Social Media News Round-Up: 29/01/21

Jan 29

Facebook rolls out its News Portal in the UK

Facebook has started rolling out its News portal, which features curated news from leading national, local and lifestyle news outlets, to UK users. Facebook News was launched in the US last year and allows publishers to monetise their content on Facebook News with advertising and subscriptions. Facebook users in the UK will now be able to see top daily news headlines personalised to their specific interests, as well as some COVID-19-related stories highlighted by Facebook News.

Twitter announces community-driven initiative Birdwatch to tackle misinformation in the US

Twitter has announced its new initiative Birdwatch: a community-driven way to address misinformation on the platform. The new pilot program, being rolled out in the US, will give users the power to identify misleading content in tweets and provide context in a comment to Twitter, allowing the site to respond more quickly and efficiently to the spread of misinformation. Eventually, when there is “consensus from a broad and diverse set of contributors,” Twitter says it aims to make these notes visible directly on tweets for the global Twitter audience to see.

Twitter acquires newsletter platform Revue

Twitter has announced that it has acquired Revue, a startup that allows users to publish and monetise email newsletters. In its latest blog post, Twitter has said that the acquisition will be a new way for Twitter to serve writers and publishers who have built a following with their tweets and make it easier for them to connect with their subscribers. This might include allowing people to sign up for newsletters from their favourite follows on Twitter and a new setting for writers to host conversations with their subscribers seamlessly within the platform.

TikTok overtakes Facebook in average monthly time spent per user

TikTok has officially overtaken Facebook in average monthly time spent per user. Time spent on TikTok is up 325% year-on-year and is projected to reach more than 1 billion users by the end of 2021. The app also ranks as number 2 in terms of consumer spend.

Instagram introduces new Professional Dashboard

Instagram has introduced its new Professional Dashboard: a single destination to help creators, businesses and social media managers track their performance and access professional tools more easily. The new dashboard is the next logical step on from its Professional Resources hub, which it launched last November, and helps towards the company’s aim of helping small businesses and creators make better decisions to grow their businesses, stay informed and work smarter. The three new features included in Instagram’s Professional Dashboard include: a tool to help you track and discover insights and trends based on your performance, tools to help you grow your business (including the ability to check monetisation status and eligibility) and a collection of curated educational resources including guidance and inspiration to grow your online presence.

Instagram rolls out new Content Publishing API

Instagram has rolled out a new Content Publishing API that supports scheduling and publishing single photo or video posts. For now, only business accounts will be able to schedule and publish content to their Instagram feeds and will be able to do so via third-party platforms. This new feature will allow businesses to more easily plan campaigns and build internal processes around publishing content using their preferred third-party platform. However, it’s worth noting that Instagram’s new Content Publishing API will not support carousel posts and each business account will be limited to 25 API-published posts in a 24 hour period.

Clubhouse looks to expand its e-commerce opportunities for creators

The latest app to take the social media world by storm, Clubhouse, has announced that it has secured a new round of funding, allowing it to open up to more users (hello Android users!), improve its technology and infrastructure and support its creator community with new e-commerce features. These new features, which Clubhouse will begin testing in the next few months, will help creators to get paid directly through tipping, tickets or subscriptions. The platform has also said that it will be using a portion of the new funding to roll out a new “Creator Grant Program” to support emerging Clubhouse creators.

New meme generator allows you to take Bernie and his chair anywhere around the world

Thanks to a new meme generator, you can now take Bernie and his chair anywhere around the world with Google Street View! The now-infamous meme of Bernie Sanders perched on his chair in his hand-knitted mittens has taken the internet by storm in the last week, even being jumped on by Rise at Seven’s Carrie Rose, whose fake IKEA chair ad taught us a thing or two about leveraging a trend to go viral. Unfortunately, due to the costs of running the API, the meme generator’s creator has now archived the site...but not before 10 million Bernie memes were created using it!

LinkedIn introduces new controls for users’ posts

LinkedIn is introducing new controls for individual posts which will allow users to restrict who can see and comment on them. On LinkedIn, posts are visible by all of your connections by default, but users will now be able to specify the audience they want to reach for each individual post, namely: anyone, Twitter, connections, group members or attendees. Comments can also be restricted to connections only, everyone or no one. The new feature will also let users curate their own feed, filtering out spammy content and taking back control over what they want to be scrolling through.

WhatsApp adds new biometric authentication feature as user numbers plummet

WhatsApp has announced new biometric features and previewed a few of its new updates set to be coming to its app this year. With the new feature, users will now be able to add in a biometric login which users either a fingerprint, face ID or iris ID (depending on the device) to add an extra layer of authentication. When implemented, it will appear for users before a desktop or web version of the platform can be linked up with a mobile app account, which currently relies on just using a QR code. The QR code won’t go away, but will be joined by the secondary biometric layer of authentication. This new update announcement comes after WhatsApp’s poorly explained and even more poorly received policy update announcement earlier this month. Over the first three weeks of January, WhatsApp competitor Signal has gained 7.5 million users globally, while Telegram has gained 25 million as users move away from the Facebook-owned messaging platform in favour of other options.

Quizlet and TikTok partner up to enable creators to build new learning videos

Global learning platform Quizlet, known for its AI-powered study tools, is partnering up with TikTok to allow the site’s educational creators to link Quizlet study sets directly to their videos. The initiative will allow creators in the education space, like teachers and subject experts, to make their videos more interactive and engaging for users by choosing from more than 450 million Quizlet study sets.