Welcome to the October instalment of Social Butterfly – TCD’s state-of-social-media wrap with Social Media Lead Jamie Hatch and Client Services Manager Tessa Charters.
Social media is like a carousel ride – you can get off, but it never stops spinning. Take a break and you’re sure to get left behind; stay on and you’re sure to get whiplash. Our purpose in life – OK, this might be an exaggeration, but still – is to help you take a guilt-free social media break, by catching you up on everything you missed and copping the whiplash for you.
Here’s what we’ve got for you this month. Buckle up; it’s chunkier than Pesto the penguin.
Content is wasted on the young
We usually break Social Butterfly down by platform, but this month, they all agree on something for once. In the wake of the Australian Government announcing a (somewhat vague) plan to ban children up to age 16 from social media, several major platforms have coincidentally announced changes to protect the youth.
Instagram is introducing Teen Accounts, with built-in protections that limit who can contact them and the content they see. If said teens want a less strict account, their parents will have to give their permission.
TikTok is partnering with Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) to create a resource designed to make it easier for families to start conversations about their online experiences, and set positive digital boundaries together.
Meanwhile, YouTube is rolling out protections in Europe that put guardrails on the content teens and tweens can see, including limiting repeated recommendations of videos related to topics that could be ‘dangerous’ for their age group, like fights and physical features.
In saying that, we don’t anticipate any of this will have much of an impact on brands, considering branded content on social media isn’t often targeted to children (and if you are doing that, please reconsider, because targeting children is gross).
We do expect there to be a whole lot of kids lying about their age to get around whatever constraints are ultimately introduced, but having done that ourselves in the early days of Myspace and Facebook, how can we blame them?
AI do declare
Meta is rolling out changes that will affect both its babies, Facebook and Instagram, by changing how AI content is labelled. Content that is detected to have been wholly generated by AI will still prompt an ‘AI Info’ label to appear under the user’s name, as it has since July, but content that is only detected to have been modified or edited by AI will now prompt an ‘AI Info’ label to appear in the post’s menu, tucked away with other buttons like ‘Why you’re seeing this post’ and ‘Manage captions and translations’.
The platforms will continue to share whether the content is labelled because it was detected using industry-shared signals, or because the account self-disclosed.
(By the way, does anyone else accidentally hit the “Label AI” button when going to save their content on IG Stories? Because it is a hazard.)
Speaking of AI, Instagram has added a few extra features to their Meta AI chat (another feature we always accidentally find ourselves in), including…
- DM Meta AI a photo and describe what you’d like added, removed, or changed, and it’ll edit it for you – because who needs Photoshop these days anyway?
- Share your Feed Post to your Story and Meta AI will generate a matching background. Honestly, it’s about time, because painting the background all one colour is way too old school.
- Meta AI will now automatically translate your voice in Reels with dubbing and lip syncing, allowing your content to be enjoyed in different languages. This will be a game changer for brands with international audiences when it’s fully rolled out, but for now it’s in a limited testing phase in English and Spanish.
- Group chats can now have custom themes created by Meta AI, which we guess is fun, but far less practical than the other features on this list.
Instagram is also offering a helping hand by launching a new Best Practices section in its Professional Dashboard to help creators maximise their content with research-backed tips, including how often to post, how to capture more attention through photos, and how long your Reels should be. They’ll also offer personalised tips to give you a sense of how your account is doing across each topic.
In an update we definitely didn’t ask for, the Instagram team has boasted that they’re rolling out 38 new stickers for Stories and Reels. Millennials, unite.
While last month we celebrated TikTok giving us our content watermark free, Instagram hasn’t gotten the memo. Rather than making it easier for us to share content across platforms, they’re hunkering down on watermarks by giving every downloaded Reel an Instagram-specific end sting. Instagram, you just don’t get us.
On another note, is it just us, or did Christmas sneak up faster than a trending video? Luckily Meta has our backs, and has provided us marketers with shiny new ad tools to help you sleigh your sales targets these Christmas holidays. There’s an array of new formats that can help turn interested shoppers into new customers, from highlighting promo codes to sale reminder ads. We’d recommend wrapping your head around the new features so you’re ready to attack the Black Friday sales head on.
A lengthy Thread
Threads continue to prove us wrong – we’re sorry we ever doubted you. It’s been reported that the platform has had a rise in overall app downloads, reaching the number one spot for iOS downloads in September, overtaking TikTok. It seems like it is only just the beginning for Threads’ world domination, with TechCrunch reporting that Meta has purchased the url threads.com, hinting the platform will soon be hitting a desktop near you.
With 200 million users and counting, Threads continues their steady growth – and maybe that’s because Adam Mosseri is actually listening to some user feedback (or it’s because X continues to go rouge). Mosseri has announced that Threads users now have 15 minutes to make changes to a post – post anxiety be gone! And stay tuned for a new community feature called Loops that’s currently in the works, and is rumoured to be similar to subreddits or X Communities.
Oh, and following in the footsteps of its big sister, Instagram, Threads has acknowledged that the more content, the better. Now you can upload up to 20 images and videos to your posts, because content truly is king.
TikTok, take another shot
This is quite literally the update we’ve all been dreaming of – TikTok has rolled out a delete and re-edit button; a complete game changer for brands and creators alike. We’ve all posted a TikTok and wished we could tweak something, whether it’s fixing a spelling error, refining a hook, or just giving the whole video a refresh. Now, you can pull down the original video and give it a makeover. Adios, regrets.
Ever found yourself searching for the city’s best café on TikTok instead of Google? Us too. So it’s no surprise the platform is rolling out an upgraded version of its search ad campaigns, making it easier for brands to stand out in the app. According to TikTok, 23 per cent of users search for something within 30 seconds of opening the app. Advertisers can now choose relevant keywords during setup, tailoring their campaigns for traffic and web conversion objectives. This means more control over placement and better visibility for those ads. While it may feel like a nod to other platforms’ search options, it’s still a smart move for TikTok’s discovery game, and we certainly aren’t complaining.
Much like Meta, TikTok also has our backs this holiday season. Say hello to Smart+, a fully automated ad solution that handles everything from ad creation to placement and bidding. Basically, it’s their version of Meta’s Advantage+ option.
And in a sad farewell for music creators, TikTok is laying their music app to rest. Launched in July 2023, this streaming service will be closing its doors on November 28, 2024, because honestly no one was using it.
Featuring YouTube
YouTube is doing the most to keep up with the ever-changing social media platforms, recently announcing nine new features – from generating more realistic backgrounds in Dream Screen with Google DeepMind’s latest video generation model, Veo, to AI-enhanced comment reply responses in Community Hubs.
One of the features we’re particularly keen to see roll out is auto dubbing. Similar to the Meta AI dubbing and lip syncing mentioned above, it’s set to be an absolute game-changer for worldwide brands. This new feature will make your videos accessible to more people in more places around the world, regardless of the language they speak. While we can’t speak to its accuracy yet, we’re keen to see the response.
YouTube is also giving brands even more opportunities for advertising, with eagle-eyed users spotting ads displayed during a paused video. Honestly, we’re surprised YouTube hadn’t thought of this sooner, although we do wonder how much attention paused videos – and the ads displayed on them – are realistically getting.
Copyright strikes can be an absolute nightmare for those looking to create high-quality content for YouTube, which is why this announcement from YouTube is prime. Essentially, video publishers will be allowed to edit parts of their content if it has been removed or age-restricted due to Community Guideline violations. Rather than the entire video needing to be re-uploaded, once the edit is made, the video will be available again.
And there’ll soon be an option to organise your YouTube channel’s content into seasons and episodes, making it super easy and accessible for your viewers to tune in. It’s giving Netflix.
And everything else…
Pinterest is following in Meta’s footsteps by using AI to help with campaign builds, hopefully meaning our ads will work harder and we won’t.
Google Search is testing “recent posts” in a carousel format – pulling results from YouTube, TikTok, Reddit and more. Our thoughts? This will be ripe for misinformation.
The new “explore more” feature on LinkedIn allows you to see related content or more content from the same creator after scrolling to the bottom of a comment section. We like it, we like it a lot.
And Spotify is looking to expand its content offerings beyond audio, investing in video content by offering significant financial incentives (think seven figures) to creators. The appetite for video podcasts is growing, so this does make sense, but we can’t help wishing the platform would just stay in its lane.
And that’s all from us this month! Until next time, stay slaying socials.
