New social media features and updates to know this week
New updates from X, Threads, Reddit and more.
It’s a week of musical chairs in the social media world: Twitter officially became X. Threads wants to be pre-Musk Twitter. TikTok wants to be YouTube. It’s a mad swirl of updates – so let’s get into it.
X
Twitter is dead; long live X.
All right, so Twitter’s been X’ed for a minute, but there has been one shambling zombie still lurking on the web (outside of the vernacular embedded into our speech). The Twitter.com URL has officially been retired, with Elon Musk announcing that “all core systems” are now located on X.com. Old Twitter URLs will redirect to X.com.
Let’s pour one out for the bird.
X is also rolling out a batch of new features for its Communities tab — its answer to Groups. New updates include featuring posts from Communities in trending and the ability to search Communities by topics. Upcoming features include analytics and better moderation tools.
Threads
Meanwhile on Twitter 2.0 — aka, Threads — the Meta-owned app is testing something that looks suspiciously like TweetDeck, a late, beloved tool that made it easy to follow conversations with pinned columns.
Post by @zuckView on Threads
Instagram head Adam Mosseri says the new test will allow users to “pin separate columns for your favorite searches, tags, accounts, saved posts, and notifications.” Threads continues its strategy of rebuilding the features users loved from old-school Twitter. Will it pay off?
Threads also introduced the ability to arrange searches by recency for easier real-time conversation sorting.
Instagram is testing the ability to add Notes to Reels and posts — short responses that will disappear after three days.
Meta
Meta announced last week that it will kill off its Workplace enterprise communications tool after 10 years in order to better focus on AI and the metaverse. The platform will continue to operate until August 2025, then enter read-only state before disappearing completely in May 2026. Zoom’s Workvivo is Facebook’s suggestion for migration.
Reddit is beefing up tools to make holding an Ask Me Anything (AMA) easier. The popular PR tactic is getting a number of new features. As Reddit put it:
For hosting AMAs, hosts can now:
- Schedule and promote AMAs in advance.
- Include guest collaborators.
- Easily inform participants of the official close of AMAs.
For participating in AMAs, participants can now:
- RSVP via a new button and receive reminders beforehand and when AMAs start.
- Sort by Answered versus Unanswered questions, allowing them to get to exactly what they’re looking for.
With that shiny IPO under its belt, Reddit continues to raise the bar on collaboration with businesses.
TikTok
As YouTube seeks to become TikTok, apparently TikTok is seeking to become YouTube. The clock app is now testing the ability to upload 60 minute videos — a far cry from the platform’s microvideo roots.
The app is also apparently testing the ability to tag multiple collaborators on a piece of content.
Similar to most messaging apps, LinkedIn is now offering the ability to long press on a specific message to reply to that particular missive on mobile.
Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on X or LinkedIn.
