Social Media Buzz Weekly: Roundup of Social Media Updates

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 Announces New Video Features for Facebook as It Looks to Align With Broader Usage Trends

https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/17/facebook-is-trying-to-be-bullish-on-video-again-with-new-discovery-and-editing-tools/

Meta’s announced some new video enhancements for Facebook, as it continues to evolve from a social app into an entertainment platform, in line with broader industry trends. Firstly, Meta’s renaming its ‘Watch’ tab to ‘Video’, which is more representative of the platform’s expanded video offerings, beyond its dedicated programming in the original Watch feed. Meta says that a new ‘Video’ tab will be appearing in the main UI of the app shortly.

Along a similar line, Meta’s also redesigned its video Explore elements, in order to better highlight popular video topics. The updated video Explore will highlight trending topics for each user, via a mix of human curation and machine learning. That, ideally, will get more people spending more time scrolling through the video feed, and discovering more top-performing content of relevance to them. Meta’s also looking to facilitate more short-form video creation, by integrating the Reels editing tools into the main feed.

2. Meta Adds Avatar-Enabled Video Calls, More Avatar Engagement Options

https://innovation-village.com/meta-enables-instant-avatar-face-swapping-during-video-calls-for-moments-when-youre-not-camera-ready/

Meta’s added another avatar option, with users now able to conduct video calls, on Instagram and Messenger, through their Meta character.

Meta’s video call avatars, which will be available in one tap from the camera, will respond to how your face moves, enabling you to interact via your Meta cartoon depiction. Meta’s also rolling out animated avatar stickers in Instagram and Facebook Stories and Reels, Facebook comments, and 1:1 message threads on Messenger and Instagram. Moreover, Meta’s adding avatar tagging in stickers, ’so you and your friends’ avatars can hang out and do things together in the metaverse just like you do IRL’.

3. TikTok Enables Passkey Access on iOS, Improving Account Security

https://appmaster.io/news/tiktok-integrates-ios-passkeys

TikTok’s adding another account safety provision, with iOS users now able to activate passkey access, which will enable them to log into the app using on-device biometric authentication options, like Face or Touch ID. That’ll reduce reliance on text-based passwords, enabling more security, and restricting the capacity for hackers to steal your info or profile in the app.

It’s a more advanced way to ensure protected access, which is both simple to use and much more difficult to crack. Eventually, TikTok will be looking to enable broader access to these more advanced log-in options, but to begin with, only iOS users will be able to utilize the option.

4. TikTok Tests New ‘Shop’ Feed with Selected Users

https://socialbarrel.com/tiktok-is-testing-new-shop-feed-with-a-handful-of-users/141805/

TikTok continues to experiment with new ways to integrate shopping into the app, this time via a new ‘Shop’ tab, side swipeable from the main screen, that’s appearing for some users.

As a result, some users are now seeing a third ‘Shop’ tab in the app, alongside the usual ‘Following and ‘For You’. It’s the latest eCommerce experiment in the app, which has been working to find the best way to prompt more purchase behavior, in line with how Asian users have warmed to its in-stream shopping options.

5. Instagram Announces Tighter Rate Limits on Threads to Combat Spam Attacks

https://www.cnbctv18.com/technology/threads-announces-rate-limits-to-fight-spam-attacks-elon-musk-replies-17248831.htm

Amid rising issues with data scraping, as generative AI projects look for inputs to feed into their systems, and scammers seek out new vulnerabilities in apps, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri has announced that they’ll be introducing tighter rate limits on Threads, its new Twitter-like app.

Meta’s implementing rate limits to protect users from spam attacks in the new app, but it may also be related to data scraping, which was the key motivator for Twitter introducing its own rate limits recently, which have been widely criticized by Twitter users and tech analysts alike.

6. Instagram Chief Says EU Access to Threads Could Take Months, User Retention ‘Better Than Expected’

https://drunkonsocial.com/instagram/instagram-chief-says-eu-threads-access-could-take-months/

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri has said that it’ll likely be ‘many months’ before the app is available in Europe.

Threads has been made available virtually everywhere but Europe, due to the expanding requirements of the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA), which is designed to protect user privacy, and provide control over data usage, while also mitigating monopoly-type behavior by the tech giants. The DMA specifically takes aim at large corporations that have outsized control over how users access apps and other connective processes. A key aim of the act is to stop Google and Apple from misusing their market power to prioritize their own products, but in this context, that also applies to Meta, as Threads is essentially a derivative of Instagram.

7. Twitter Rolls Out Communities Promotion Module for Profiles to All Users

https://www.redmention.com/news/twitter-rolls-out-communities-promotion-module-for-profiles-to-all-customers-2/

Twitter has released its Community Spotlight profile module to all Professional Profile users, which enables you to showcase a chosen community above your tweet feed on your Twitter presence. Community Spotlight is now available to all community admins and mods who have also switched to a professional profile in the app.

Twitter first began testing this in October last year, with selected creators invited to showcase their communities. Now it’s being made more widely available. The option is currently available on desktop only, but the module itself, once activated, is visible on all devices.

8. Twitter Implements New DM Filtering to Combat Spam Messages

https://themessenger.com/tech/twitter-introduces-new-message-filter-to-combat-twitter-blue-spam-mail

Twitter’s making a change to its DM options, which will give users more control over who can and can’t message them in the app, with a new restriction option that will relate to Twitter Blue users specifically.

Coming into effect from 14th July, Twitter’s adding a new message setting that should help reduce the number of spam messages in DMs. With the new setting enabled, messages from users who you follow will arrive in your primary inbox, and messages from verified users who you don’t follow will be sent to your message request inbox.

9. Twitter Will Soon Enable Users to Hide Their Blue Checkmark, Along With Tweet Likes and In-App Subscriptions

https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2023/07/twitters-hide-and-seek-disappearing.html

Twitter’s working on new options that would enable users to hide their tweet likes, as well as the list of who they subscribe to in the app.

Twitter’s been developing this for some time, with Twitter Blue subscribers soon set to get access to a new toggle that will mask their blue tick. Twitter’s blue tick toggle will also include a warning that some actions may still reveal that you’re paying for the app – like posting longer tweets or using its text editing tools – while some other Blue functions may not be available to you if you deactivate the marker.

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.