Welcome back to our Favola Five, where we bring you the top five updates from the rough and tumble of the ever-changing world of social media. Spring madness has extended to social media this month, with updates from Meta, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and even Snapchat (is it 2015 again?). Ready to get started? Let’s dive right in.
Meta’s moving mad
Meta has announced a variety of changes for businesses to improve their ads:
- Advantage+ Creative optimisations will use AI to optimise video ads for viewing on Reels or the mobile Facebook and Instagram apps with 9:16 ratio.
- Advantage+ Catalog ads will introduce added capacity to import and use branded videos or customer demonstration videos, instead of just static images.
- Advertisers will now be able to include external links to a new product or sale in their Reminder Ads to help turn a person’s interest into a purchase. They’re also looking to expand Reminder ads to Reels in the coming months.
- Meta is also working on Advantage+ Catalog ads, with omnichannel brand and product level reporting available. This will help to prove that ads on Meta platforms drove sales both online and in-store.
LinkedIn are changing things up
LinkedIn have announced that they are changing up their algorithm to put more emphasis on maximising value in the app, as opposed to timeliness.
What does this mean? Rather than posting about timely, trending topics, we could actually see more benefit from posting more in-depth, educational posts that add value to working professionals. Their aim is to better align with its mission to “connect the world’s professionals to economic opportunity”. Education over trends, our professional alter-egos like it.
Long form Reels are coming
One year after TikTok announced that they would be introducing ten minute long videos, Instagram has announced that they have been testing longer Reels video uploads. Some users are now able to upload Reels that are up to three minutes long.
Instagram has also been prompting users to upload longer Reels to boost engagement, with some users receiving prompts telling them that Reels over 30 seconds long perform better on the platform. After retiring its long form “IGTV” video option in early 2022, Instagram has now seemingly given it a makeover and is on a mission to bring back long form content.
It’s official, Facebook Pokes are back
No, we haven’t gone back in time to 2010, but our Millennial team members have been caught in a nostalgia trip. There has reportedly been a x13 spike in poking on Facebook in recent months. While the poke never truly went away, it was essentially shuffled to the back of the class, being buried in the depths of the settings page.
Facebook has now decided to give the Poke its time in the sun, by adding the option to Poke someone in the search functionality. Stay tuned to see if Poking will take off again. Somehow, we don’t think it will…
Snapchat is taking a big step
Finally, in an announcement that has shaken Snapchat lovers to the core (or least given them a x), Snap has revealed that it is testing out a new option that would enable users to select a “Never delete” option in their messaging retention options.
While this would essentially remove Snapchat’s key point of difference to other messaging apps, they have stated that this experiment is “in response to feedback from [their] community”. Can we read “community” as “an internal decision to keep up with our competitors”? We think so.
Snapchat has also noted that conversations in the app will continue to auto-delete by default. This is a big step from the platform that has always positioned themselves as the disappearing message platform.
