Lots of Meta news in Week 42's Social Update. Will Meta put even more focus on video instead of news, to provide stronger competition to TikTok? Scheduling Instagram posts finally seems to become a reality! And music also seems to become an even player on the socials...
Meta.
Facebook
Facebook is increasingly moving away from news, in favour of short-form video. Instant Articles, which existed since 2015, will be disappearing by April 2023. That short-form video is thé strategy for Meta is evidenced by the fact that Reels are appearing in more and more Facebook features. Facebook also continues to evolve within 'groups', with new features. Including the integration of Reels in Facebook groups.
Did you know that most people on Facebook are member of at least 15 active groups? Also, about 100 million new groups are opened every day (!)
Instagram
Instagram is going to offer even more options to block people and comments in the app. Thus, a number of new security features had already been announced for the app's blocking function. For instance, Instagram had previously extended the feature to block individuals and any future accounts that person will create, but now comes an extension to this that now allows you to block someone's backup accounts as well.
A revival of MySpace, but different? Instagram is testing adding songs to your profile, a much-loved feature of the former MySpace. A feature you already see a lot of on dating apps like Tinder and Bumble these days, due to its link to Spotify.
Previously announced, now actually officially declared as a test: schedule organic posts on IG! So you can prepare a post ahead of time and use this new feature to set when you want it to be posted. Users of the platform will have to be patient for a while, as the test phase is only available to a limited number of users.
Snapchat.
A heavy loss for Snap, despite surge in users The company is suffering from the challenging ad market. The platform last announced 4 new features on its premium version of the app, Snapchat +. Could there be a connection? Surely the most interesting feature is "Customer story expiration", where you can choose how long your Snap remains available in your stories. The options for setting the length of time range from an hour to up to a week.
Twitter.
Rumours circulated that Musk would like to fire 75% of Twitter employees. Twitter informed staff last Thursday that there are no plans to do so. That tension is rising internally is one thing that is certain, now that the contract signing is almost complete - this is scheduled for next Friday. According to the Washington Post, there is still a chance that job losses - regardless of ownership - are imminent in the coming months, based on leaked documents.
