Social media platforms move as fast as their users. Data and Insights Director, Ala Shashaa at the regional digital marketing agency, Netizency shares with Communicate all the relevant updates for your business so you don’t have to look for them yourself.
Welcome to January, where each day feels like a week and the week feels like a month!
In this month's roundup of social media updates, you'll find that Twitter was the most active when it comes to trying new features — all in Musk’s efforts to steer the company in the right direction! Despite making the world’s most popular electric car, leading the transition to sustainable energy, and launching rockets into space, in the eyes of many, Musk has yet to cross one major item off his list: Reviving Twitter!
Besides that, we're particularly excited about Twitter's current focus on improving the search experience on mobile for curious users, as well as the introduction of a new ad type called Search Keywords. This could spell trouble for Google – an interesting battle to watch unfold!
For now, let’s get right into this month’s recap of all the social media news you need to know:
- Introduces ‘Search Keywords’ ads.
- Adds ‘Advanced search’ on mobile.
- Publishes its annual 2023 Marketing Calendar.
- Adds ‘Hashfetti’, a new branded hashtag experience.
- Considers selling usernames online.
- Adds ‘For You’ and ‘Following’ tabs on the desktop.
- Adds an annual Blue subscription plan.
- Bans all third-party apps.
- Revives an old side-swipe feed navigation feature.
- Brings the ‘Bookmark’ display button up front.
- Works on counting Bookmarks as “quite likes”.
- Loosens the ban on political ads.
- Outlines its areas of focus for 2023.
- Adds a 'Quite Mode' feature.
Meta
- Announces launch of ‘Rights Manager’.
- Adds more restrictions on teen ad targeting.
- Centralizes all its platforms’ settings in ‘Accounts Center’.
- Renames 'People' metric to 'Accounts Center accounts'.
TikTok
- Partners with IMDb for feature-targeting film and TV content.
- Adds video-scrubbing thumbnails.
- Tests ‘sleep reminders’.
- Adds ‘Talent Manager’ to its Creator Marketplace.
- Tests a ‘playback’ feature.
YouTube
- Tests suggested hashtags on Shorts.
- Tests its Queue feature on mobile.
- Adds subscribers by format in YouTube Analytics.
- Launches Shorts thumbnail selection on Android.
- Experiments with Shorts location tagging during upload.
- Launches proxy support.
- Tests voice notes to status uploads.
- Highlights their goals and plans for 2023.
- Makes newsletter subscriptions visible to others.
