What’s New in the World of Social Media? August Edition

By Matter

From the newest social platforms, to changes to your old favorites, here is the latest in social media news that you should be aware of.

Facebook Limits Video Clickbait

As part of Facebook’s larger effort to improve user experience, the company will begin to demote posts containing two kinds of video clickbait. According to Social Times, stories containing images with fake video play buttons and videos containing static images will be demoted in the News Feed in an effort to discourage spammers.

A New Mobile Look for the Facebook Feed

In a blog post by Facebook’s design team, a new release of changes was explained. The changes, which focused on the News Feed, should make it easier to read, more engaging, and easier to leave feedback. The team decided to change the comments section to include round message bubbles, remove story titles, eliminate empty space, and more.

Amazon Gets Social with Spark

Not content with moving into the food industry, Amazon has its eye on the social space as well. Amazon Spark, a social feed of user-posted images, debuted in July and might someday be a potential competitor to inspiration-fueling social channels like Pinterest and Instagram. According to Adweek, users can curate content by following specific interests and people. For now, Spark is available exclusively to Prime members.

LinkedIn Builds Out Sharing Options + Adds Comment Filter

According to the Social Times, LinkedIn introduced three new features: enabling users to share drafts of articles to specific users, providing the capability to disable comments, and sharing content with anyone on the web. All of these efforts coincide with LinkedIn’s central goal of attracting more users on a daily basis and becoming more of a hub for social sharing in the mold of larger, consumer-facing platforms.

Instagram Allows Promotion of Multi-Photo + Multi-Video Posts

Since February, Instagram has allowed business and personal accounts to include up to 10 photos and/or videos in a single post. Now, businesses have the option to promote these carousel posts. According to Adweek, in the same fashion as a regular promoted post, brands will be able to add paid support via the “promote” button located at the bottom of the content and select from the following objectives: more profile visits, more website visits, and reaching users located near a specific address. Considering the amount of content that can be included within one of these mixed media posts, this is one more way that organizations can get creative when telling a story to users.  

BuzzFeed Livestreamed Twitter Show to Debut in September

According to the Social Times, Twitter and BuzzFeed News are creating a new morning show focused on “fire tweets” that will feature reporters and special guests. The show is set to launch September 25th and is titled “AM to DM.” It will be available free-of-charge to logged-in and logged-out Twitter users weekdays from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. ET on @BuzzFeedNews. Reporters, editors, and special guests will discuss the day’s top stories, bringing headlines from BuzzFeed News reporters all over the world.

Facebook Expands Related Articles Test in Battle Against “Fake News”

According to Adweek, Facebook is taking quality control a step further with smarter technology to detect hoax news articles, or “fake news,” as some have termed it. The company will begin using machine learning to identify more potential fake news and share that content with third-party fact checkers. The fact checkers will then share updates below the original post.

Pinterest Pushes Search and ‘Lens’

In a recent blog post, Pinterest announced the addition of a new search bar and ‘Lens’ option in their app. The search bar allows users to type in exactly what they are looking for and the ‘Lens’ allows users to snap a picture of something they find interesting and get related items. Both of these items will be “front and center” within the app for ease of use.

Facebook Puts Even More of a Premium on Fast Load Time

Facebook is increasingly sifting content by speed, prioritizing stories that load quickly on mobile at the expense of those that take longer. According to Newsroom, in the coming months, stories that load the quickest will rise to the top of feed, while slower content will remain towards the bottom.

LinkedIn Adds Audience Demographics for Website Visitation

LinkedIn announced the launch of LinkedIn Website Demographics, a new feature that enables brands to tap into data from the professional network to see who has been visiting their websites. Brands will be able to add the “Insight Tag” to their website, create audiences to track, and apply those insights to their marketing strategies.

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