Here we are again, Giraffe is here to bring you the latest buzz within social media news. Read on to find out the latest developments and updates. We keep our ears and eyes peeled to help keep your social media marketing and strategy ahead of the curve.
Facebook Officially Launches Test of Option to Share Instagram Reels.
TikTok is on the rise, so naturally Facebook has been working to rise above it, working to quiet the apps growth where it can in order to prevent a migration of users from both Facebook and Instagram to TikTok’s platform.
Facebook’s main competitor to TikTok; Instagram Reels, which launched last July was on hand targeting the Indian market just days after TikTok was banned within the country. Allowing Facebook to fill the gap left by the ban and seeing fast initial growth. Facebook’s next step, as reported by Reuters, is to target India as a testbed for allowing Instagram Reels users to share their clips directly to Facebook too.
XDA Developers have shared screenshots of the new functionality, which will bring a new panel of short video clips into Facebook News Feeds. This expands the potential reach of Reels and Facebook hopes it will encourage creators to share more content on Instagram.
Facebook stated to Reuters that this is currently exclusive to India, but will be expanded over time with the hopes that Reels will gain greater exposure and could get more people posting to reels with Facebooks ideal scenario being that Reels draws users away from TikTok. Time will tell what users and creators make of these new features, however if successful potential platform audiences could be expanded by billons thanks to the added reach of Facebook.
Twitter Testing ‘Undo’ Option for Sent Tweets
Since the beginning of Twitters existence, users have called for an ‘edit’ option in order to correct errors. Yeah we have been there too! Twitter has always maintained the same stance that it’s not something they plan to implement. However Jane Manchun Wong, known for uncovering new features across multiple digital platforms has uncovered a potential undo feature. A compromise from Twitter? Maybe.
As can be seen in the example, once a tweet has been sent there appears to be a short window of time where a tweet can be recalled in order to correct errors before your blunder is unwittingly shared to an unsuspecting world.
The format, if ever released is not likely to be the final version and several Twitter users have noted that the promo obscures the tweet in question, which is clumsy and negates its function. However this is a step in the right direction fro Twitter and for passionate users who may send potentially offensive or polarising tweets, only to have a moment of clarity and instant regret after the fact.
It’s not the coveted tweet editing that users of the platform have advocated for, but it’s a start and could prevent a lot of errors, offence and moments of regret in future. A valuable addition to the platform then.
Instagram Tests New Labels to show When a Feed Post is Re-Shared to Stories
In other social media news, Instagram seems yet again to be discouraging users from posting their regular posts to Stories, whether this is due to some users complaining about it or a move by the platform itself to discourage people from recycling posts into Stories remains to be seen.
Instagrams latest experiment in this area sees new labels added to Stories posts that are directly re-posted from users main feeds. Examples have been shared by TestingCatalog, use the link above to view these. As can be seen in the examples posts re-shared from either a users main feed or reels may gain labels to alert users to their origin. Whilst this isn’t a huge change, it does make things look a little more cluttered. This may discourage users from re-sharing posts from their other feeds. Back in January Instagram experimented with blocking some users from re-sharing feed posts to stories, which naturally was received poorly. This looks to be why Instagram is now trying this new approach which is less heavy handed on the user, however how effective it could be, or how big an issue this is for users and Instagram is largely unknown.
Ultimately it can be annoying having to see the same posts from your main feed recycled into Stories, something to bare in mind when creating content for your own IG feeds. But will this stop those looking to maximise their exposure by re-sharing in this manner? The jury is still out on this and we will have to wait and see what Instagrams findings are after conducting the experiment.
That’s it from us this month, we will catch you next month for more social media news updates!
