We hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas, full of merriment and lots and lots of chocolate, we know we can barely move. Roll on the new year when we can pretend, we are going to go to the gym. Enough of our lack of willpower, you’re here for your dose of social media news, read on at your leisure to find out what’s been happening during the festive period.
Meta Launches Year in Review Features on Facebook and Instagram
Pop onto Instagram or Facebook over the festive period and you may have noticed a new element, ‘Year in Review’, which provides users with an overview of some of the key moments they have posted to each platform during 2021, where has this year gone though, seriously!
Instagram’s new ‘Playback’ feature can be found at the top of your feed and showcases Stories highlights from the past 12 months, providing a nostalgic look at a year that probably involved a lot of time sitting on the sofa watching Netflix, thanks COVID!
The function searches your Stories archive to visually summarise your year, this of course can be edited, and users can add up to 10 Stories from their archive collection. These can have stickers/elements added just as you would with a normal Stories post and can then be shared with friends and family as usual through the Stories feature.
Facebook will include a new ‘Year Together’ option, highlighting ‘friends, feelings, places and people’ from 2021 that you have engaged with.
Be prepared to see your Facebook feed full of these as lots of users love the ‘On This Day’ reminders that this new feature ties into, this is bound to make this a real winner for Facebook and users alike, helping them invoke positive memories with their time spent on the app.
It is also worth noting that these are highlight reels, most users will not be posting key challenges and low points from 2021, be mindful of that as you may feel like others are doing more than you. It is important to note that everyone faces challenges and difficulties even if they aren’t posting them on social media.
Twitter shares the Top Tweets and Trends of 2021
In other social media news, Twitter has shared an in-depth overview of the top tweets and trends of 2021, there is a plethora of content here, including the most liked tweets, the most retweeted comments, the most discussed TV shows, movies and more.
It is a fantastic summary of the state of the world in 2021 with US politics and BTS dominating a large proportion of the most-liked tweets.
The ‘Hello literally everyone’ tweet which was posted during the great Facebook outage of October 2021 also topped the charts during the 6 hour Facebook blackout! How did we cope!
The most retweeted tweet of the year also came from BTS, with massages of support of racial tolerance and equality.
In terms of entertainment, the most-tweeted-about movies included both modern releases and also some cult classics:
- Black Panther
- Godzilla vs Kong
- Zack Snyder’s Justice League
- The Suicide Squad (2021)
- Spider-Man: No Way Home
- Space Jam: A New Legacy
- Black Widow
- Dune (2021)
- Mortal Kombat (2021)
- Shrek
Shrek remains a highly discussed, and beloved movie franchise, while Black Panther has also become a memorial film, of sorts, for actor Chadwick Boseman, who passed away in August last year.
The most tweeted about TV shows according to Twitter:
“The most Tweeted TV shows included reality TV competition favourites Big Brother Brasil and A Fazenda 13, while K-drama Squid Game changed how we’ll view children’s games forever, taking the third spot for most discussed TV show worldwide. Escapism was another big theme from TV this year, creating a movement which manifested through meme creations, costume-wearing, and more.”
It’s no surprise to see movie and TV discussions featuring prominently as the world has been locked down due to COVID, meaning more of us have been spending time inside due to restrictions. It’s an interesting take on what has resonated with audiences over the past year though.
For a full and insightful look at Twitter’s 2021 trends, you can check it out here.
TikTok Plans to Open its Own ‘TikTok Kitchen’ Delivery-Only Resturants.
This slice of social media news couldn’t have been predicted, In a surprise move, TikTok will be opening a new chain of delivery-only restaurants, which will see the company convert viral recipe videos from its app into themed menu items.
TikTok is partnering with Virtual Dining Concepts and Grubhub to get this off the ground and will update its menu on a four-month cycle, allowing for TikTok branded foods to be delivered directly to your door.
As reported by TechCrunch:
“The menu at the restaurants will draw upon the most popular viral food posts on TikTok, which people can then have delivered to their door via Grubhub. TikTok plans to launch around 300 locations that will start delivering dishes in March, with plans to open more than 1,000 restaurants by the end of next year.”
The process involves using staff and kitchens from other, existing restaurants to handle local orders, which will mean lower overheads, due to not operating physical outlets, this will afford more flexibility in scale and expansion.
Virtual Dining Concepts are well versed in such an operation having been involved in ‘Mr. Beast Burger’restaurants, launched recently by YouTube celebrity Mr Beast, which has now delivered over one million burgers and expanding. TikTok will be leaning heavily on their expertise to push their brand in a whole new direction.
TikTok has stated that it will allocate half of any profits from food sales to the creators of the menu dishes, yet another way for creators to monetise content on the platform and a very generous gesture on TikTok’s part.
Is this also a challenge to Instagram too, which seems to replicate TikTok features rolled out just weeks behind, Insta-Burger anyone? It seems unlikely IG will replicate this model, however, never say never if it becomes hugely successful for TikTok we could end up seeing a ‘Sizzling Stories Stack’ from Instagram too.
With that, we will leave you all hungry, sorry! We don’t make burgers. We hope you enjoy the rest of the festive break, and we will be back with you in 2022 for another slice of social media news. Happy New Year in advance from everyone here at Giraffe. See you next year!
