What’s new in social: December

Instagram announces the return of the chronological feed

Personally, this is the news highlight of the year for me — can you tell I work in social media? Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri deep dived into the announcement on his Q&A stories earlier this month. While they are testing two versions of the feature, they are aiming for it to be released early next year.

Version 1: You would be able to pick your favourites and they would show at the top of your feed in chronological order.

Version 2: You would be able to see posts from everyone you follow in chronological order, however he didn’t detail how the recommended posts would be woven into the mix.

These functions would appear as options in-platform and wouldn’t switch every user back to a chronological experience. This update could significantly impact a brand’s ability to cut through the feed, or alternatively give them more chances to do so as long as posts are published at an optimal time.

We can’t wait to see these functions roll out in 2022. It feels like the first time Facebook (Meta) is honouring the initial intentions of the app.

You can now add custom text and colour options to Instagram link button stickers

It was a question on all of our minds when link buttons were launched — why can’t we customise them? It hasn’t taken long for Instagram to roll this feature out, and now you can customise the text and colour in-app! This opens the door to more creative ways to drive traffic to your website or promotion.

To update the text, an additional field will appear where you usually type or paste a link. Here you can add in your own bespoke wording. To update the colour, just tap in the sticker while you’re placing it onto the creative. While the options are still limited, it’s a level up from the past few weeks.

Reply to a comment with a pin on Pinterest

Instagram has recently added the capacity to reply to a comment with a Reels video, not dissimilar to how replies have worked on Tik Tok since May 2020. Pinterest has now released a similar function, allowing users to reply to pin comments with an ‘Idea Pin video’.

Simply tap on the three dots next to any comment which will give you the option to reply with a new ‘Idea Pin’, then the full screen composer will open so you can add the comment to your response, as shown below.

For brands, this function could be easily folded into the content mix to add more context to Q&A videos, How-To content and personalised replies to product promos and new releases.

YouTube tests out two new features

Announced on the 10th December, YouTube is looking to automatically detect places in videos and place these details in the description box. This new functionality adds more information in the description box of videos, giving users a more engaging way to find out about places mentioned in a video. To date, creators have manually added in text and links to add this context for viewers, however with this test the feature would automatically add a new visual link format when YouTube can detect a place.

The trial is starting with selected food and drinks videos with more to come down the line.

YouTube is also trialling editable auto chapters after hearing frustration from users about the current functionality. Now Creators will be able to go into the video details and add their own text for chapters, allowing more opportunity for the content to align with search queries.

Facebook launches “Professional Profiles”

So Facebook does it again, taking “inspiration” from another social platform and attempting to integrate it in the Meta model. With the launch of professional profiles, Facebook is looking to support creators in a similar way to Tik Tok’s Creator Tools with more insights about their post performance. Until now, creators have been limited to using Pages for insights, so now the platform will allow insights on post performance for regular Facebook profiles.

In an attempt to bring back younger users to the platform they have also incentivised users by allowing them to earn bonuses from Facebook when new Reels are shared.

So what will this new feature look like? To start, there is a new Professional Dashboard providing an overview of Page metrics and insights. Facebook has also added a new top of the feed overview prompt which shows a snapshot of new engagement on creator content.

Users will also be able to schedule content across pages and groups at the same time, streamlining the posting process in-app.

Will these updates make Facebook more appealing to a younger audience? While time will tell, bonuses seem like a pretty good deal to us!

Stay tuned for What’s New in Social in January!