New social media features and updates to know this week
New updates from Instagram, Pinterest and more.
We may be heading into a holiday in the United States, but there are still plenty of social media updates this week. From AI bots that mimic Instagram creators to a wealth of new safety tools for young Snapchatters, here’s what you need to know about today.
Broadcast channels are now available for eligible pages with more than 10,000 followers on Facebook. These channels allow pages to share content directly with thousands of users who opt-in, including early access to channel content. It’s a handy way to foster a more personalized connection to fans.
Facebook is also experimenting with A/B testing for Reels posted by pages. The automated tests would try “various captions, covers and more and distribute the top performer for you” in a bid to maximize performance.
Mark Zuckerberg announced that Instagram will begin testing AI versions of 50 popular creators. These clearly labeled bots will allow creators to “interact” with fans in a scalable way, since it isn’t always practical for larger creators to respond to every message received. This is still a beta test and will certainly have bugs to work out. Creators should be hyperaware of the brand safety risks inherent in outsourcing some aspects of your personality and following to a robot, but this will be a fascinating test to watch. Zuckerberg said more use cases for the AI will roll out in the future.
In another move to increase engagement in Instagram messaging, the app is testing chat widgets that can offer pinned content, a countdown clock and a time zone tracker.
Threads
Threads, already deeply inspired by X, is now taking a page out of Snap’s book and testing threads that disappear after 24 hours – including replies.
It’s also testing the addition of a media tab to profiles. Assuming it works similarly to the X media tab, this would organize a user’s video and photo uploads.
X
X continues to revamp its analytics, both for posts as well as for ads. Sid Rao, an engineer at X, shared a sneak peek of the app’s revamped ad analytics dashboard. “We’ve designed it to be snappy and super intuitive so businesses can view every key metric in a single glance,” he posted. The update will be rolled out “soon.”
The app will also add time engagement analytics to its post stats page, so creators can better time their content to when users will be online and ready to interact.
And X also announced it will move a feature behind its Premium paywall. Only paying subscribers will be able to livestream content on the app.
YouTube
YouTube is also beefing up features for those willing to pony up a little extra cash for a subscription. YouTube is tempting users to its Premium tier with new features including:
- The ability to automatically jump ahead to the good parts of a video. This will be powered by a combination of AI and viewership data to determine exactly where you want to go.
- Watch Shorts as picture-in-picture while using apps so you never have to live a second of your life without short-form video content.
- Get early access to YouTube experiments.
Pinterest is making a big move to get its boards out into the public eye. Now, you’ll be able to share auto-generated videos of your public boards on other social networks so everyone can see the ~ aesthetic~.
Snapchat
Snapchat, a perennial favorite app for teens and creepers alike, has introduced several new safety features. These include:
- Expanded warnings when a user receives a message from someone who is frequently blocked, reported, or is outside the geographic area where the user is typically located.
- Prevent friend requests from being delivered specifically to teens if they have no mutual friends and if they are located “has a history of accessing Snapchat in locations often associated with scamming activity.” This will apply whether the teen is the sender or recipient of the request and is designed specifically to cut down on sextortion scams.
- Simplifying the process of choosing which friends to share locations with and sending more frequent reminders to ensure they’ve recently reviewed that sharing data.
- Now when you block a user, it will also block all subsequent friend requests from accounts that were created on the same device – a move intended to cut down on bullying.
Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on X or LinkedIn.
