August 2024 Social Platform Updates

Instagram added music to profiles. Telegram released monetization features. And LinkedIn finally lets you edit scheduled posts.

Here's everything you missed from social platforms last month...

Bluesky 🦋

✦ Enabled users to hide replies and detach their original post from someone’s quote post to help prevent abuse.

Facebook 👍

✦ Added educational resources about community standards violations. Creators who receive a first warning from the app can get that warning removed and keep making content if they complete a new educational training.

✦ Working on a digital assistant called “MetaAI.”

✦ Shut down CrowdTangle, a free public insights tool the company acquired back in 2016.

✦ Reportedly preparing to unveil new AR glasses soon.

✦ Announced plans to deprecate its Spark platform, which lets creators make their own augmented reality effects, in January 2025.

Fizz 🐝

✦ The anonymous college social platform launched a marketplace feature a la Facebook Marketplace.

Instagram 📷

✦ Switched to views as its primary engagement metric across all post types.

✦ Increased the carousel content limit from 10 to 20 images or videos. 

✦ Testing a copy of Snap’s Map feature in select markets.

✦ Enabled post scheduling up to 75 days in advance.

✦ Experimenting with vertical rectangles instead of squares on the profile grid.

✦ Add support for songs on user profiles, reminiscent of the popular MySpace feature.

✦ Released new fonts and stickers for Stories and Reels.

LinkedIn 🤝🏻

✦ Introduced newsletter sponsorships, which can be purchased via Campaign Manager.

✦ Enabled users to edit scheduled posts.

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Pinterest 📍

✦ Partnered with Amazon to let users buy items from Amazon ads without leaving the app.

Snapchat 👻

✦ Also planning to release a new generation of AR glasses in the next few weeks.

Telegram ✉️

✦ Introduced new monetization features, including tipping and paid channels.

Threads 🧵

✦ Launching analytics tools for audience and content performance metrics.

✦ Added support for saved post drafts.

✦ Testing scheduled posts.

✦ Testing posts that disappear after 24 hours, a la Twitter's ill-fated Fleets feature.

TikTok ♪

✦ Sued by the U.S. DoJ for violating children’s online privacy laws.

✦ Released a new “Spotlight” ad to promote new film and TV content.

✦ Removed features that reward in-app engagement following EU pressure.

✦ Partnered with Amazon to show Amazon product recommendations as pop up ads on users' For You Pages and enable purchases directly in app.

✦ Launched group chats that can include up to 32 people.

✦ Added stickers to DMs.

✦ Released a custom AI voice feature for text-to-speech audio.

Twitch 💬

✦ Unveiled a redesigned mobile app that features a vertical feed of recommended livestreams.

✦ Announced a new feature called Drop Ins to make it easier for creators to stream together.

✦ Raised prices for some subscriptions on its mobile app, after announcing it would raise prices for web subscriptions.

YouTube 🎥

✦ Enabled creators to appeal suspensions and demonetization.

✦ Testing ads during live streams.

✦ Experimenting with comments (instead of views) as the metric users see under videos when browsing. 

✦ Released a new Chrome extension for U.S. creators to save products while browsing a retailer’s site, so they can go back later to tag them in videos.

✦ Rolled out an AI chatbot to help users who have been hacked recover their accounts.

✦ Announced it's launching QR codes to help creators share their channel online or in person.

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