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April 2022 Social Media Platform Updates

Thursday 5th May 2022

Blog Author Beth Perrin by Beth Perrin
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April 2022 Social Media Platform Updates

Thursday 5th May 2022

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Can you believe we’re already heading towards the halfway point of 2022? May is here and that means it’s time to look back over all of the useful updates that were released by our favourite social media platforms throughout April. Whether you’re an individual user or a brand marketer, read on to discover which new features might be beneficial for you or your business.


Share to Reels on Facebook

With interest in short-form video continuing to rise, Meta kicked off the month by introducing another way to lean into the trend: a new ‘Share to Reels’ option for third-party developers, which will make it easier for users of non-Meta apps to share their video creations directly to Facebook Reels. Therefore, even if a video has been created using a different social media platform or app, it can be seamlessly shared onto Facebook in order to maximise exposure and engagement.


 

Climate Change Misinformation Ban on Pinterest

In order to combat the concerning rise in climate change misinformation on social media, Pinterest has enforced a new policy which aims to prevent false claims about the subject from being posted and shared on its platform. This makes Pinterest the only major digital platform to implement a full ban on this harmful form of content so far (Twitter also unveiled a similar policy later in the month, but only for paid ads, not posts). In line with the policy, Pinterest will now remove:

• Content that denies the existence or impacts of climate change, the human influence on climate change, or that climate change is backed by scientific consensus

• False or misleading content about climate change solutions that contradict well-established scientific consensus

• Content that misrepresents scientific data, including by omission or cherry-picking, in order to erode trust in climate science and experts

• Harmful, false or misleading content about public safety emergencies, including natural disasters and extreme weather events


 
 

Removal of In-Stream Ads on Instagram

As part of its ongoing overhaul of its video features (which also included the recent removal of its sister app IGTV), Instagram has now removed its in-stream video ad placement, meaning that Reels and Stories are now the only two options for video advertising. This is in line with Adam Mosseri’s 2022 mission statement last December, in which he explained: “We’re going to double-down on our focus on video and consolidate all of our video formats around Reels”.


 
 

Unmention Option on Twitter

Twitter has released an initial live test of its new ‘unmention’ option, which will enable users to remove themselves from conversations if they no longer feel comfortable being involved. If you select this option, your username will be untagged from the original tweet and replies, other users won’t be able to mention you again within the same reply chain, and you will no longer be notified about further updates to the discussion. Your username will still appear in the initial tweet(s) that you were mentioned in, but it won’t be a clickable/tappable link, and you won’t be an active part of the exchange anymore. It’s essentially ​​a text-based version of the ‘Untag’ tool offered by most social media platforms which allows you to remove your name if you get tagged in a photo you’re not happy with.


 
 

Improved Subtitles and Captions on Youtube & TikTok

Both YouTube and TikTok have taken steps to improve accessibility this month, by upgrading their video subtitles and captions. YouTube’s Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan announced that creators can now outsource the addition of subtitles to a third party or editor within the YouTube Studio app thanks to the new ‘Subtitles editor’ role which now appears in the Permissions section (similar to Page Roles on Facebook).

As for TikTok, the platform has decided to turn on English auto-captions by default for all uploads. TikTokers can still include their own captions instead if they prefer, but if they choose not to, the platform will now auto-generate them instead of leaving the video captionless, as it did previously.


 
 

Pinned Posts on Instagram

Twitter and Facebook users have been able to pin a specific post or tweet to the top of their page for a long time, but other than the Story Highlights tool, a similar option has never been available on Instagram. However, thanks to an ongoing test, some users are now able to select a ‘Pin to Your Profile’ option on their posts, which enables them to stick 3 of their favourite pictures to the top of their post grid on their profile. This provides a great way to showcase your favourite or best-performing content, or could be used by businesses and brands as an ‘introduction’ panel to welcome newcomers to their page.


 
 

WooCommerce Partnership on Pinterest

With social commerce continuing to soar in popularity, our favourite social media sites are beginning to partner up with more and more eCommerce platforms to offer direct storefront integration and streamline the checkout process. Pinterest is no exception, so as part of its “broader commitment to becoming the most inspiring shopping destination online”, it recently unveiled a new partnership with WooCommerce, which will enable WooCommerce’s 3 million merchants to convert their product catalogues into shoppable Pins.


 
 

WhatsApp Communities

Halfway through the month, WhatsApp announced that a new feature will be coming to the platform later this year called Communities. This tool will provide additional functionality for group chats in the app, and includes a range of new abilities such as large file sharing (up to 2GB) so people can easily collaborate on projects, emoji reactions, group audio calls for as many as 32 people and the capacity for admins to delete unwanted messages from everyone’s chats.

WhatsApp says that Communities will be great for “close-knit groups” like schools, local clubs, non-profit organisations, members of religious congregations and small businesses. The platform has also stated that it’s proud to be supporting the intimate groups that are part of our daily lives instead of building large-scale chat tools for hundreds of thousands of people, like other messaging apps are doing.


 
 

‘Recent’ Hashtag Tab Removal on Instagram

Instagram launched another test for a small group of users which involves the removal of the ‘Recent’ tab from hashtags. For these users, instead of seeing the usual ‘Top’, ‘Recent’ and ‘Reels’ tabs displayed at the top of the page after tapping on a hashtag, they will now only see ‘Top’ and ‘Reels’. Instagram wants to find out if this will help people connect with more interesting and relevant content through hashtags - plus, it will help prevent ‘growth hackers’ who are notorious for spam-tagging their posts with lots of irrelevant hashtags in order to unfairly push their content to the top of the ‘Recent’ section. However, this update could make things more difficult for users who genuinely want to see the most recent posts that have been added to a hashtag; for example, when carrying out Social Listening.


 
 

Linkedin Profile Links

Up until now, only businesses have been able to showcase a link on their LinkedIn pages - but now, this option is available for individual user profiles too. You can pick any URL and display it below your name and bio, plus you can customise the link text to create your own enticing CTA depending on what the link points to. As you can see in the example below from social media expert Matt Navarra, he has chosen to add a link to his newsletter, with the custom link text being the newsletter’s title and how many subscribers it currently has.


 
 

Summary

Did you or your business take advantage of any fresh social features throughout April? What other new arrivals are you hoping to see over the coming months? If you’ve discovered a better way to interact with your audience, enhance your customer service or boost the impact of your marketing content, share your thoughts with us on Twitter @3sixfivepro.


 
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