Social media updates and new features to know this week
Updates from Threads, Instagram, WhatsApp and more.
Platforms keep tinkering, and communicators have to keep up. This week brought another batch of tests, rollouts and policy shifts across the apps where your audiences spend their time. Here’s what you need to know.
Threads
Threads is testing shaking up the visual look of photos and videos on the app.
A new “quote” feature, currently in testing phases, will overlay a text post directly on top of videos or photos, kind of like quotes from movie critics on a trailer.
View on Threads
Additional edit options include adding stickers, dividing a photo into up to nine parts and more. Threads says this is “the foundation” for future features as well.
The app is also bulking up its live chat feature with a new spectator hand raise feature that allows chat hosts to call on members of the audience, as well as the familiar ability to send an emoji to the full chat.
Live streams can now be boosted on Instagram to aid in discoverability. The streams can show up in Reels, Stories or the main feed. Videos can be scheduled to be boosted in advance and will only last while the live stream is, well, live.
In Instagram-adjacent news, the Edits app is rolling out a new AI assistant that, Meta claims, will give you better recommendations for using Instagram than other LLMs.
“The Edits assistant is a creative partner that knows you and your audience,” writes Brett Westervelt, lead of the Edits app. “It can help you analyze your insights, brainstorm ideas, and get inspired from what other people are creating on Instagram. Instead of generic advice, you’ll find perspective grounded in who you are as a creator.”
The app is connected directly to your IG and can analyze metrics and posts without additional uploads or permissions.
Finally, Instagram is launching a new “centralized hub for school-related accounts.” Schools that opt in can broadcast announcements to verified members of the school community. In a nod to ongoing child safety concerns, reports flagged by schools will receive priority handling. Schools can also set up smaller hubs for the use of clubs and teams. And in a throwback, they can even assemble a school directory — just of Instagram handles instead of phone numbers.
WhatsApp is rolling out teen safety measures that help parents “guide them without reading over their shoulder.” The updates include:
- Parents get alerts when their teen joins or leaves a group, and when a group their teen belongs to grows significantly, so they can keep track of who their teen is talking to.
- Parents can control how their teen uses Channels.
- Parents can decide whose Status updates their teen sees and who can view their teen’s own Status updates.
- Parents can choose between two options for Meta AI use: a standard setting for users 13 and older or a more restrictive “Limited Content” option.
A PIN is required to change these settings.
YouTube
Like all video apps, YouTube is battling with copycats who download the content of popular creators and reupload it under their own usernames. In the latest front in the war, YouTube has updated its recommendation algorithm to reduce distribution on channels that upload content with no or little addition or changes.
“Rather than making minor technical edits or template-based changes simply to alter a video, focus on bringing your own voice, storytelling, or distinct point of view to the conversation,” the update advises.
The second generation of LinkedIn’s AI hiring assistant is here, aptly named Hiring Assistant 2. The tool is being touted as being smarter, with more persistent memory and the ability to better determine which profiles are real and which are fake.
As an example of the improvements for recruiters, the blog post announcing the update said:
In the past, a recruiter would ask Hiring Assistant to find a candidate in product management, and it would do that. Now, with advances in memory, Hiring Assistant will not only find a product management candidate, but it will now find one close to the office, in the retail industry and with mid-level experience, because those are all the things you’ve hired for in the past. Think of it like this: before, Hiring Assistant did a search based on what you said. Now, it searches based on what you mean.
Reddit will stop its support for RSS feeds as of Nov. 13, calling it a tool often used for “large-scale scraping and automated abuse.”
Allison Carter is editorial director of PR Daily and Ragan.com. Follow her on LinkedIn.
