New social media features and updates to know this week

A number of apps announced major updates this week, most notably Facebook, which is undergoing one of its periodic redesigns, and YouTube Shorts, which is chasing hard at TikTok’s heels for the microvideo market.

Here’s what you need to know.

TikTok

TikTok is not only a social media app — it’s increasingly a tool for search, especially among Gen Z and Gen Alpha. According to TikTok itself, 23% of users search for something within 30 seconds of opening the app.

Naturally, TikTok is continuing to monetize this lucrative space.

Search Ads Campaigns will be an extension of the existing Search Ads Toggle, appearing the same to users but offering new options for advertisers. The campaigns “(enable) sophisticated keyword-based ads which specifically target TikTok’s search results page,” TikTok says, while also allowing advertisers to exclude negative keywords from their ad placements. Campaigns can be oriented around either traffic or web performance goals.

Reddit

Last year, protests roiled Reddit over changes to the site’s API policies. Many popular subreddits marked themselves private as a way of reducing traffic and attempting to punish Reddit for the unpopular changes.

The protests eventually died down. Reddit won. And they want to make sure that scenario can never happen again.

The Verge reports that communities that want to go from public to private will now have to get permission from an admin — that is, a Reddit employee. Requests from communities of less than 5,000 employees or that are less than 30 days old will be approved automatically. Communities can also temporarily go private.

It’s a clear signal that Reddit is growing up and moving from a truly user-run site to a more sophisticated organization — with rules and enforcement to match.

YouTube

TikTok competitor YouTube Shorts has unveiled some big changes.

First, Shorts are getting bigger. Starting Oct. 15, Shorts can be up to 3 minutes long — something YouTube says is a top requested feature from creators. Along with that, YouTube says upcoming algorithmic tweaks will improve discoverability for these longer shorts.

Templates will also make it faster to recreate trends — hit “Remix” and “Use this template” to start.

YouTube also promises that making Shorts will get easier as “the vast universe of YouTube content” becomes available from within the Shorts camera, which should make it easier to comment on clips from across YouTube.

A new Shorts trends page is also available on mobile devices. And finally, Shorts will offer a preview of the comments before you enter the dedicated feed — a clear way of trying to draw more people into the comments.

Whatever happens with the future of TikTok, it’s clear that Shorts is becoming an evolved, robust platform in its own right rather than just a bonus for the general YouTube platform.

Facebook

The granddaddy of social media introduced a number of big updates at its Facebook IRL event in Austin last week.

These include:

• A new Local tab will compile content from across Groups, Events and Marketplace to tell you what’s happening in your geographic area. Two new event digests — one weekly and one for the weekend — will help surface recommendations for what to do via notification. A swipeable Feed section will also help find “the best content across Facebook” related to your neighborhood, including events, groups, people, businesses, Marketplace items and more. This is currently in testing for a handful of large American cities.
• The new Explore tab is an algorithmically driven discoverability feed.
• Reels will now be incorporated into the Video tab rather than segregated. The announcement notes that young adults spend 60% of their time on the app watching videos, further cementing the importance of video content even on Facebook.
• You can now send Event invites via Instagram or SMS, making Facebook Events viable whether or not someone is a Facebook user — and important step as young audiences migrate away from the platform.
• Additional AI deployed within Groups will help surface answers to frequently asked questions.
• Matchmaking on Facebook Dating (yes, Facebook has a dating app built in) will allow your friends to swipe on matches for you.
• Messenger is getting a number of seemingly WhatsApp-inspired updates, including the ability to see memories of past content shared or to create Groups directly from within Messenger.

These are big updates, which is sure to rile some users. But it’s charting a path for Facebook’s near future that seems driven by real-life connection, person-to-person communication and, of course, video.

X

Bold and italics text briefly took over X timelines. But Elon Musk personally took care of the annoying styling. Now, to see text styles, you have to open the post. They won’t appear directly while scrolling your timeline.

Snap

Footsteps, which was previously available only to Snapchat+ subscribers, is now usable by all iOS users. The feature uses location data to tell you how much of the planet you’ve explored. Cynically, this opt-out feature is likely also to be used to encourage users to turn data services on so that information can, in turn, be sold to advertisers.

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.