Social Media Updates 2020
Reading Time: 4 minutesThe only thing that is constant, is change – particularly when it comes to social media. Every week I review a number of websites so that I can share all the changes in a weekly email newsletter, and update this blog post.
They include new features, retired features, brand refreshes, financial reporting, algorithm updates and more. To review all the changes from 2019, read this blog.
If you would like to receive updates straight to your email inbox at 10.15am (UK) every Monday morning, subscribe here.
If you would like to discuss what the changes mean to you and your business, get in touch.
February
- LinkedIn’s vision is to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. To better understand how people define opportunity and the barriers they face in accessing it, they have published their first global LinkedIn Opportunity Index. This research gives a view into how people around the world think about opportunity: their attitudes, their realities, and the challenges they face.
Read more, from LinkedIn. - ‘We call it breaking views’ – how LinkedIn’s growing editorial team shapes its news feed. Useful insight via The Drum.CEO Jeff Weiner to move into Executive Chairman role and Ryan Roslansky, Senior Vice President of Product, to become CEO on June 1st. Read more, from LinkedIn.
- LinkedIn has rolled out several new features for Sales Navigator to make it easier to add leads from the sales prospecting platform to Salesforce, share content within a Sales Navigator account, get alerts when a company account shows signs of growth and more. Read more, (from MarketingLand)
- LinkedIn has announced that on March 18, it will shut down Sales Navigator for Gmail, an extension that provided further information about the person you were emailing in Gmail, which was formerly known as Rapportive. Read more (from Techcrunch).
- Microsoft has once again reported that LinkedIn saw ‘record levels of engagement’ over the last three months of 2019, while the platform also continues to expand its audience across the globe. Read more, from Social Media Today.
January
- LinkedIn has announced that it will merge the functionality of its Elevate employee advocacy program into its company pages tools. Core Elevate functionality will be available in Pages by December 2020, at which point Elevate will no longer be available as a standalone app. Read more, from LinkedIn.
February
- Twitter reports $1.01b in Q4 revenue, with 152m monetizable daily active users. Read more, from Techcrunch.
- Twitter says AI tweet recommendations helped it add millions of users. Read more, from The Verge.
- Twitter’s manipulated media policy will remove harmful tweets & voter suppression. Read more from Techcrunch.
- Twitter has given conversations a makeover on iOS. When people you follow are in a conversation, you’ll see their replies in a new way in your Home timeline. The new layout makes it easier to see who’s replying to who so you can join in on relevant conversations. Read more, from The Verge.
January
- Twitter is rolling out iMessage-like reactions feature to direct messages. Read more, from 9to5Mac.
- Twitter users will soon have four options to “tailor” the replies to their tweets: anyone can reply, only those followed by the user can reply, only those tagged can reply, or setting a tweet to allow no replies at all. Read more (from Techcrunch).
- Twitter is bringing twttr’s experiments in threaded conversations to its main app. Read more (from TechCrunch).
- Twitter has created a new hub for academic researchers to more easily access information and support around its APIs. Read more (from Techcrunch).
- Twitter launches Promoted Trend Spotlight – a new takeover ad unit in the Explore tab. Read more (from MarketingLand).
- Twitter is removing the audience insights element from Twitter Analytics. Read more (from Social Media Today).
- As part of its increased focus on Lists, Twitter has shared that they are working on a range of list updates, including new activity details, location sorting and custom images for List headers. Read more (from Social Media Today).
February
- Facebook is now testing a new “Top Admins and Moderators” insights stream, which would provide an overview of the total activity levels of each assigned group admin and moderator. Read more (from Social Media Today).
- Facebook has announced a new agreement with Reuters which will see the company work with The Social Network to detect and address misinformation on its platform. Read more (from Social Media Today).
- Facebook has added a new ‘one-time notification’ messaging option for businesses to get in touch with customers and update them on relevant info. Read more, from Social Media Today.
- Facebook reported another record quarter on Wednesday but warned that privacy regulations will limit ad targeting capabilities and slow the future revenue growth. Read more, from MarketingLand
- Facebook has shared details of the work they are doing to give you more control over your privacy, including:
- Prompting people to review their privacy settings
- Giving you more control of your off-Facebook activity
- Introducing alerts for third-party logins
January
- Facebook’s updated desktop layout is now appearing for more users. Read more (from Social Media Today).
- New features will allow people to see fewer political and social issue ads on Facebook and Instagram. Read more (from Facebook).
- Facebook has updated the Privacy Checkup tool to help you strengthen your account security and control who can see what you share and how your information is used. Read more (from Facebook).
- Facebook quietly announced a new feature coming later this month that will allow users to control whether or not an advertiser can show ads to them using a Custom Audience list. Read more (from MarketingLand).
- Facebook has added new ‘Page Management History’ tab in Page tools. Read more (from Social Media Today).
- Facebook removed the option to sign up for Messenger without a connected Facebook account. Read more (from Social Media Today).
- Facebook added some new elements to its Instant Articles offering for publishers, including a new function bar and Stories links. Read more (from Social Media Today).
February
- Instagram launches new appears process for disabled accounts. Read more (from Social Media Today).
- Instagram is changing its advertising rules to require political campaigns’ sponsored posts from influencers to use its Branded Content Ads tool that adds a disclosure label of “Paid Partnership with.”
Read more (from Techcrunch). - Instagram brought in $20 billion in ad revenue last year, more than a quarter of Facebook’s earnings. Read more, from The Verge.
- Instagram Rolls Out Option to Reply to Stories With GIFs. Read more, from Social Media Today.
- Instagram is working on a new video trimming feature for Instagram Stories, which would be a welcome update for creators. Read more, from Social Media Today.
- Instagram prototypes letting IGTV creators monetize with ads. Read more, from Techcrunch.
- Instagram now lets you see which accounts you interact with the most and least. Read more, from The Verge.
- Footballer Cristiano Ronaldo has become the first person to reach the 200 million followers mark on Instagram and this tally is only bettered by the social media platform itself with 330M followers.
January
- New Instagram Stories tool lets you quickly feature Story mentions from other users. Read more, from Marketing Land.
- Instagram has added new SloMo, Echo and Duo modes to Boomerang. Read more (from TechCrunch).
