Social Media News Round-Up: 12/11/21
This week’s social media marketing news at a glance:
Scroll down to read the full news stories
🧿 Twitter expands subscription service Twitter Blue to more users
⏱️ Instagram tests ‘Take a Break’ feature to encourage users to limit time on its app
⬇️ YouTube removes dislike counts on videos
📲 Instagram adds new TikTok-like features to Reels
🧠 YouTube expands crisis resource panels to improve mental health assistance
🤝 TikTok launches ‘Creative Exchange’ platform to connect brands with top creators
Twitter expands subscription service Twitter Blue to more users
Twitter is beginning to expand its paid subscription service Twitter Blue. When it launched back in June, only users in Australia and Canada got access to the highly anticipated service. Now, users in the US and New Zealand can sign up and gain access to the additional features, which include the ability to undo tweets, customise your colour scheme and app icon, and turn tweet threads into easy-to-read text with Reader Mode.
Instagram tests ‘Take a Break’ feature to encourage users to limit time on its app
Instagram is following in its rival TikTok’s footsteps with a new ‘Take a Break’ feature, which encourages users to limit their time on the app. The wellbeing feature will allow users to set reminders that prompt users at certain intervals on the app - every 10, 20 or 30 minutes. ‘Take a Break’ comes as Meta (AKA Facebook) grapples with restoring its reputation after a barrage of criticism around its handling of the mental health of its users.
YouTube removes dislike counts on videos
YouTube has announced that it is removing the dislike counts from videos on its platform in order to limit ‘downvote brigading’, whereby users deliberately mass-downvote a video to harm videos’ performance. The downvote count will still be privately visible to the creator of the video.
Instagram adds new TikTok-like features to Reels
Instagram has announced that it is adding more TikTok-inspired features to Reels, including a new text-to-speech narration option and voice effects. Reels’ text-to-speech option will allow an auto-generated voice to read text in videos aloud, and is an incredibly popular tool on TikTok. Similarly, Instagram Reels’ new voice effects tool will allow users to modify the audio and/or voiceover in videos, getting creative and adding humour with filters such as ‘Helium’, ‘Robot’, and more.
YouTube expands crisis resource panels to improve mental health assistance
In another move towards improving the mental health of its creators and users, YouTube is expanding its crisis resource panels, which provide contact information on mental health providers. Previously, YouTube’s crisis resource panels only appeared in search results. Now, they will also be shown on the Watch Page - where people spend most of their time - and will be displayed directly under the video title at the top of the page.
TikTok launches ‘Creative Exchange’ platform to connect brands with top creators
TikTok is improving its brand-creator partnership features even more with its new ‘Creative Exchange’ platform, which will allow brands to pitch a campaign brief that creators can then respond to, before arranging sponsored content deals. TikTok says the platform will give marketers “instant access to the best TikTok creative partners in the industry,” enabling “efficient collaboration at scale”.
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