Welcome back for another monthly social media news update from Giraffe, this month our focus is on Twitter, surprise surprise! Facebook updates and Instagram finally add the ability to add more links to your bio! Rejoice! So sit back grab a cuppa relax and take a read of the latest updates across your favourite social platforms.
Facebook Testing AI-Generated Stories
Facebook has begun testing AI-generated stories based on users’ previously shared images. Meta keeps exploring ways to get more people engaging with stories, this latest effort sees image recognition AI creating Stories from your shared content.
This example posted by Jacki PitKow and shared by Matt Navarra, shows that some users are being prompted to use a new feature ‘Advanced Stories’.
Facebook describes the feature:
“Allow Facebook to suggest high-quality, ready-made stories for you using advanced photo and video data, including image quality, location, and the presence of people or animals.”
Facebook will generate Stories based on images users have uploaded to the app, using thematic matching to provide templated frames that can then be shared with an audience.
This may be a handy tool for brands to help create batch content and highlight products or themes in reminder posts.
Regular users may find it engaging to create stories based on wedding photos, family days out or baby photos, which could see the feature gain a lot of traction. Facebook Memories has always been a hit with users and we can see this being the same, based on nostalgic and sentimental content users may want to share.
Both Facebook and Instagram have been looking to better align with behavioural shifts towards Stories and private messaging,
People are still consuming content in the main feed, with Meta’s advancing AI recommendations helping to keep people scrolling for longer, but Meta also needs to ensure that people continue to glean real value from their in-app experience. And for Facebook, that comes from engaging with their friends and family.
Time will tell if these new ‘Advanced Stories’ are a success, but for Meta & Facebook, it is surely worth the gamble to test out as another avenue to keep personal engagement alive on its platforms.
Twitter Announce Without Warning That All Adversiders Will Now Have To Pay for Verification to Run Ads
In other social media news, Elon is back at it again trying to boost Twitter’s new subscription service, by brute force it seems!
Emails to Twitter advertisers have been hitting inboxes, informing them that to continue running ads on the platform they’ll have to sign up to either Twitter Blue or Verification for Organisations to keep ads running.
This means that all brands will have to pay to play with Twitter ads moving forward, this was seemingly an overnight decision which came into effect overnight, thanks for the warning, Elon!
The cheaper option is to buy Twitter Blue for your brand, at £8 per month, costing £96 per year to your business. Whilst not a huge imposition to annual budgets everywhere, it could be a bit of a shock to price-sensitive brands and social media agencies who price ads into costing client service offerings.
Paying will get you access to ads again, but also, you’ll get a verified tick, which may give your brand more legitimacy. However, with celebrities trying to get rid of their blue ticks, due to negative stigmas attached to paying for it, these checkmarks no longer carry the weight of trust and authority they once did.
The other issue of course is that now anyone can buy verification, as currently there is no checking process involved, watering down the blue tick offering even more. At £8 per month, Twitter Blue verification protections and bonuses now seem of little benefit to SMM and brands everywhere past the ability to access the advertising platform Twitter offers.
Instagram Adds the Capacity to Display A Max of 5 Links in Your Profile
In more social media news, Instagram has just launched a much-requested feature, finally giving users the ability to add up to five links to their Instagram bio!
As per Instagram:
“Starting today, the update will make it easier for creators and other users to highlight their passions, bring awareness to causes they care about, promote brands they love, showcase their personal business, and more.”
As you can see through the link, your Instagram bio will have the ability to display how many links you have available, via profile linking, once tapped users are taken to a link overview not dissimilar to Linktree, with the various links you have enabled.
Just like that Linktree and other linking tools may find themselves in a bad spot. Gone are the days when Instagram opposed external linking, a key driving force behind the rise of Linktree and other third-party linking options. With users now able to replicate this feature natively in-app it will see subscriptions to third-party apps cancelled and abandoned.
But then again, some of these tools enable branding options that could still act as an enticement, along with more link display options. It’s also become such a standard behaviour now that users don’t find it jarring, so maybe, some businesses will stick with third-party link tools, even with this new capacity available.
It’s good for users, though, and there’s a range of ways that brands and creators can utilize this capacity to drive traffic to various URLs to maximize brand presence.
It’s surprising that Instagram’s taken this long to implement it, as it’s been testing it since 2021, but now, it’s decided, is the time to push ahead.
Well, that wraps things up for another month of news updates from us here at Giraffe, we predict that next month will again be dominated by Twitter and Elon Musk making more polarising decisions.
Until then head over to our blogs section which is full of rich info and ideas from our social media experts here at Giraffe to help improve your social media strategy.
