Jan 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.

Discord acquired Gas. Instagram announced major design changes. And YouTube prepared for Shorts ad monetization.

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

Amazon 🛒

✦ Started paying creators to post short vertical videos to its Inspire shopping feed.

Discord 💬

✦ Acquired anonymous compliment app Gas, which quickly rose to popularity among teens.

Facebook 👍

✦ Meta removed advertisers' ability to target teens by gender on Facebook and Instagram (though they can still target by age and geo).

✦ Signed a new deal with Shutterstock to use its visual and audio content library to fuel its AI tools.

✦ Reportedly working on Reels ad monetization for a Q4 rollout.

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Instagram 📷

✦ Announced plans to remove the Shop tab and return Compose to the center of the navigation bar in February.

✦ Reportedly shutting down Creator Studio and merging it with Meta Business Suite.

✦ Introduced quiet mode, which mutes notifications and sends an auto-reply to DMs.

✦ Added new parental controls so parents can see teens’ IG account settings.

✦ Rolled out its Notes feature in Europe and Japan.

LinkedIn 🤝

✦ Added a subscribe button and link for creator newsletters.

Snapchat 👻

✦ Leaked plans to charge $0.99 to restore a broken Snapstreak (consecutive days that friends have exchanged Snaps).

Substack ✍️

✦ Added Pledges, which allows readers to commit to a paid subscription when a writer starts to monetize.

✦ Announced private publications, which require authors to approve newsletter reader requests.

TikTok ♪

✦ Will soon allow creators to restrict videos to 18+ viewers.

✦ Partnered with IMDb to allow US and UK users to link their favorite films and shows in TikTok videos.

✦ Added a Talent Manager Portal to its creator marketplace to allow managers to take actions on behalf of their clients.

✦ Testing sleep reminders.

✦ Testing video-scrubbing thumbnails to make it easier to identify a certain point in a video.

✦ Testing a podcasts feature that continues to play audio even when the app is in the background.

✦ Started applying state-controlled media labels to 40 markets around the world.

Twitter 🐦

✦ Announced relaxed rules for its cause-based advertising policy.

✦ Launched a default For You view of tweets, though users can still swipe to a tab for tweets from followed users.

✦ Suspended third-party bots and apps (e.g. Tweetbot).

✦ Shut down its CoTweets feature.

YouTube 🎥

✦ Announced it will start sharing Shorts ad revenue with eligible creators on Feb 1st.

✦ Enabled Shorts users on Android to pick the preview image for their video.

✦ Added location tags for Shorts.

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