Social media updates and new features to know this week
Including Meta, Pinterest, LinkedIn and more.
Welcome to a new week of updates. Meta is rolling out new AI training and support programs aimed at helping small businesses and rural companies use AI tools more effectively.
The company announced a partnership with startup accelerator gener8tor to launch an AI incubator program for regional communities, along with a new Community Accelerator event that will train more than 100 small businesses on AI skills and tools.
The bigger strategy here is that Meta wants small businesses to become long-term users, and eventually paying customers, of its growing AI ecosystem across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and ads tools. The company says smaller businesses using AI are “growing faster” and reaching more customers, while Meta is positioning itself as the platform that helps them do it.
Meta
Meta is reportedly preparing to launch more advanced AI agents that can complete tasks for users instead of just answering questions. According to a report cited by Social Media Today, the company is developing tools that could research information, shop online, manage tasks and take actions on a user’s behalf across Meta’s apps.
One internal project, reportedly called Hatch, is being tested now, while Meta is also working on AI shopping tools tied to Instagram.
Meta also announced new AI-powered age verification tools designed to better identify teens, especially users under 13, across Facebook and Instagram. The company says its systems will now analyze things like profile information, posts, captions and “visual cues” in photos and videos to estimate a person’s age and place them into age-appropriate experiences automatically.
This will include moving suspected teens into stricter Teen Account settings or removing accounts believed to belong to children under 13. Meta stressed that the technology is “not facial recognition,” but it can analyze broader physical indicators, such as height or bone structure.
Pinterest shared new details on how it is making ads more relevant in real time by combining a user’s long-term interests with what they are actively looking at in the moment.
In a new blog post, the company explained that its previous recommendation models relied heavily on historical behavior, which meant ad recommendations could miss immediate intent signals. For example, if a user was currently viewing a “vintage leather armchair” Pin, Pinterest’s older system might still prioritize ads based on broader shopping habits instead of that exact particular item.
What’s new here is that Pinterest built a new Contextual Sequential Two Tower Model that adds live context into its recommendation engine. The system now factors in things like the Pin someone is currently viewing or the search they just performed, alongside historical behavior and demographic data, to better predict what ads they may actually engage with.
LinkedIn says it is rebuilding its recommendation systems around AI models that can better understand a person’s long-term professional goals and behavior.
CTO Erran Berger explained that LinkedIn is moving away from separate recommendation engines for things like Feed posts, job suggestions and ads. Instead, it’s using generative recommenders that analyze activity across the platform as part of a continuous professional journey.
Threads
Threads is adding a couple of new creative tools aimed at making posting easier and more visually engaging.
The biggest update is that users can now paste long blocks of text into the app and Threads will automatically split them into multiple connected posts.
Instead of manually breaking up long thoughts into a thread, the app now handles that automatically. Threads is also testing animated stickers that users can insert directly into posts to add more movement and personality to updates.
Instagram is adding new labels to clearly mark when content has been created or significantly edited using AI tools.
Creators will start seeing tags like “AI-generated” applied to posts when Meta detects AI involvement or when users disclose it themselves. The goal is to give viewers more transparency about what they’re seeing, especially as AI-generated images and videos become more realistic and widespread.
YouTube
YouTube is testing a redesign of its mobile app navigation that moves the Subscriptions feed from the bottom navigation bar to the top of the screen alongside the Home feed.
The new layout lets users swipe between Home and Subscriptions more easily. YouTube says it may also move other sections like Movies and TV into this top navigation area over time.
The company says the goal is to make content discovery feel faster and more intuitive on mobile.
Courtney Blackann is a communications reporter. Connect with her on LinkedIn or email her at [email protected].
