Insight
What’s new in social media? Q1 2022
Social media is constantly changing, and it can be hard to keep up to date, so we’ve put together an overview of the latest news we’ve seen in social media for Q1 of 2022.
In March, Meta launched some new tools to help admins of Facebook groups keep their communities safe and reduce misinformation. Group admins can now automatically decline incoming posts that have been identified as containing false information.
The new Admin Assist features can also help save time by automatically approving or declining member requests based on, for example, whether they have completed all the required member questions.
As of March 2022, Instagram users now have the option to switch between a chronological or algorithm-led feed. There are two new Instagram feed display options; favourites, which will show you the latest posts from accounts you’d added to your ‘Favourites’ list, and following, which will show you posts from all the accounts you follow.
Back in December 2021, Instagram announced its plans to streamline video content on its platform and consolidate all formats around Reels. As a result, the separate IGTV, Boomerang and Hyperlapse apps have now been retired from app stores and will no longer be supported, demonstrating Instagram’s focus on driving more creation in the app.
Live streaming on social media can be a great way to engage with your audience, however it can be challenging to control the flow of comments and moderate inappropriate behaviour. To help with this, Instagram is now enabling accounts to assign a moderator within a stream, who can assist in reporting offensive comments and removing viewers from a stream.
In March, Instagram launched automated captions for Instagram feed videos. Previously, captions had to be added manually. Auto-captions not only make Instagram more accessible for deaf and hard-of-hearing users, but they also help increase views amongst those who watch videos with the sound switched off.
TikTok
When TikTok first launched back in 2016, the time limit per video clip was only 15-seconds. It was later extended to 60 seconds and then 3 minutes. Now TikTok has confirmed it’s expanding the maximum length to 10-minutes long.
Although longer live streams have been available on the platform for a while, this is a bold move for a platform that’s most well-known for short-form content and it will be interesting to see how this impacts user behaviour.
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In March 2022, Twitter announced they have finally launched keyword search for DMs, allowing accounts to find specific mentions within any direct message text. This should help with making community management and customer service easier.
Twitter also recently launched a beta experiment ‘Twitter Shops’ which is allowing a select number of merchants to showcase their products within the app. While this feature is currently only available to a small number of brands in the US, it’ll be interesting to see if this is eventually rolled out to other countries.
After a year of testing, Twitter also announced some new updates to their crowdsourcing fact-checking program ‘Birdwatch.’ This allows users to manually add notes to Tweets that they believe contain misleading information.
Birdwatch is currently only available to a small, randomised group of users in the US, however the results from the pilot so far have been promising. 20-40% of people surveyed said they were less likely to agree with the content of a potentially misleading Tweet after reading a note about it, compared to those who saw a Tweet without a note.
In January, LinkedIn announced it was rolling out a new events platform, where qualified LinkedIn pages and creators can host and market interactive, virtual live events.
According to a recent survey, LinkedIn found that nearly two-thirds of employees have taken a break at some point in their career. With this in mind, it has now launched a ‘Career Break’ option for users to add more context to explain gaps in their career history.
Conclusion
So far in 2022, we’ve seen social media platforms continue to make steps to reduce the spread of misinformation. Video content is still the most popular form of content across all platforms, and it’s great to see more recognition on the importance of making content more accessible.
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