Social Media News Round-Up: 18/02/22
THIS WEEK’S SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING NEWS AT A GLANCE:
Scroll down to read the full news stories
📵 LinkedIn tests option to turn off political content
💟 Instagram introduces Stories likes
💳 Twitter expands tipping options
💅 WhatsApp rolls out feature to listen to audio in other chats
LinkedIn tests option to turn off political content
LinkedIn has started testing a new feature, available to some US users, which would allow members of the platform to turn off political content in their feeds via ‘Feed preferences’.
Image Source: Social Media Today
The new option utilises keywords and signals from other users, alongside input from the app’s editorial team, to identify political posts and block them from feeds if a user chooses. When LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky explained to The Wall Street Journal, he said that users would also soon be able to block posts on specific topics from appearing on their feed.
Instagram introduces Stories likes
On Monday Instagram started rolling out private Story likes, providing users with a new way to engage with Stories in the app, without sending a DM. The option to like a Story is displayed as a heart icon in the bottom right hand corner of Stories view, next to the message icon.
Image Source: Social Media Today
The likes aren’t public and only Creators are able to view them under their Story insights option.
Instagram was also seen testing new options for reels, such as transition effects and the remixing of photos.
Twitter expands tipping options
This week Twitter expanded the tipping options available to users. Users can now tip creators using Paga, Barter, Payton and most notably, Ethereum.
The app also officially launched a new label identifying ‘good bots’ that was seen in testing last year. The label appears as a small robot icon under a user’s Twitter handle followed by ‘Automated by’ and the account’s operator handle. The label is currently available as an opt-in option for automated accounts.
WhatsApp rolls out feature to listen to audio in other chats
The messaging platform began rolling out the ability for users to listen to voice notes while in a different chat, to iOS users this week, after testing the feature last month.
Version 22.4.75 of the app lets users play a range of audio files outside of chats and iOS users can now reply to other messages while sitting through a long voice note.
