- TikTok has introduced various improved creation and editing tools to broaden the scope of what’s possible with content. These editing tools enable people to have more creative freedom, share richer stories, and bring their content ideas to life across formats. In addition, the improved editing tools allow users to easily adjust clips, sounds, images, and text in a new editing environment, all while remaining within TikTok’s creation flow. The tools include:
– Clip editing through stacking, trimming, and splitting video clips.
– Cutting, trimming, and adjusting the duration for sounds.
– Editing and positioning text and its set duration.
– Overlays for picture-in-picture (or video-in-video) stacking.
– Adjusting video clip speeds.
– Rotating or zooming in and out of individual clips’ frames.
– Including sound effects.
– Photo Mode is a new carousel format available on mobile for photo content, ideal for sharing high quality images on TikTok, for when users want to express themselves in formats other than video. Photo Mode allows users to share carousel posts of still images that appear one after the other. In addition, they can use music to accompany the images, which viewers can scroll through at their leisure. Furthermore, Photo Mode allow users to create with longer descriptions of up to 2 200 characters per post. - Research has shown that heavy tweeters have been in decline since the start of the pandemic. While these heavy tweeters (people who log in to the platform six or seven days a week and tweets three to four times a week) account for less than 10% of the platform’s overall monthly users, they generate 90% of all tweets and about half of global revenue. The study also discovered a shift in interests among Twitter’s most active English-speaking users over the last two years, which could make the platform less appealing to advertisers. Furthermore, the most popular topics of interest among English-speaking heavy users are cryptocurrency and “not safe for work” (NSFW) content, which includes nudity and pornography. At the same time, users’ interest in news, sports, and entertainment is dwindling. Tweets about those topics, which have helped Twitter establish itself as the world’s “digital town square,” are also the most appealing to advertisers. In addition, Twitter is losing a devastating number of heavy users interested in fashion or celebrities like the Kardashians. According to a Twitter researcher, these users are likely migrating to rival platforms such like Instagram and TikTok.
- YouTube has introducing handles as a new way for people to find and interact with creators and each other on YouTube. Every channel will have its own handle, making it easier for fans to discover new content and interact with their favourite creators. Handles will appear on channel pages and Shorts, making them easily and consistently identifiable. This will make it easier and faster for creators to mention one another in comments, community posts, video descriptions, and other places. Unlike channel names, handles are truly unique to each channel, allowing creators to further establish their distinct presence and brand on YouTube. There is no need to update links if a channel already has a personalised URL. They will be automatically redirected to the new, handle-based URL to create a better, more unified presence for creators on YouTube.
- In an effort to be more inclusive, LinkedIn has introduced auto captions and high contrast for improved video accessibility. As people share insights and collaborate to solve problems on LinkedIn, it’s critical that all members have access to these conversations in order to do their jobs, run their businesses, and stay informed. The platform is rolling out auto captions to make video content on LinkedIn more accessible to those who are deaf, hard of hearing, or prefer to watch videos with the sound turned off. Captions will be generated automatically when users upload a video to LinkedIn (English-only for now). They can be added as soon as they’re ready, or users can review them before publishing to ensure accuracy for their audience. In addition, when watching videos on the LinkedIn app, viewers can enable high contrast, which adjusts the colours to improve accessibility for those with low vision or visual disabilities.
- Instagram has launched a live test of native scheduling in the app. It’s built-in post-scheduling feature will be added to the advanced options in the post composer flow, along with a new element that allows you to set a date and time for the post to go live. This, it appears, will allow you to schedule both regular posts and Reels.
- Meta is launching new ad placements and formats on Instagram to help businesses tell their story and reach new customers. Advertisers can use these features to connect with people on Instagram:
Ads in Explore home and profile feed: Businesses can now place advertisements in Explore home, the grid that appears when people first visit the Explore tab. Meta is also starting to test ads in the profile feed, which is the feed experience that people can access after visiting another account’s profile and tapping on a post. As part of this test, they will experiment with a monetisation opportunity that will allow eligible creators to earn extra money from ads displayed in their profile feeds, starting with a small group of US creators.
AI-powered multi-advertiser ads: When someone interacts with an ad, Meta will deliver ads beneath what they think may be of interest, using machine learning. They have discovered that adding multi-advertiser contextual ads to existing Instagram feed ads campaigns outperformed running campaigns for the Purchase outcome when compared to those that did not. - People aren’t just watching Reels; they’re actively engaging with them and having conversations about them. Meta reported an increase of more than 30% in the time people spent engaging with reels across Facebook and Instagram. Audio is another important hook for increasing Reels engagement. Therefore, Meta is releasing free, high-quality songs from the Meta Sound Collection that can be added to Carousel Ads on Reels to make it easier for businesses to create Reels ads. Businesses can choose a song from the library or let the app choose the best music for an ad based on its content. Furthermore, the company is launching a test of post-loop ads, which are 4 to 10-second skippable and standalone video ads that play after a reel has ended. This is to help businesses connect with customers through Reels on Facebook. When the advertisement concludes, the original reel resumes and loops again. In addition, they are testing image carousel ads for Reels. These horizontally scrollable ads, which will appear at the bottom of Facebook Reels content, can include up to ten image ads.
