March, the financial year closing month saw a lot of major updates across different social media platforms. There were drastic decisions taken by the upper hierarchy and many promising and innovative steps enabling transparency and thereby gaining users’ trust. There were updates on ad features helping maximise the promotions of businesses and creators.
Let’s go through some of the significant updates that happened in March.
From April 15, the Main feed will Recommend Only Tweets from Blue Subscribers
Elon Musk is taking severe actions to drive more subscribers considering the failure to reach expectations with Twitter Blue take-up. As per Musk’s new announcements, from April 15th, tweets that will appear in the ‘For You Tab’ will be only from those Twitter Blue Verified accounts who are paying.
Twitter’s also removing ‘legacy’ blue checkmarks from April 15th and hence your Twitter feeds contain only the blue ticks from paying users, and only paying users will show up in For You feed recommendations.
However, tweets from the accounts you follow in your ‘Following’ tab can still be viewed, and you’ll still be able to see tweets from non-Twitter Blue accounts in other areas like Explore trends. But it will limit visibility, which will prompt more accounts to pay up and boost Twitter’s revenue intake through subscriptions.
Meta Launches New Reels Ad Options to Maximise Promotion Opportunities of Advertisers
With Reels getting more momentum on Facebook and Instagram, Meta’s launching some new ad options to help advertisers maximise their promotions opportunities in short-form video clips.
Meta is making its Click-to-Messenger Ads available within Facebook Reels, which will let businesses drive direct DM contact via Reels clips. Click-to-Messenger ads in Reels will have a large CTA button to drive contact via private chat, which aims at both the increasing popularity of short-form video as well as private message interaction.
Meta also has a second new addition in its plan -making WhatsApp Conversion optimization available for Facebook Reels Ads.
Google Launches New ‘Ads Transparency Centre’ to Share Insights on Campaigns
Google aims to provide more transparency on the ads running across its apps, with the launch of a new Ads Transparency Center, which will provide the details of each organisation and campaign.
The new Google Ads Transparency Center will help to search ads by topic, advertiser or website, allowing to filter off the listings by region. Then exact insights on which ads are being run where will be available and you’ll also be able to access info on when each campaign was previously run, and what the ad format/s used. The new insights will ensure more transparency in Google ads and users will also be able to block or report any ads that they find direct from these listings.
It could also function as a handy research element for digital marketers, enabling them to dig into how competitors are using Google ads to promote their business.
The new Google Ads Transparency Center will be available directly from any ad, by just tapping on the three dots menu and you’ll also be able to access the platform via My Ad Center.
Instagram NFTs Will Soon be Deactivated
Meta informed the Instagram users that their current, active NFTs in the app will be deactivated as of April 11th. Instagram users are now shown an alert to let them know about the change.
Instagram was viewed as the home for Meta’s NFT push, with the company aiming to get in on the NFT boom to showcase digital ownership, which it sees as a key element of its evolving metaverse push.
Youtube Adds Podcast Analytics and Are Up with New Hashtag Recommendations for Long Form Clips
YouTube rolls out some new options for podcast creators. In addition, it also includes the launch of a new experiment that will recommend hashtags to add to your uploads to increase discovery.
Creators will now be able to create a new podcast directly in YouTube Studio and designate an existing playlist as a podcast to improve the podcast upload and management process.The new options help to focus on podcasts specifically in the app, with improved upload processes and tools to help separate your podcast uploads from your video clips.
YouTube’s also adding Podcast Analytics.YouTube’s been developing more podcast tools, as it moves to align with growing audio usage.
YouTube will also now enable creators to download their videos from the mobile version of YouTube Studio.
Youtube says, “Up until now, Creators have been able to download their videos in Studio on desktop, but have not been able to do so on mobile. We’re happy to announce that we are launching the ability for Creators to download their videos in MP4 format from the video list to their device, in Studio Mobile and YouTube Mobile.”
Youtube has come up with new video downloading options. This makes it easier to manage your YouTube content or cross-post to other platforms via native apps. Videos downloaded however have the watermark in it which while cross-posting on other apps, stands as a drawback.
Social media updates in March give ambivalent feelings. Some were surprisingly helpful and some are shocking. While some benefit the businesses, others invite more expenditures to cope with new decisions as part of the updates. Let’s accommodate our social media accounts and businesses in a way suitable to tide through and make the most out of the updates.
