New social media features and updates to know this week
New updates from YouTube, Threads and more.
There aren’t a ton of updates this week, but there are still some significant items on the list. Threads continues to beef up its offerings, YouTube and LinkedIn want to be TikTok, and X is adding some surprisingly good analytics for premium subscribers.
Let’s get into it.
YouTube
TikTok Shop has become a popular way for consumers to buy the viral products they see touted in videos. YouTube wants a slice of that revenue pie. That’s why they’re investing more heavily into an affiliate shopping program in partnership with Shopify, including a Chrome extension to help creators make more money from the sales of products associated with videos, TechCrunch reports.
Threads
Threads is continuing to roll out plenty of new features to round out the app. This week, that includes a new media tab to keep a user’s video and photo content all in one place, similar to what you find on X.
Meta has also formally released the ability to cross-post content from both Instagram and Facebook to Threads. TechCrunch reports that Meta has, in the past, automatically suggested cross posts from one network to the next, but this move formalizes easy posting across the Meta family. Now, whether that’s a good community management practice or not is another story, but it’s something you could do.
Finally, you can now tag Broadcast channels in Threads posts.
X
X continues to revamp its analytics for subscribers, this time with some genuinely nifty tools that can help PR professionals, including keyword analytics over time and conversation velocity, so you can see whether the noise is picking up or slowing down.
TikTok
Tired of using the same two AI voices for your TikTok videos? You can now record your own robo voices to create your own narrations. It’s an interesting opportunity to add some unique personality to videos, while not having to custom narrate each video.
In a throwback to the early days of social media, Instagram is giving you the opportunity to share the music they’re currently listening to their profile. This may be an attempt to knock back against Nospace, an upstart competitor similar to Myspace.
It’s time for a pivot to video. This time, LinkedIn is leading the way, introducin a carousel of algorithmically chosen videos to populate user feeds. . Everyone is trying to grab the eyeballs of short video watchers and this is LinkedIn’s latest attempt. If you aren’t using video on LinkedIn, this is the perfect time to give it a shot.
Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.
