Feb 2023 Social Platform Updates

This is a monthly newsletter about social platform updates and new features. To receive Social Navigator in your inbox each month, subscribe here.

Quick shoutout to the RockWater Roundup newsletter, which makes me smarter on all things media and commerce. It's published by my friend Chris Erwin, who runs a strategy and finance consultancy. He just released his must-read 2023 Exec Playbook, available for free on LinkedIn or via email.

YouTube launched Shorts monetization. Snapchat. released an AI chatbot. And Instagram announced Broadcast Channels.

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

Discord 💬

✦ Announced video and screen sharing on its Stage Channels feature.

Facebook 👍

✦ Enabled creators to search for comments by keywords to improve content moderation and community engagement.

Instagram 📷

✦ Will stop allowing creators to tag products in livestreams in March.

✦ Introduced Broadcast Channels, a one-to-many messaging feature.

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LinkedIn 🤝

✦ Redesigned its Activity feed with sections per content type.

✦ Improved the messaging inbox with a new feature to Star messages.

✦ Expanded its post scheduling feature to also include articles.

Snapchat 👻

✦ Added ray tracing technology to its AR Lens Studio to simulate light movement for more realistic AR experiences.

✦ Released an AI chatbot powered by ChatGPT.

TikTok ♪

✦ Introduced a 3 strikes system to permanently ban accounts that repeatedly violate its guidelines.

✦ Announced it will soon allow users to Refresh their For You feed with new videos.

✦ Released new Promote features, including the ability to boost other people’s videos.

✦ Expanded its fact-checking efforts to include more languages.

✦ Reportedly working on a Creator Fund 2.0.

✦ Testing paywalled videos a la OnlyFans.

✦ Added dedicated video feeds to the homepage for Sports, Fashion, Gaming, and Food alongside the traditional Following and For You feeds.

✦ Announced TikTok Trivia, a live 5-day trivia game that offers U.S. adults a chance to win $500K in prizes (a la HQ Trivia).

✦ Launched Sounds for Business.

Twitter 🐦

✦ Deprecated free access to the Twitter API, replacing it with a basic paid tier.

✦ Started sharing ad revenue with creators that subscribe to Twitter Blue for ads that appear in their reply threads.

✦ Reportedly plans to charge companies $1,000 / mo. for gold verification pages.

✦ Announced that Tweetdeck will soon be exclusive to Twitter Blue subscribers.

✦ Increased the Tweet limit to 4,000 characters for Twitter Blue subscribers.

✦ Faced criticism for Tweet view counts reportedly being inaccurate.

YouTube 🎥

✦ Launched Shorts ad revenue sharing with creators.

✦ Added a self-service portal to its BrandConnect marketplace.

✦ Unveiled two new metrics for Shorts: Shown in Feed and Viewed (vs Swiped Away).

✦ Officially launched its multi-audio feature, which had previously been in beta.

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