Facebook's feature updates, Instagram influencer clarity and Twitter's new look - Social Media News - Insight

In this week’s dose of social media news, we get a gazillion new updates from Facebook, so nothing new there! We’re looking at Twitters interface overhaul; they’re rocking a sexy new curvy look, and we look at the big announcement from Instagram; they want to be more transparent about paid collaborations, what this could mean for influencer marketing?

So, let’s start with the mammoth list of Facebook updates.

GIFs! Everyone’s favourite way to react on the internet have now arrived in Facebook comments. In much the same way as you can share GIFs in your Messenger app conversations, you can now reply to user posts with your best Oprah cheer or Britney eye roll. This is not yet allowed on paid posts, I assume because they are worried about the amount of people who may spam GIFs. GIFs are also now upload-able as posts on Facebook and usable as creative within Facebook Advertising.

You know your Facebook albums? I know, I hardly use mine anymore, it’s just mobile upload after mobile upload. Well, anyway, you can now make your photo albums into ‘virtual scrapbooks’ if you will; you can add in text posts, check ins and videos to create a complete collection for the album. You can now also follow or unfollow albums of friends, if that floats your boat. There is also the option to feature albums on your profile page, and collaborating on albums has been made simpler. All these new features will be available on Android soon and iOS shortly after.

Do you ever wish you could get more users to trust in your product or service on your Facebook page? Well now you’re in luck. Facebook are testing a new feature which would allow pages to add their star rating to their adverts. If you’re lucky enough to have a star rating of four or above you can now turn on the test feature which will allow adverts to display the rating, which will be an extra way to attract users to your business. However, don’t panic if your star rating isn’t quite up to scratch, you can also turn this feature off. Simply head into your general page settings to turn this option off. In other ad news, Facebook is also rolling out value optimisation which allows advertisers to focus their campaigns based on a user’s anticipated purchase value.

To round up the Facebook news here’s a bit more of a light-hearted non-techy note. The first Facebook Live controlled game happened on the platform as promo for a Canadian sports retailer. The clever idea made viewers control an arcade style crane game with the Facebook reactions. Each reaction moved the crane in a different direction. You can see the cool idea in the video featured below.

Instagram have made the decision that influencers on their platform need to be more honest about their paid collaborations. To do this Instagram are rolling out a feature which allows influencers to mark their posts as a ‘Paid partner ship with (tag company name here)’. This note will display where you are used to seeing a picture’s tagged location above the posted image. The bonus for the advertiser and the influencer is that both parties will gain access to the insights for this post allowing each party to measure success. I can’t imagine that this comes as the best news to influencers who inflate their engagement rates and figures, however, hopefully it will allow for greater transparency for users of the platform.

Finally, rounding up the round up this week is Twitter’s new look! Twitter have updated their interface based on user feedback and added and removed features based on what they heard. Here’s a quick overview of what they have changed across the platform.

• A new side navigation menu on the apps. This was already available on the Android App but it is now added to the iOS app as well.

• Links to articles and websites on iOS will now open with the safari viewer to save logging in.

• They have made amends to fonts to make it appear more consistent site-wide as well as making headlines bolder and rounding off profile pictures (this, according to Twitter, makes it easier to see who is saying what…).

• Icons have had an update mainly as a way of making things easier for new users. The speech bubble icon replaces the back arrow for replies, which some found confusing, and the icons have been made lighter so it ieasier to see where you have interacted with a Tweet.

• Finally, reply, like and retweet counts update live so you can see how conversations are progressing. (This is not available on the desktop version).

That’s all for this week! Keep in the loop by subscribing to our newsletter!

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