Welcome to the May instalment of Social Butterfly – TCD’s state-of-social-media wrap with Digital Content Managers Tessa Charters and Jamie Hatch.
And just like that we are back (we’re just as surprised as you are) with another deep dive into everything you need to know about the comings and goings in the social world.
Here’s what’s on our minds…
Instagram is fighting to get our attention back
But is it working? We’d say it’s a solid 50/50 at this stage.
Starting with what really gets our pulses racing, Instagram is now letting us add up to five links in bio. While we are prepped for mourning with the third parties who have been saving our link lives up until now, we are more than ready to make link accessibility easier on Instagram.
Instagram seems to be finally doing something original by allegedly working on the ability to add polls in comments. While we aren’t entirely sure how this will play out, and are certainly worried about how this might look with the amount of spam currently going on, at least it is doing something different.
That said, the copycat Instagram that we’ve gotten to know (and not love) has struck again, with its carousels now auto-scrolling à la TikTok. Yawn!
Meta (along with everyone else) has seen the gap that the old Twitter has left, rest in peace, and its own Twitter alternative is starting to take shape – Barcelona. Are we missing something, because why is it called Barcelona and what does that have to do with anything but a city in Spain?
We see you, Reels
Reels is doing enough for its own heading – is it weird that this feels kind of like a proud mum moment?
Instagram is supposedly making it easier for us to edit our Reels with the launch of ‘in-app Reel editing’. We’re now able to cut together and drag video clips, audio, stickers and text with its new editing interface.
While we’re big fans of Instagram finally introducing this in-app editing feature, we’re not quite sure we see ourselves editing Reels through Instagram anytime soon – the frustration of the app crashing before we’re able to upload the Reel will be the bane of our content creating existence.
Instagram have also added total watch time and average watch time to their Reels insights. Valuable insights means in-depth social media reporting, which can help us create more engaging content and keep our clients happy. Better yet, they’re adding a way to see how Reels are contributing to your growth by sending a notification with new followers from each Reel.
You might know that feeling when you create and upload the ✨perfect✨ Reel, only to have the audio removed a few days/weeks later. Thankfully, Instagram now has our back – they’re giving us one chance to add new audio to our Reels, so we best be acting on it!
Simply tap the replace audio on your muted Reel and choose a new audio to add. The catch? You can only replace the audio with licensed audio (no surprises there, really). While the beat may not be as synchronised as it was before, having audio on a Reel has the potential to increase engagement much more than having a muted Reel.
Old is the new new?
As always, there’s a lot to unpack in the world of Elon Musk, and while he is packaging a number of changes into a neat little ‘new’ bow, all we can see are steps backwards.
Just a few examples:
- Musk has fueled rumours that Fleets, Twitter’s abandoned version of Stories, will be back, “but not in the way it was done last time”. Sure.
- As promised, Musk removed all legacy blue ticks, before quickly changing his mind and reinstating them for those accounts with more than a million followers. Some might say he finally realised no one wants to pay to be part of an exclusive group when its most exclusive members – the actual celebrities – don’t even want to be in it.
- Musk also claimed to be the first to use keyword targeting for Twitter ads, which we all know was actually a thing way back in 2013 (and if you didn’t, now you do).
In another attempt to make Twitter a cash cow, you now have to be subscribed to Twitter Blue or be a Verified Organisation to continue running ads. We can already predict how that’s going to go down – let’s see how long this change lasts.
Of course, we may not be talking as much about Elon from now on, because he’s appointed a new Twitter CEO, Linda Yaccarino, to oversee business operations. Yaccarino will take the reins in six weeks time, while Musk will remain involved as Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer – so stay tuned for the next Social Butterfly, as we’re sure we’ll have plenty of new updates from the Twittersphere.
TikTok has a sibling
Yes, you read that correctly. Introducing Lemon8; a content-sharing platform designed for the youthful community to discover “beautiful, authentic and diverse” content.
While this new app founded by the owners of TikTok, ByteDance, may sound surprising to some, we really aren’t shocked by the news, considering all the talk about the US TikTok ban. Lemon8 isn’t currently available in Australia, but we’re certain it’ll reach our shores very soon.
While TikTok has had a strong influence on the shortening of our attention span on social media, a recent study has actually found that TikTok users are more open to in-app promotions.
The research found that 38 per cent of TikTok users tolerate advertising, while almost 15 per cent of users struggle to determine the difference between an ad and organic content on the app. Is this your sign to start rethinking your social media ad strategy?
In other news
Meta is shutting down its in-app 2FA code generator, so we recommend switching over to a third-party app now before you get stung.
Microsoft (not a name we thought we’d be mentioning in a social wrap) has partnered with Snapchat to bring Lenses to virtual meetings. 2020 called, and it wants its feature back.
My AI chatbot is also now available to all Snapchat users. We think this is incredible for loneliness, but we can confirm it is not incredible for predicting who is going to win the NRL games this weekend, and you should definitely not put money on what it says.
LinkedIn is starting ‘Suggested Posts’ in its feed, while Instagram is testing curated feeds based on common interests.
And while we’ve previously reported Instagram is moving away from in-platform shopping, YouTube and TikTok seem to want to pick up the pieces, and are giving it a red hot crack themselves.
And that’s just a little insight into what’s been going on in our brains this month – until next time!
