New social media features and updates to know this week
Big moves from LinkedIn and TikTok.
After a fairly quiet period of updates last week, social media platforms are announcing a ton of new features. Some might cause you to raise an eyebrow, but others could seriously up your social media game.
Let’s get into it.
In a move that will be either prove to be brilliant or a miserable failure, LinkedIn confirmed it will incorporate gaming into the professionally focused app, TechCrunch reported. Expected to be simple puzzle games similar to the massively popular Wordle, app researchers found that it’s possible that employees from different companies will be able to compete together against other organizations. This could be a great tool for internal team building — or an awkward fit for a platform that’s meant to be all business.
In more traditional LinkedIn news, the app is tweaking its collaborative articles function on the feature’s one-year anniversary. The AI-generated prompts allow users to share their experiences on a variety of topics.
New features for collaborative articles include:
- A focus on prompts that ask people to speak to personal experience.
- An “unhelpful” button to help weed out low-quality content.
- Updates to the algorithm that matches users to prompts.
- A mobile experience that now mirrors the desktop design.
- Expanded distribution that can match organic content.
- A collaborative article search filter.
Finally, new thought leader ads will allow companies to sponsor any post from a first- or second-degree connection, not just those from employees. The creator must approve the sponsorship before it appears, but this could be a unique way to surface content that matters, even if it wasn’t made by you.
TikTok
Even though TikTok’s future in the United States is in doubt, the company is still rolling out plenty of updates and even contemplating a whole new app.
Blog The SpAndroid did some digging and discovered strings of code that seem to indicate a separate TikTok Photos app in the works. That’s right, after years of Instagram chasing TikTok, TikTok is now creating its own Instagram clone. Photos can already be posted in TikTok itself, but this would create a new option. TikTok has not confirmed the app yet, but it’s certainly an interesting concept for marketing and PR pros to watch.
TikTok has also rolled out a new library of Sounds for Business — Voice Clips. These clips, voiced by popular creators on the app, are on a variety of small business-related topics and are free to use. Whether or not you’ll want to is another question. Take a listen for yourself.
Finally, TikTok unveiled a new Creator Search Insights tool that helps show what people are looking for on the app, which is now one of the world’s most popular search engines. The results are searchable by topic and also show “gap topics,” or content users search for but for which there isn’t a great deal of content, creating a unique opportunity for creators.
There are no new concrete announcements of new Instagram features this week, but plenty of intriguing hints leaked by the intrepid users who hunt through code for insight into coming attractions. Here’s a quick rundown:
- A survey hints at some new features that may be implemented into Meta’s Verified program, including the ability to add links in Reels, a dedicated customer service phone line and priority advertising reviews, among others.
- Instagram may soon allow you to attach files to DMs, though this feature might only be available for businesses.
- Photo Carousels could expand to 15 photos.
- A Spins feature could allow people to add their own audio and text to your Reels footage.
If any of these come to pass, you can read about it right here.
Snapchat
Snapchat is giving users the ability to opt-out of a core part of its functionality: the disappearing DM. Currently, if you want to save a message, you must do it manually each time. But in a feature currently in testing, users could choose to save all DMs from a conversation forever. Users would have the ability to change settings on each conversation so you don’t have to save every message from everyone, and in-chat notices would ensure everyone in the conversation knows how the messages will be handled.
In a move that is certain to enrage Reddit users, the soon-to-be public company has announced a new set of ads that’s quite difficult to distinguish from organic content. Dubbed free-form ads, advertisers can share multiple media types in a single ad. “As our most native ad format yet, free-form ads are designed to look and feel similar to the type of content redditors share with each other, inviting maximum engagement from the community,” according to the announcement. These will likely be great for advertisers, but do be aware of the backlash from the notoriously advertising-averse community.
Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.
