New social media features and updates to know this week
New updates from Threads, Reddit and more.
Even as the fate of TikTok threatens to turn social media on its head, the new features and updates keep coming. Don’t miss a beat – here’s what you need to know.
Threads
Threads continues to slowly and surely build up its feature list as well as its member list. Meta is now offering creators who are popular on other apps $5,000 if they join the app and post Threads that receive at least 10,000 views. It’s a pricey gambit, but could prove worth it. The app has already surpassed 150 million monthly active users, but that still makes it a relatively minor player in the broader social media space. Growth is still necessary.
And part of that growth comes from new features, which Threads is still actively adding as the app approaches its first birthday.. This week, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri announced that the Hidden Words feature is expanding to allow users to weed out content they’d rather not see from most places on Threads, including posts, profiles, searches and more. “I hope these features give you more control over your experience on Threads and help keep it a place for positive conversation,” Mosseri said.
Threads is also testing a more controversial feature: the ability to automatically archive all posts on the app after a certain period of time. Mosseri announced the feature is being tested as an opt-in rather than a default option. It’s an interesting choice that could set Threads apart, eliminating the risk of damaging posts being resurfaced years later, often in different contexts. We’ll see how this one plays out.
X
X is continuing its efforts to move beyond its roots as a text-based microblogging platform and into a video-forward app with the rollout of X TV. As the name implies, this allows users to watch X video content on smart TVs.
Coming soon to a television near you: X TV 👀 pic.twitter.com/C7VWNa7jG5
— News (@XNews) April 23, 2024
It’s part of Elon Musk’s broader ambition for the app, but is it too far from the app’s core premise to work?
Fresh off its IPO, Reddit continues to pile on new app tweaks and more ad options.
Reddit is leaning into one of the most powerful parts of its platform: the comments. “Conversations are at the heart of Reddit and what sets us apart from the rest of the internet,” Reddit wrote in an announcement. “It’s through posts and comments that redditors engage with each other and their communities.”
So Reddit is working to help users get to the comments faster and engage there more. The platform now features “instant” comment loading that takes users directly to the comments section, new media players and consistent navigation.
Reddit is also continuing to expand advertising options by rolling out Dynamic Product Ads, which offer instant campaign creation, new targeting options and increased support.
Instagram is now offering an array of new analytics data for creators, Social Media Today reports. This includes insight into sticker taps, new teases to alert non-subscribers when content for subscribers has been posted, and tools to prevent people from screenshotting or recording subscriber only content.
TikTok
Besieged in the United States, TikTok is also facing issues in the European Union. After the EU accused the app of being “addictive” TikTok suspended its TikTok Lite rewards program that gave perks for watching videos and completing other tasks on the spinoff app designed for those with slow internet speeds.
Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.
