Social Media News Round-Up: 26/03/21

Mar 26

Twitter explores emoji reactions and downvotes

Twitter is reportedly exploring more new features to add to its platform, including Facebook-style emoji reactions and a new downvote button. After surveying users for little over a month about how they felt about using emoji reactions, a Twitter spokesperson has confirmed the platform is exploring ways for people to “express themselves in conversations”. The downvote button, of which similar versions are available on platforms such as Reddit and YouTube, is also being tested by Twitter. Unfortunately, still no news on the highly requested edit button though.

Instagram announces story drafts are coming soon

On Tuesday, Instagram announced that its newest feature, the ability to save Instagram Stories as drafts and post at a later stage, will be coming soon to the platform. According to Instagram, story drafts have been highly in-demand from its users and the feature will now provide them with more flexibility in how they use and plan stories. Stories have become an integral part of Instagram’s platform and already offer brands and creators a way to communicate with their audience in a more real-time way.

Facebook and Twitter test new ‘green screen’ creation options

Twitter and Facebook are now testing new ‘green screen’ features for Fleets and Facebook Stories respectively. Facebook’s ‘green screen’ will enable users and creators to overlay their video over another video or still image from their camera roll. Twitter’s ‘green screen’ will also allow users to add in either an already captured image/video as a background, or create a new one, when sharing tweets via Fleets. TikTok already provides a similar green screen tool which has proven popular with creators.

Clubhouse announces new features including Whiteboard, Q&As and polls, and paid rooms

Clubhouse has announced some more new features to its app this week, including the introduction of a Whiteboard, Q&As and Polls. The Whiteboard feature will allow users to “bring ideas to life” and draw and type on a board displayed to their room, while new Q&A and Poll functionality will allow them to engage more with rooms by questioning, answering and surveying.

The app has also announced the arrival of paid rooms, which will allow hosts to charge users for entry to their rooms. Though this is obviously a great opportunity for brands and creators, Clubhouse have also suggested using the feature for fundraising purposes.

Facebook is testing Clubhouse-like audio-only rooms

After the success of emerging app Clubhouse and Twitter’s newest audio-only feature Spaces, Facebook has been working on its own live audio meeting rooms feature. The feature would enable Facebook app users to create audio broadcasts that users can tune into and participate in. The platform already has a video Rooms feature - which it added last May but that never really took off - which enables users to create private video chats that others can drop into.

YouTube tests automatically detecting products in videos

YouTube has announced a new experimental feature on its platform that will automatically detect and display products included in videos. The products will be detected using AI and displayed automatically as a list which will appear between recommended videos. YouTube says the goal is “to help people explore more videos and information about those products” on its platform. The feature will also give YouTube the ability to help increase sales of specific products mentioned in videos, a great opportunity for creators and brands and one which could be used to power other e-commerce features on the platform going forward.

Snapchat is developing new Remix feature, its take on TikTok Duets, and new auto-captioning feature

After the success of Snapchat’s Spotlight feature, its rival to TikTok, the platform is now developing the feature with the addition of a new Remix option. Remix will allow users to create new content using their friends’ Snaps and will work similarly to TikTok’s Duets feature, which has been hugely popular with creators. Instagram is also testing its own ‘Remix’ feature for its Reels content.

The platform is also the latest to introduce a new auto-captioning feature to allow creators to improve the accessibility of their content. Platforms including YouTube and Instagram already offer an auto-captioning feature, with Instagram recently testing the expansion of auto-captions for stories.

Facebook announces its users have raised over $5 billion through its donation tools

This week, Facebook announced that it has reached a new milestone. Across Facebook and Instagram, users have now raised more than $5 billion using its donation tools, which provide new opportunities for non-profit organisations to raise awareness and funds. Since 2016, Facebook have released a range of these donation tools, including non-profit fundraisers and birthday fundraisers on Facebook, donation stickers on Instagram Stories and most recently the expansion of non-profit fundraisers to Instagram’s main feed.