Social media updates – What happened in January 2020
Read the first social media round-up of the new year from our specialist, Nick.
Facebook updates January 2020
Zuckerberg outlines five key areas of focus for Facebook moving forward
At the start of each year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sets a goal for his company. This year was slightly different, being the start of a new decade, so Zuckerberg picked out five key ways Facebook can impact society over the next 10 years:
- Generational Change: Facebook want to give “a platform to younger entrepreneurs, scientists, and leaders” to enable change throughout the world.
- A New Private Social Platform: “Our digital social environments will feel very different over the next 5+ years, re-emphasising private interactions.”
- Decentralising Opportunity: Facebook hope to give small businesses more opportunities to reach customers and access commerce tools.
- The Next Computing Platform: Zuckerberg believes augmented reality devices “will be the most human and social technology platforms anyone has built yet”.
- New Forms of Governance: He also calls for greater regulation for the main digital communities, suggesting they should operate under one set of rules. [source]
Facebook updates Privacy Checkup tool
Facebook have updated their ‘Privacy Checkup’ tool, which helps users find how their personal data is being used by the platform. [source]
Facebook provide tips for organic videos
As well as announcing that Traffic Source Insights have been rolled out in Creator Studio, Facebook released some general advice to improve video performance.
They suggest posting at least one or two videos per day to increase reach and to prioritise content over three minutes long, while also stating that returning viewership is a key indicator to increase distribution. [source]
Twitter updates January 2020
Twitter provide first look at option to limit who can reply to tweets
In October, Twitter’s head of product Kayvon Beykpour said they were thinking about ways for users to restrict the audiences of their tweets. Now Twitter have provided a preview of how this may look for users on the app.
When sending a tweet, the user would be presented with four audience settings:
- Global: Anyone can reply
- Group: Only people you follow or mention can reply
- Panel: Only people you directly mention within the tweet itself can reply
- Statement: No tweet replies allowed
This new process is due to be rolled out later this year. [source]
Twitter launch ‘Promoted Trend Spotlight’ ad option
The new ‘Promoted Trend Spotlight’ ad unit will enable brands to feature in the top section of the Explore tab. Twitter says this should compliment their Promoted Trend ads, and will support six-second videos, GIFs and static images.
As this is a prime placement opportunity, these ads will be very expensive and suited to larger advertisers for big brand awareness campaigns. [source]
Instagram updates January 2020
Instagram address questions on the algorithm
Posting a Q&A on their @Creators account, Instagram provided some interesting insights about the platform in January. For instance, they don’t “universally favour photos over videos” because each feed is customised to what type of content a user normally engages with.
They also revealed that since switching to the algorithmic ranking, compared to a chronological feed, the average post is now seen by 50% more followers. [source]
Instagram remove IGTV button after just 7m app downloads in 18 months
They’ve removed a button on the home page which directed users to IGTV. Since users can already watch videos over one minute within the main app through the embedded IGTV experience – and the separate app failed to take off in 2019 – this change doesn’t come as a surprise. [source]
TikTok update January 2020
TikTok reaches parity with Twitter among 18–24 year olds in the UK
Data from Comscore shows that TikTok, the fastest-growing social media platform in 2019, is used by nearly one-tenth of all adult UK smartphone users. Their figures also reveal that 26% of 18-24 year olds used the platform in December 2019, putting TikTok level with Twitter in terms of use by this age group. [source]
