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August 2022 Social Media Platform Updates

Thursday 1st September 2022

Blog Author Beth Perrin by Beth Perrin

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August 2022 Social Media Platform Updates

Thursday 1st September 2022

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Throughout August, many new features arrived across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more top social media platforms. Plenty of updates have been released to enhance our browsing experiences and make it easier for brands to connect with their fans and customers. Whether you’re a digital marketer, influencer or casual user, read on to find out which tools might be beneficial for you and your strategy!

 

LinkedIn Link Sticker

LinkedIn kicked off the month by announcing the arrival of a new link sticker that users can add to images in their posts, allowing them to drive web traffic from their feeds. It can be placed wherever you like within the frame, and its size can be changed to fit in the desired space, just like the link sticker available on Instagram Stories and Facebook Stories. This offers a more fun and interactive way to encourage clicks or taps through to your website, and might help to generate more engagement than plain text links in the body of a post.


Link Sticker on Linkedin

 

TikTok Advertising Transparency

In order to give users more insight into how their personal data is used for ad targeting in the app, TikTok has introduced a new ‘About this ad’ feature, which will give people the ability to tap on any ad in their feed and view the reasons why it’s being shown to them. The option can be found in the Share menu in the lower right corner of an ad, or by long pressing on it. Here, users will be able to see the factors that have been used to deliver this ad to them, such as their age range, location and TikTok’s estimate of topics they might be interested in. From the ‘About this ad’ page, TikTokers can also access their Ad Personalisation settings and make changes to their preferences in just a few taps.

 

 
 

New Privacy Features on WhatsApp

WhatsApp released a range of new privacy tools, including the ability to leave Groups silently, meaning the full group no longer has to be notified if you choose to leave it. When this option is switched on, only the admins of that group will be alerted. Secondly, users can now choose who can see when they’re online, such as ‘everyone’, ‘my contacts’, ‘my contacts except___’ and ‘nobody’, which could be beneficial when using the app without wanting to be disturbed. Screenshot Blocking has also been introduced for View Once messages (Snapchat-style messages that disappear from the chat after they’ve been opened), which adds an extra layer of protection for images that show private information, such as passwords.

 

 
 

Gender Equality Tools on LinkedIn

As part of its ongoing push to help businesses improve diversity, equity and inclusion, LinkedIn has launched some new prompts in LinkedIn Recruiter called ‘Diversity Nudges’, which will alert hiring professionals as to when they’re not getting enough gender diversity in their candidate search. These notifications will tell managers the male/female ratio of that search, and will recommend ways to expand the candidate search to address the issue, helping to rectify any imbalances in the recruitment process.

 
 

LinkedIn Design Templates

LinkedIn has built a selection of templates for users who want their text posts to stand out in the Feed and grab their audience’s attention (similar to the background colour/pattern option on Facebook), rather than leaving them as plain paragraphs. Simply open up the share box or tap ‘Post’ on mobile, then choose ‘Use a template’, where you can easily create visually engaging content for your followers. Plenty of customisable backgrounds and fonts are available - all you have to do is add your own text and hit Share.


Linkedin Design Templates

 
 

New Reels Tools for Facebook & Instagram

Meta announced some updates for Reels, across both Facebook and Instagram. Firstly, the Add Yours sticker from Stories is now available for Reels, which will prompt others to share their own Reels in response to a topic of your choice. Secondly, a new auto-creation option for Facebook Reels will enable users to automatically convert their archived Stories into Reels clips. You’ll soon see a ‘Create from your Story archive’ button within the Reels creation process, which will let you convert your Stories into Reels clips quickly and easily. Reels performance insights are also being added the to Creator Studio - including reach, minutes viewed and average watch time - so that creators can access valuable data and reports regarding the effectiveness of their Reels, and make changes to their strategy if needed.

 

 
 

New Shopping Ads on TikTok

TikTok introduced three new Shopping Ad formats, which it has described as “simpler, smarter, and more advanced ad solutions that help brands meet shoppers wherever they are in the purchase journey, sparking demand and boosting sales”. The three ad types are: Video Shopping Ads, Catalogue Listing Ads, and LIVE Shopping Ads, all of which aim to simplify the buying experience and unlock the potential of brands’ product catalogues. They are still currently in the development phase, but once they have been fully rolled out they will be accessible under the Product Sales objective in TikTok Ads Manager.

 

 
 

Automatic Watermarks on YouTube Shorts

YouTube is taking steps to stop users from re-posting Shorts to other apps (or at least show where they were originally created), with the addition of a new watermark on downloaded Shorts, just like when you download a TikTok. With Instagram already deliberately limiting the reach of watermarked content, it’s becoming clear that platforms only want their users to create original clips using the built-in camera rather than copying the same videos across platforms, so it makes sense for YouTube to follow suit. What do you think of watermarked content and cross-platform sharing?

 
 

Hosted Checkout on Pinterest

Shopify merchants on Pinterest can now maximise their in-stream sales with the addition of a new conversion process that will make it faster and simpler for users to buy directly from their Pin listings. Usually, when people want to shop from a product Pin, there are several steps before the final purchase - they click the Pin, visit the retailer’s own site and then follow extra steps to add products to their cart, before entering payment and shipping details. However, Hosted Checkout removes many of these steps, meaning customers can now browse, click and buy without having to leave the Pinterest shopping experience.

 
 

Podcast Integration on Twitter Spaces

Podcasts will now be available on Twitter as a part of the platform’s newly redesigned Spaces Tab. The redesign introduces personalised hubs that group audio content together, based on specific themes such as News, Music, Sports, and more, so listeners can easily access a more individual selection of live and recorded Spaces which relate to the topics they’re most interested in. Some of the most popular and engaging podcasts from around the world will also be displayed here, and will be shown to users who have engaged with similar content elsewhere on Twitter.

 

 
 

Pinned Replies on LinkedIn

LinkedIn users can now pin a comment within the reply section under their posts, which could help to highlight the best responses, spark more engagement and develop insightful discussions. Simply click on the three dots in the corner of the comment you’d like to pin and choose ‘Pin comment’, which will then keep that specific reply at the top of the chain instead of getting buried amongst the rest of your audience’s responses. (A similar option might be coming to Twitter soon too!)

 
 

Snapchat Dual Camera

Emerging social app BeReal is rapidly growing in popularity, recently reaching a whopping 10 million daily users - and as a result, it’s beginning to influence some of the new features we’re seeing on other social media platforms. The app’s unique Dual Camera option seems to be of particular interest, with Snapchat deciding to launch the same tool for its users just a few days ago (and Instagram has also hinted at a similar update in a series of ongoing tests!). Snapchatters can now record content using both the front and back cameras on their phones at the same time, with the ability to split the two videos vertically, horizontally, picture-in-picture or as a green-screen style cutout.

 

 
 

Circles for Everyone on Twitter

Back in May this year, Twitter began testing a new option called Circles, which allows users to choose a group of up to 150 of their followers to view certain Tweets instead of them being publicly available for everyone to see. Following a positive response to the trial, Twitter has rolled the feature out to all users, meaning anyone with an account can now select individual audiences for each of their Tweets. Twitter hopes this update will “make it easier to have more intimate conversations and build closer connections with select followers”.

You can adjust who’s in or out of your Circle at any time, and no-one will be notified of any changes you make to your Circle. Tweets sent to your Circle will appear with a green badge underneath them, and they can only be seen by those in the group. They can’t be retweeted or shared, plus all replies to these Tweets will be private, even if your Twitter account is public.

 

 
 

Group Invite Links on Messenger

At the end of the month, Head of Messenger at Meta, Loredana Crisan, announced that group chat admins now have the capacity to create and share links to their group, providing a quick and simple way for them to invite people to join. Messenger explained: “This highly requested feature will make it easier than ever to connect with family, friends and communities, eliminating the need to search for and add group members individually”. In order to maintain control over the group and protect its security, only the admin can turn the group link on or off, and they have the option to approve new members before letting them in.

 

 
 

Summary

What were your favourite new arrivals throughout August? We’re always on the lookout for fresh ways for brands to engage and interact with their audiences, as well as any updates that make our social media experiences more streamlined and hassle-free, so tweet us @3sixfivepro and let us know if we’ve missed anything this month!


 
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