October 2024 Social Platform Updates

Meta revamped its monetization program. Snapchat+ surpassed 12M subscribers. And YouTube increased the max video length for Shorts to 3 minutes.

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

Facebook 👍

✦ Merged in-stream ads, Reels ads, and performance bonuses into a new Content Monetization beta.

✦ Announced Movie Gen, which offers new AI content creation and editing tools.

✦ Released new gen AI features for video ads, such as turning images into animated videos.

✦ Rolling out its Meta AI assistant to 21 more countries, including the U.K. and Brazil.

✦ Decided to shut down its augmented reality platform.

Instagram 📷

✦ Launched a “Best Practices” tool to offer personalized tips to creators.

✦ Released profile cards globally, which are like digital business cards for easy sharing.

✦ Added a naming option for saved drafts and a post scheduling feature from the drafts folder.

✦ Started including photos and carousels with music in the Reels tab alongside short-form videos.

Pinterest 📍

✦ Rolled out AI and campaign automation features for advertisers called Pinterest Performance+.

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Reddit 👽

✦ Now requiring subreddit moderators to get approval from a Reddit admin to change from public to private in order to make it harder for online communities to digitally protest the platform.

Snapchat 👻

✦ Launched Sponsored Snaps, which allow users to receive video messages from advertisers.

✦ Unveiled Promoted Places, which enables advertisers to sponsor locations on Snap Maps.

✦ Announced that Snapchat+ has surpassed 12M subscribers, more than double YoY.

TikTok ♪

✦ Launched FlipStory, which allows creators to add a second side to their stories.

✦ Released an AI advertising toolkit called Smart+.

Triller 🎵

✦ Finally went public. 4th time’s the charm!

Twitch 🎮

✦ Introduced a dress code for VTubers.

✦ Launched mental health resources to offer creators private support.

X 🐦

✦ Elon reiterated plans to update the block function to stop a blocked account from engaging with but not block seeing content from a given user, though no release date has been set.

YouTube 🎥

✦ Increased the max video length for Shorts from 60 seconds to 3 minutes.

✦ Enabled users to “remix” clips from other Shorts and long-form videos.

✦ Testing a save button for Shorts.

✦ Announced plans to use DeepMind’s generative video model Veo to create backgrounds and video clips.

✦ Released a bedtime feature to automatically pause videos after a certain amount of time.

✦ Testing more granular playback speed controls.

✦ Added a voting option for videos in playlists and introduced new customization tools to let creators personalize playlist thumbnails.

✦ Experimenting with AI-powered comment replies that are meant to mirror each creator's tone and style.

✦ Included Shorts in the main YouTube Trending charts.

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