Social Media News: Instagram gives Creators a boost with new subscription features, Twitter rolls out Unmention function + More
The SocialDay - Social Media News Roundup is back! Your Midday, Midweek social media news is rounded up from the past week in one place so you don't have to go anywhere else! Arm yourself with the latest social media updates so you can impress your colleagues, boss, clients etc... We've got you!
I hope you're keeping cool 🥶. (I am not by the way)
Find out what's new in Social Media, plus we'll pull a session from the SocialDay event archive for you to watch in your own time - to see this week's session scroll to the bottom - We thought, what a great time to share a session from the weather people themselves! The Met Office and The Ray of Sunshine that is Ross Middleham... You'll learn: Learn how the Met Office launched on TikTok - with Ross who at the time was Content and Social Lead at The Met Office, now he's Creative Lead at the Met Office! find out more about Ross!
If you haven't got your ticket to this year's SocialDay in London grab yours here and if you need help to get your boss to pay for your tickets, see our guide to convincing your boss.
Here are your TOP Social Media Stories...
(Scroll down to read the full stories)
👉 Meta launches ‘sexting’ guide to help parents have difficult conversations
👉 Twitter rolls out Unmentioning function
👉 Instagram gives Creator community a boost with extra Subscription features
👉 TikTok introduces “maturity” rating to protect younger viewers
👉 Instagram adds auto-generated captions for Reels
Meta launches ‘sexting’ guide to help parents have difficult conversations
Meta, the owners of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, have produced a guide to help parents talk to their teens about sexting. Not every young person is sharing images of themselves online, and recent research from Meta has found that much fewer teens send intimate images than you might think - as few as one in ten. But ‘sexting’, and sending nude images via messaging or social media apps, are often part of modern teen interaction.
In an attempt to make uncomfortable conversations between teens and their parents and carers, Meta’s Guide is a common sense starting point to deal with the issue. The Guide is also a useful resource to help teens deal with the situation if they find images of themselves are shared online.
Twitter rolls out Unmention function
Twitter rolled out the Unmention function earlier in July (and we cheered!) Announced quietly last week, Twitter has enabled all users to ‘unmention’ themselves from any tweet thread. This is great news if you are repeatedly and unnecessarily tagged in round robin, engagement pods and other online networking tweets.
And its really great news if you’ve ever wanted to withdraw your profile link from a conversation that you’re not comfortable to stay a part of.
You will be untagged from the original tweet and replies and you will not be able to be mentioned again within the same reply chain. Notifications of any further updates to the exchange will not be sent to you.
Your username will still appear, in text form, in the initial tweets that you were involved in, but you won’t be part of the exchange once your unmention is active.
Instagram gives Creator community a boost with extra Subscriptions features
Instagram is constantly adding and removing features (now faster than ever), but here’s what we’ve spotted this month. Instagram is placing the stock of its future on its Creator community and it’s released another bunch of tools to help creators make money on Insta.
Subscriptions were announced in January and beta testing has been rolled out to some accounts. As well as recurring revenue, Subscripts include a bunch of extra features so you can invite your community to subscribe to Reels.
We really like the Home option, which enables you to create content exclusively for your Subscripts and invite this community to a Group Chat. Subscriber Posts / Reels allow Creators to post Reels for Subscripts alone and create exclusive content for this valuable (and revenue generating) community.
All Subscription related content will also be accessible to subscribers via a special place in the Creator’s profile, so we’re going to look for further updates connected to these features.
TikTok introduces “maturity” rating to protect younger viewers
TikTok is rolling out content filters and maturity ratings as part of its pledge to make the app safer for the younger generation of users that are increasingly using TikTok to consume content.
The ratings work just like the maturity ratings used for movies and video games. The content rating system will organise videos based on “thematic maturity” and will flag videos that contain “mature or complex themes”. The video’s rating will then determine whether or not TikTok viewers under 18 can view it while scrolling through their feeds.
TikTok viewing time has overtaken YouTube this month. This is what our kids and teens are watching so these ratings will surely be welcomed.
Instagram adds auto-generated captions for Reels
Now, auto-generated captions are available for Insta Reels. OK so this is a June update, but this is so important for creating inclusive content for members of the deaf and hard-of-hearing communities that we’re dropping in it here again.
Auto-generated captions are included when an IG video is uploaded to Reels, which is another reminder that Meta, which owns Instagram, likes it when we use its own software to generate contentment. So another reminder to record directly from Instagram, not your camera phone.
From the archives:
Ross Middleham Content and Social Lead at The Met Office (Now Creative Lead)
In this session, you will learn how and why Met Office Launched on TikTok, some random inspiration, useful tips and a plot twist! Enjoy. (PS if you enjoyed this session please show some love for Ross by checking him out on Linkedin)
Thank you! We'll see you again next week! If you enjoyed this roundup, you may also like our Digital Women news roundup too which includes content from the world of tech, web3, digital and social media and is totally up to date to the moment on the digital news on a Friday!
Enjoy the sunshine!
