Social Media Platform News and Updates for December 2022
The new month brings new updates for all social media platforms that marketers can't live without and consumers can't get enough of daily. As you're working to meet your client deadlines or finalize that new marketing campaign, check out these social media updates that will help you stay in the know of the new features and releases for crucial platforms.
Social media updates for LinkedIn
This one is for the “newbie and wanna-be” Tech Engineers. LinkedIn is in partnership with GitHub (a coding software company), to provide learning specifically tailored to the needs of Tech Engineers in the making to help them acquire skillsets and real-life experiences necessary for their career journey. Techs will use the new feature in the GitHub hands-on practice Technology (GitHub Codespaces) to achieve this feat via LinkedIn Learning. You can get free courses on LinkedIn Learning until the 28th of February, 2023. Now, if you’re interested in IT, it’s a great opportunity to take advantage of the promo period to upskill.
LinkedIn has launched the initial stage of post-scheduling on the app, which it has been testing internally for some time now, and says that it will soon add post-scheduling for Groups and Company Pages too. This could provide an alternative to Twitter if things don’t go well at Twitter.
LinkedIn has launched a new Brand Safety hub for its Audience Network ads, which will enable advertisers to find out more information about LinkedIn’s partner platforms, and create allow and block lists to manage the same..
Social media updates for Facebook
Political content is on the decline on Facebook, and this is because Meta is making concerted efforts to ensure fewer political-related materials show up in people’s Facebook feeds.
Parents may now heave a sigh of relief as Meta introduces a new feature to protect minors from predators. This feature will restrict who sees the activities of minors (16 and under) on Facebook and Instagram, comments, and tags them.
Meta has begun informing Facebook users that it’s removing religious, political and sexual preference profile info fields in order to streamline the platform and make it easier to navigate.
Social media updates for Instagram
You can now add music to your Instagram Feed photo posts. This can help you express yourself with the power of sound and bring your content.
Creators can now showcase their achievements on Instagram reels in the following areas:
Creative streak – Keeping up their creation streak by creating more than one Reel per week.
Trendspotter – Joining the conversation by using trendy audio or Reels effects.
Collaborator – Collaborating with another creator through Remix, Collabs tool, and ‘Add Yours’ stickers.
Followers can now gift creators whose content they love on Instagram. This will be available on reels and will help creators earn money from their followers.
Social media updates for Pinterest
Starting on November 14th, Pinterest launched a holiday shopping showcase in the US and Canada to leverage the high volume shopping season and help users gain access to the over 60 participating brands.
To broaden its reach and international acceptability, Pinterest has added Afrikaans, Croatian and Bulgarian languages Pins to its platform, bringing it to a total of 41 languages and counting! Hopefully, this feature will help maintain Pinterest’s steady growth experience.
“What has a beginning also has an end” may be a true saying for Pinterest as it ends its reward program for Idea Pins which has been running for a while now and which incentivized creators monthly on Pinterest for providing themed Ideas Pins.
Pinterest has increased its removal of content that depicts child exploitation and self-harm.
Social media updates for Twitter
Okay, this one has been on the front burner for some time now. Elon Musk has made good his promise of introducing a new monthly fee, now settled at $8 for Twitter Blue subscribers, and in turn, they can upload longer videos and get reduced ads and priority in search and replies. So that’s goodbye to freebies, erm, “cheapies.”
Twitter has just launched new ad-targeting options. Though it looks like its current ad goals, there are some differences.
Social media updates for TikTok
With the Yuletide around the corner, for TikTok, it is a season of exploration and leverage into the under-charted course of eCommerce, as it adds In-app shopping features to help users in the US, UK, and other regions make purchases on the go.
To promote Native American creators in art, music, and culture, TikTok celebrates Native American Heritage Month by launching various programs that will aid users to gain new insights about the festival. The content can be found through #NativeTikTok.
TikTok has done a number for marketers who wish to scale their businesses and have an expanded campaign experience as it introduces the new Audience Insights feature. Marketers would now have added audience demographic information that will help them plan their campaign ads and their targeting strategy even beyond their traditional target audience. This is innovative!
Tiktok has launched an Updated Marketing Partners Platform to help brands connect with promotional assistance. This platform has a listing of 186 endorsed providers from over 35 nations who can provide direct assistance with all aspects of your TikTok marketing process.
Social media updates for Snapchat
In other news, Snapchat has gone a step further to collaborate with Strava so that the app users can now track and share their fitness progress and goals as well as compete with virtual friends from any part of the globe using the Strava Activity Lens. Talk of creativity at its best!
In a new partnership, Amazon integrates Snapchat’s AR Try-on Technology so that customers can virtually test their array of eyewear products using the Snap lens before they can buy. For Snapchat, it’s a spot at the very top of the “virtual try-on” space or nowhere else.
Snapchat’s announced a range of new features to help fans engage with the 2022 World Cup, including team-based AR filters and new AR Try-On features so that you can see what you’d look like in each team’s kit, and live update overlays to keep you informed of the latest.
Social media updates for WhatsApp
WhatsApp is on a roll again. We can recall that earlier in the year, WhatsApp introduced a feature that enhances Community group chats; now, there’s a feature in WhatsApp which enables Admins to arrange these community group chats by topic. It gets even juicier because video calls can now accommodate a whopping 32 people at a time, and there can be over 1K members in a group! Just wow!
And when you think you’ve heard it all, WhatsApp drops another bombshell for WhatsApp Business. Search functionality is now in place to find businesses by categories and business name, all on WhatsApp without it being traced back to you. So you can sneak in and sneak out. With this feature, you can find businesses near you, send messages and make purchases.
If you ever wished there were ways to message yourself on WhatsApp to enable you to keep important notes, save links, keep track of appointments, etc., then you’ll want to see this. WhatsApp introduces a new feature to help you do all that and more.
Social media updates for YouTube
With the holiday season around the corner, YouTube has joined other social media platforms in the shopping frenzy to launch a series of shopping live streams where viewers can ask questions to anchors while they shop online. Favorite YouTube creators will be featured, and they’ll share a lot of gift ideas. The busy shopping days are upon us!
Exciting news for Smart TV users on YouTube. Thanks to YouTube’s ingenuity, there’s an enhanced user experience to help them perform several functions while selecting YouTube Shorts; filter by topic, flip through the feed, like, comment, etc.
To enable creators to engage and interact with their audience in the app, YouTube has launched two new tests for its Community Posts feature.