Social Media News Round-Up: 22/01/21
TikTok highlights SMBs that excelled in 2020
TikTok has shown its support for the small businesses on its platform in a recent post. The video was posted on its TikTok For Business account and highlights brands “that found their own unique communities and saw incredible engagement on TikTok in 2020”. Some of the featured businesses include Pounce Cat Cafe and Wine Bar, who racked up 12M likes on its cute cat content, and Baro Cosmetics, whose in-feed ads generated more than 10,000 new leads and yielded 1000 new orders. The emerging platform, which is well on its way to becoming the next billion-user app, has joined the likes of Facebook to do its bit to help small businesses get discovered, increase their engagement and maximise their sales throughout the pandemic.
TikTok introduces new Q&A feature
TikTok is introducing a new Q&A feature which allows creators to respond more directly to their audience’s questions. Creators will have the option to respond with either text or video answers, with the feature working across both video and livestreams on the platform. Currently, the feature is only available to a limited number of creators. The Q&A trend is very much gathering momentum across social media, with Facebook set to include the feature in its newest business page update, mirroring demand for a more conversational relationship between brands/creators and users on social media.
Pinterest launches new ad specialty: Dynamic Creative
Pinterest has seen huge growth in the last year and is quickly becoming increasingly front-of-mind for brands. In a search for new ways to make it easier for advertisers to create more relevant ads for consumers, Pinterest has launched its new ad specialty, Dynamic Creative. The feature will enable advertisers to automate the ad creation and targeting process for their campaigns based on individual user behaviour, reducing the amount of time and effort required by advertisers to make unique custom ads. However, it’s bad timing to say the least for this announcement, as the feature could be impacted by Apple’s upcoming iOS 14 data tracking changes (around 85% of Pinterest users access the platform via an app!).
WhatsApp extends new update deadline after confusion among users
WhatsApp has extended the deadline by which its users must accept its controversial policy change after they expressed confusion about it. The original cut-off date to accept the update was 8th February, but this has now been extended to 15th May. WhatsApp, which has been owned by Facebook since 2014, addressed the confusion and concerns around its privacy policy in a recent blogpost, where it stated that personal messages had always been encrypted and would remain private, and its practice of sharing some user data with Facebook was not new.
Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, launches new e-wallet
The Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, has expanded its e-commerce capabilities with a new e-wallet Douyin Pay. The Douyin app already offers payment through e-wallet market leaders AliPay and WeChat Pay, which reportedly already handle more than 90% of China’s online payments. Unlike AliPay and WeChat Pay, Douyin Pay can’t be used in physical stores and will only be available in-app. The initiative demonstrates a further drive by TikTok and Douyin owner ByteDance into areas beyond social and into e-commerce and fintech in China. The shift towards increased e-commerce capabilities on social media is now also gaining traction in the west, with Facebook continually enhancing its e-commerce capabilities across its platforms.
YouTube rolls out new hashtag landing pages
YouTube’s newest feature, hashtag pages, is being rolled out to all of its users. The feature will allow users to click on a hashtag anywhere on the platform and be taken to a dedicated landing page that only contains videos using that hashtag, allowing users to discover new content based around their interests. YouTube has previously been slow to embrace new features like the hashtag, which found success on Twitter and was later adopted by both Facebook and Instagram.
Latest social media updates surrounding the US election and inauguration:
Twitch suspends Trump’s account indefinitely
Popular livestreaming app Twitch has suspended former President Donald Trump’s account indefinitely after it was determined his actions violated its policies regarding prohibition of hateful conduct and incitement of violence.
Snapchat offers new Joe Biden lens, allowing supporters to attend virtual inauguration
US President Joe Biden’s inauguration committee rolled out an augmented reality lens on Snapchat ahead of the big event this week, which spectators were banned from attending in real life. The Biden campaign has invested heavily in more unconventional and young user-friendly content in an effort to encourage a diverse range of Americans to vote and get involved, reportedly spending nearly $740,000 on Snapchat (compared to Trump’s $41,000).
Twitter resets official presidential accounts, including @POTUS, to 0 followers
The institutional Twitter accounts reserved for official government use, including @POTUS, @FLOTUS and @VP, were reset to 0 followers ahead of the inauguration this week. Trump’s previous @POTUS account will be archived as @POTUS45, just as Obama’s was archived as @POTUS44, however Trump’s personal account has been removed from the platform following his ban. Biden’s @POTUS account has already accrued 5.7M followers while @VP Kamala Harris has 7.6M.
The New York Times publishes “The Complete List of Trump’s Twitter Insults (2015-2021)”
The New York Times has this week published a list of all of Trump’s infamous Twitter insults from the last 6 years, proving that, while Twitter can remove him from their platform, the archive of his tweets will inevitably live on across the internet.
