As our favorite month of fireworks and beach days comes to a close, we have to remember the ever-changing world of social media platforms. This past month, we saw quite a few updates that will impact day-to-day usage and long-term strategies. From WhatsApp to Facebook, here are the things you need to know in social news and updates.
LinkedIn Adds Multi-Photo Post Capability
LinkedIn iOS users can now share multiple photos in a single post and soon enough, Android users and desktop users will be able to do the same. As LinkedIn notes, there’s some nice opportunity here for social marketers to get more creative with company culture posts, scenes from industry events and more.
WhatsApp Moving Towards Monetization?
Since Facebook purchased WhatsApp in 2014, there hasn’t been much movement to make money off the messenger service, which counts more than 1 billion users around the world. According to Adweek, that may be starting to change based on a few recent job listings. The new postings are soliciting applications for a product manager, product marketing manager and public policy manager, all of which reference upcoming “monetization efforts.”
Twitter Taking 10x the Action on Abusive Accounts
According to Adweek, Twitter is making strides to make the platform a safer place with less harassment and toxicity. According to the VP of Engineering, Ed Ho, in 2017, the platform has taken action on ten times as many abusive accounts each day as it did last year. Twitter is also making it more difficult for repeat offenders to create new accounts and more.
Facebook Removes Link Preview Edit Function
As part of the ongoing efforts to tamp down on “fake news,” Facebook is changing the way that business pages (and everyone else) can publish links. Up to this point, it’s been possible – and highly advisable – to edit link posts before taking them live, because a more suitable photo or catchier headline often drives more clicks. Unfortunately, this functionality can also be used to create spam and misleading content, which is exactly what’s happened and what Facebook is trying to stop.
Facebook To Add Subscription-Based News Service, Paywalls
Facebook is set to start testing a subscription-based news product in October 2017. Publishers have long agitated for a paywall on Facebook so that they can make more money from their own reporting (and from Instant Articles in particular) when it’s viewed through the platform; now that 2,000 publishers have organized for antitrust action against Facebook and Google, the social platform appears ready to listen. According to The Street, the model will direct Facebook users to the publisher’s home page, where they can buy digital subscriptions, and emplace a 10-free-articles limit. Publishers will retain full control over whether to lock or unlock their articles.
LinkedIn Adds New Notifications
LinkedIn has added some new bells and whistles recently, including a Daily Rundown notification, a weekly update on how many other people found user profiles and new customization options for the feed. According to Adweek, these tweaks are all really aiming to do the same thing: getting users to spend more time on-site or in-app, and that’s been a major goal for LinkedIn during the past year or two.
Facebook Testing Custom Audience Based on Instagram Business Profile Interactions
As first reported by Adweek, Facebook is testing out the ability for advertisers to create a custom audience based on engagement with Instagram business profiles. Here’s an example of why this could be so helpful: let’s say the Boston Red Sox want to sell tickets for August home games. They could create some really cool posts on Instagram (say, a video of Jackie Bradley Jr. stealing a home run from Aaron Judge in absolutely heroic fashion) and then promote that for engagement. Tons of people will engage with that ad, and then the Sox could re-target those same users through the new custom audience parameter and drive them to the ticket landing page.
How to Hide Inappropriate Comments on Instagram
Pretty straightforward in terms of the functionality, but this sometimes flies under the radar. There’s an Instagram tab where you can control for nasty words/phrases, which is useful, because it allows social managers to screen out anything unwanted in advance. A piece by the Social Times gives a nice step-by-step, and there’s actually a custom keywords field as well, so if there are other phrases users would like to screen out, they can do so.
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