Social media updates and new features to know this week

Vine lives! Well, it may. Sort of.

Twitter acquired Vine in 2012 and completely airballed the microvideo concept, leading the app to shutter in 2016, leaving these early internet relics to become pieces of lost media.

But now Elon Musk says they’ve located the user archive and will be “restoring user access, so you can post them if you want.”

As with all Musk announcements, take this with a grain of salt. We don’t know when or if this will happen. But for those of us who came of age with Vine, getting to view these early — and sometimes cringe — bits of media could be a cool throwback, or the foundation for a retro campaign.

Now onto some more contemporary social media updates.

YouTube

You may start seeing more cursing in YouTube videos. At the beginning, at least. YouTube is changing its Advertiser Friendly guidelines to allow creators to use strong profanity (read: the F word) at the beginning of videos. This is due to creator feedback, according to YouTube’s Creator Insider channel. Advertisers can still limit what level of profanity they’re interested in advertising against.

The video streaming platform is also now using AI to determine whether a user is under the age of 18. According to YouTube, they’re looking at “the types of videos a user is searching for, the categories of videos they have watched, or the longevity of the account.” If the user is believed to be under age 18, YouTube will turn off personalized advertising, turn on safeguards for some kinds of content and turn on digital wellbeing tools. If someone is wrongly judged to be under 18, they can submit a credit card or government ID to prove their age.

Finally, YouTube is currently testing a feature that will allow creators to tag another account as a collaborator, which will serve the video to both pages’ audiences.

TikTok

TikTok has also been busy with lots of new features, programs and even new apps.

Adweek reports TikTok is testing a new feature that would allow tracking of users after they engage with a TikTok ad. “The new tool, called Engaged Session, will allow advertisers to target users who spend at least 10 seconds on a website or retailer landing page after clicking an ad,” according to Adweek.

TikTok Footnotes, the clock app’s version of the Community Notes fact-checking feature first popularized by X, has expanded to the U.S.

“Footnotes is powered by a bridging-based system that finds a broad level of consensus between people with different opinions. Footnotes that contributors agree are helpful will start to appear on videos in the coming weeks for our U.S. community, who will also be able to rate them,” according to a blog on the launch. The notes are contributed by people whose accounts are based in the U.S. and have had an account for at least six months with no community guidelines violations.

A new version of TikTok that enables charitable giving has rolled out in Germany, Spain and Portugal. TikTok Pro has the app’s “Sunshine Programme” built in. Users gain “virtual Sunshine” by getting other people to sign up for the app or by engaging with content from selected charities. They’ll then spend Sunshine on those charities, and TikTok will, in turn, make a donation.

A new fleet of health and safety tools has also been unveiled for TikTok. Among the many new features:

• A Family Pairing feature will allow parents to see their child’s privacy settings and notify them when they upload a video or story. Parents can also manage the Topics that show up in their child’s feed.
• Well-being Missions are a new feature that asks users to complete short tasks to build healthy habits. They’ll accumulate digital badges as they complete missions.
• Creator Care Mode, which helps filter offensive comments.
• The ability to mute words, phrases and emojis in TikTok Lives.
• Content Check Lite helps creators see if their content will be eligible for the For You page algorithm before posting.
• A new Creator Inbox for DMs.
• A Creator Chat Room for creators to engage with followers.

X

X is incentivizing advertisers to create aesthetically pleasing ads. The move comes weeks after the app banned both emojis and hashtags from ads. “We’re also refining our ad formats to be sleeker, while assigning each ad an aesthetic score that will influence its pricing. The bottom line? Craft ads that look and feel premium, and watch your performance soar,” according to a post from @XBusiness.

Digging deeper, it appears that aesthetic scores will reward ads that use proper spelling and grammar, that avoid imagery that is “gimmicky, excessively cropped, or indecipherable,” and that lead to landing pages whose “primary purpose cannot be advertising.”

It seems that the platform is trying to weed out spammy, low-quality ads with these new initiatives — but of course, enforcement is key.

Instagram

You’ll now need at least 1,000 followers to go Live on Instagram, which could limit the options available to smaller creators on the app.

Meta

Meta continues to beef up features on its Edits app as it attempts to take on juggernaut Capcut. New features include:

• 150 new fonts
• Save drafts to Instagram
• Extend content or audio beyond the main video clip
• A “cut silences” feature
• Import audio from files
• Swipe between saved audios and Reels
• Preview clips while recording

Elsewhere within Meta, Messenger is now allowing businesses to send utility messages. Triggered by purchases, events or other account activities, these messages use Meta-approved templates. “These templates not only simplify message creation but also reduce the risk of violating Messenger platform policies,” according to the announcement.

Reddit

Reddit is positioning itself to become a human-powered search engine. Future redesigns will put search directly at the heart of the user experience.

“We’re unifying those [Reddit search and Reddit Answers] into a single search experience, and we’re gonna bring that front and center in the app. So, whether you’re a new user opening the app for the first time or a returning user opening the app, that search box will be present immediately,” CEO Steve Huffman said during a second quarter conference call, TechCrunch reported.

So it’s time to get your Reddit strategy squared away to help influence search efforts.

Reddit is also implementing automated bidding on Brand Awareness & Reach objective ads.

Threads

Threads is beefing up its API features. Per Threads’ announcement, you’ll now be able to:

• Search and add a location to your Threads post when publishing.
• Add polls when publishing new threads, and retrieve poll results from existing threads.
• Create text-only threads faster using a single API call with the auto_publish_text parameter.
• Delete your own posts.
• Retrieve public profiles and fetch public posts that were created by public profiles.
• Create posts with topic tags and search for public posts by topic tag.
• Query click metrics to understand how many times your links are clicked on.
• Find relevant posts by specifying a date range when searching with a keyword.
• Fetch GIF media on posts with GIF attachments.
• Restrict posts to only allow replies from followers.
• Get real-time notifications when you are mentioned in a post thanks to a new webhook.

Allison Carter is editorial director of PR Daily and Ragan.com. Follow her on LinkedIn.