September 2024 Social Updates

Instagram added comments to Stories. LinkedIn is getting rid of the orange Top Voices badges. And YouTube announced the new Hype feature to spotlight emerging creators.

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

Discord 💬

✦ Opened development for Activities, its in-app ecosystem for apps and games, to all developers.

Facebook 👍

✦ Expanded Meta AI’s Imagine features, which use generative AI to turn text into images, across Facebook and Instagram posts.

✦ Announced new AI translation tools to enable users to watch reels recorded in different languages.

Instagram 📷

✦ Rolled out comments on Stories, which are only visible to a user's followers. Like Stories themselves, the comments will only be visible for 24 hours.

✦ Launched new youth privacy and safety features, such as automatically making accounts for users under 16 private by default and muting notifications from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.

LinkedIn 🤝🏻

✦ Announced plans to sunset Top Community Voice badges (the gold badges earned from collaborative article contributions).

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Pinterest 📍

✦ Added "remix” and sharing features for collages, its popular digital scrapbooking tool.

Reddit 👽

✦ Rolling out AI-powered translations of posts and comments to 35 new countries, starting with Brazil and Spain.

Snapchat 👻

✦ Introduced ads in its Chat tab.

Substack ✍️

✦ Launched a live video feature.

Telegram ✉️

✦ Announced it will start sharing the IP addresses and phone numbers of users who violate its terms of service with relevant authorities in response to valid legal requests.

TikTok ♪

✦ Organized a U.S. Elections Integrity Advisory Group and added FAQs about voting from authoritative sources.

✦ Started requiring two-step verification for U.S. government and politician accounts.

✦ Expanded its subscription feature to new countries as well as creators who don’t livestream.

✦ Shutting down its music streaming app TikTok Music in November.

✦ Partnered with the World Health Organization to provide health information on related videos.

Twitch 🎮

✦ Updated its Ad Manager to allow Partner streamers to control how many ads are played during their streams.

✦ Announced several new features at its annual Twitchcon event, including “enhanced broadcasting” in 1440p resolution and vertical video options coming early next year.

✦ Unveiled a “shared chat” feature, which allows streamers to link their chats when streaming together.

✦ Promoted an upcoming Clip Carousel feature, which will highlight the best clips from a creator’s most recent stream and a new monetization option that will allow viewers to react to on-stream moments by purchasing a digital emote.

✦ Started providing streamers with more clarity on policy violations, such as showing an excerpt of where violations occurred in chats.

X 🐦

✦ Got banned in Brazil for failing to meet a court deadline to appoint a new legal representative in the country. X can be reinstated by paying a $1.9M fine.

✦ Testing a new video app for internet-connected TVs.

✦ Launching a new video tab a la TikTok’s For You Feed in a push to turn X into a “video-first platform.”

✦ Elon Musk suggested upcoming change to the platform's rules around blocked users, which would enable a blocked account to still see posts but stop them from engaging with those posts.

YouTube 🎥

✦ Expanded safeguards for European teens, such as stopping recommendations for “content that compares physical features and idealizes some types over others."

✦ Announced new AI detection tools for music and faces, which will be added to Content ID for content protection.

✦ Enabled creators to change their handle to a different language.

✦ Rolled out its “Add Yours” feature to all users, which allows viewers to share their responses to a creator’s Short through their own Shorts clips. 

✦ Announced Hype, a new feature designed to spotlight emerging creators with less than 500K subscribers.

✦ Unveiled paid digital gifts during livestreams.

✦ Added organizational tools for creators to curate their content into seasons and episodes for the YouTube TV app.

✦ Announced a partnership with Shopee in Indonesia, allowing creators to tag and promote products in their videos to make them purchasable through Shopee.

✦ Releasing its affiliate shopping program, which is currently available in the U.S. and South Korea, to Thailand and Vietnam in the coming weeks.

✦ Added a 'New' label to recently uploaded Shorts, which could potentially impact content discovery.

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