growth advice to various U.K. beauty brands.
The British Beauty Council is an industry group that advocates for the broader beauty industry, and as such, has connections to many U.K. beauty brands. The partnership with TikTok will provide direct connection through to these businesses, in order to help them tap into rising opportunities in the app. Through this partnership, TikTok Shop will be lifting the lid on how beauty brands can win at LIVE shopping sessions on the platform, learning best-in-class tips of the trade from one of TikTok Shop’s best performing LIVE beauty sellers.
7. Instagram Launches New Profile Cards
After testing them out with selected creators over the past couple of months, Instagram has now announced a broader launch of its new profile cards, which provide a simple way to link people through to your IG presence.
Intagram’s updated profile cards, which are being made available to all users from today, are digitally flippable panels, which provide a QR code for immediate connection on one side, and a profile overview and summary on the other. The profile overview includes your image and bio, while it’ll also list your profile category and business links (for creator accounts). You can also include a song to play when your card is opened, and edit the background of the card with an image of your choice.
8. X Moves to the Next Stage of Diluting the Power of Blocking
Social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, has announced a significant change to its blocking mechanism, prioritizing transparency.
Previously, when a user blocked another, the blocked user was completely barred from accessing the blocker’s tweets. However, under the new system, only private tweets will remain hidden from blocked users. This means that blocked users will still be able to view public tweets, though they will be limited in their ability to interact with the content. They won't be able to like, reply, or repost tweets from the user who has blocked them.
This shift in policy is a notable move towards increased transparency on the platform. While it might raise concerns about unwanted interactions, it also aligns with the platform's growing focus on open discourse and accessibility of information.
9. EU Commission Confirms That X Doesn’t Qualify as Key Business Platform
The European Commission has confirmed that the platform formerly known as Twitter does not currently qualify as a “Gatekeeper” platform under the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA), which means that X won’t have to adhere to EU rules around access and collaboration, as part of anti-monopoly regulations.
Under the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA), platforms identified as gatekeepers must enable third party systems to inter-operate with their services (e.g. Meta needs to let other messaging apps send messages to WhatsApp), while they also need to let business users access the data that they generate in their use of the platform, and provide ad performance info for independent verification.
The aim, essentially, is to ensure fair competition in the market, by making it harder for the tech giants to squeeze smaller players out due to their dominant position. And after investigation, the EU has decided that X won’t be held to these requirements.
Wrapping Up
And that was a wrap of this week’s Social Media Buzz. We’ll be back next week with more news and updates for you from the social media world. Till then, stay tuned!
If you want to read more on the latest developments taking place in the social media space, take a look at ClickInsights’ Social Media Buzz, wherein we bring to you monthly reports on everything going on in social media, ranging from platform updates to policy changes that influence the way we market.
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