The latest Social Media updates, trials and new features!
Hot off the press, find out about the latest social media roll-outs here before anywhere else. Find out what Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and others are trialling, testing and rolling out:
New make-your-own stickers
14th December 2023
A fun new feature for Instagram Stories has launched this week. The helpful new Cutout tool lets you select stuff in your pictures and trim them out. Then, you can use them as stickers in your Stories and Reels.
Instagram’s chief, Adam Mosseri, says you can trim stickers not just from your camera roll but also from “suitable pics you spot on Instagram.” That means pictures other people have posted.
New safety and spam tools
14th Dec 2023
This week Instagram have launched new tools enabling bulk removal of spam & bot followers and bulk rejection of spammy tags which should cut down the amount of time spent moderating your account!
Messages from suspected spam and bot accounts will be filtered into a separate inbox for you to review. Instagram will also begin highlighting followers of yours which they suspect to be bots and spam.
New Sound effects on reels
8th Dec 2023
Now rolling out is the ability to add sound effects within the editing screens of Instagram reels itself. Sound effects are a great way to keep the audience engaged and watching your content for longer, as it adds interest and intrigue. So where do you find them and how do you add them to your reels? Last week I recorded a tutorial for the Growth Club Membership, and I thought I’d share it with you all as a little freebie here, so you can give them a go for yourselves.
Hype comments on stories
6th Dec 2023
Last week a notification appeared on Instagram, telling everyone that Hype comments had now been added to stories. We’ve seen this roll-out on reels previously, and put simply it means that it shows a preview of positive/ encouraging comments on the reel itself, much like we’ve seen on TikTok for a while. So we can only assume it will follow a similar format on stories. However, as yet users haven’t actually seen anything appear on Instagram stories since the notification.. wo we’re left a bit puzzled?
Older updates:
23rd Nov 2023
Song lyrics on captions
Instagram is introducing the ability to add song lyrics to Reels, similar to the existing lyrics feature in Stories. When a music clip is added to a Reel, users can now select the lyrics option to display the words on screen. They can then customise the font, highlight specific sections, and add text overlays to make the lyrics a more creative, engaging element in their video.
22nd Nov 2023
BIG REELS EDITING UPDATES & MORE
Instagram is rolling out new Reels editing features like undo/redo, crop, scale, rotate, zoom, and the ability to preview and rename drafts to make video creation faster and simpler!
There are also 10 new text-to-speech voices and six new fonts, styles, and text outlines provide more text customization options.
Creators can now turn parts of photos into customizable stickers for Stories and Reels using Instagram's Segmentation AI model, and 25 new photo filters allow creators to explore different looks and moods for their posts and carousels.
11th Nov 2023
New camera roll screen for reels
Instagram announced that it’s rolling out a new screen at the start of reels when you add content from your camera roll. It adds music options on the first screen, zooming and most helpful - search! So no more scrolling for hours to find the content you want to add to your reel!
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10th Nov 2023
Threads may finally be launching in the EU
App researcher & prominent social media leaker, Alessandro Paluzzi, posted a screenshot that they came across that states, "Threads EU launch." We don't know any other information yet, but if you're based in the EU, this could be what you’ve been waiting for!
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Instagram rolling out sharing post comments to Stories
The Instagram Creators account posted this week that you can now share a user's comment from your post to your Story. As always roll-outs are sporadic and can take a long time to reach all accounts, I still haven’t got this one yet!
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9th Nov 2023
New read receipt options coming to Instagram DMs
Adam Mosseri announced that the app is testing out the option to turn off your read receipts for DMs. Now you don't have to worry about leaving someone on read!
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6th Nov 2023
Instagram tests collaborative carousel posts
Adam Mosseri posted on Threads last week that Instagram is currently testing collaborative carousel posts.
Users with access to this feature will get to choose if their followers can submit photos and/or videos to their carousel post. The user who posted will have the option to either approve or deny the added content.
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Facebook removes the Rooms feature with Groups
Starting November 10th you won't be able to create a room within a Facebook Group and on November 16th you won't be able to access existing rooms.
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Meta experiments with custom AI chat box creations
Meta says that you will soon be able to create your own chatbots modelled after your own image. These AI characters will be able to respond in their own voice as well.
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3rd Nov 2023
X may be adding GIF profile pictures
X engineer, Andrea Conway, recently tweeted out a poll to see how many people would be interested in GIF profile pictures.
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