This Week’s Social Media News — April 15, 2021
Welcome back to Café Social’s regular weekly social news updates. We’ll keep up to date with all things digital and social so you don’t have to.
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Instagram To Let You Decide If You Want To See Likes
After trialling hiding public like counts in a variety of ways — on all posts, on just your posts, or seeing everything still — Instagram’s chief Adam Mosseri annouced the app has decided it will let you make the final choice on how you see like counts.
Twitter Launches ‘Responsible’ Machine Learning Plan
As algorithms continue, with no end in sight, to be responsible for what we see in our social feeds, Twitter’s announced their new Responsible Machine Learning Initiative. The initiative is built on pillars that mean Twitter assumes ownership of what the algorithm makes you see, in contrast to Facebook’s recent stance that you’re curating your own relationship with the algorithm. Some analyses of the algorithm(s, as there are more than one) that you’ll see from Twitter in the near future are those such as gender and racial bias analysis of the image cropping tool — which flared up recently when people realised the algo opted for ‘higher contrast’ previews of white people in a mixed-race image.
Facebook Oversight Board’s Remit Expands
Facebook and Instagram users will now be able to appeal content that has remained on the platforms through the Oversight Board. The Oversight Board’s remit previously limited it to just mediating on removed content but users can now escalate their concerns to the Board for content that has instead not been taken down.
TikTok Launching New eCommerce Ad Plan
TikTok has previewed a new eCommerce-focused ad offering as they continue to compete with the most established social networks. Most of the ad formats are ones you’ve seen before — collection ads and dynamic product ads — while new ‘Tiles’ placements like Promo Tiles and Showcase Tiles mean creators can showcase products directly in their videos with a link to the relevant info at the bottom. Remember that TikTok is the English-language version of a Chinese app called Douyin and Douyin generates more money from in-app sales than from ads so expect this push to continue. Facebook and Instagram continue to push for the same thing with their Shops feature but the uptake in the West hasn’t been quite as high.
TikTok Ads ‘Inspiring, Enjoyable, Optimistic’ Says Kantar
Related to the above, TikTok recently commissioned Kantar to see what it is about ads on TikTok that people love. Results show that people find most TikTok ads inspiring, enjoyable, and optimistic and that ads on TikTok had a better reception than ads on other apps. TikTokers’ preferred ad placement — weird question, in our opinion — is the TopView format.
LinkedIn Helping Explain Career Gaps
LinkedIn is also working on new ways to help users — particularly mums — cover employment gaps in ways that don’t look suspicious, especially as COVID forced 2.5 million women out of work. The most straightforward of these new options is ‘Stay-at-home mum’ while ‘parental leave’, ‘family care’, and ‘sabbatical’ also count.
Twitter Opens An African Office
As Twitter continues to expand its footprint, it’s just opened a new office in Ghana in Africa. CEO Jack Dorsey has been investing in the continent for a while and there’s an underserved, increasingly connected audience of 1.2 billion there upon which Twitter’s poised to capitalise. Twitter’s considered one of the core enablers of the Arab Spring, which led to goverments shutting down Internet access, but as we’re all aware — free speech is good and more of it is better.
Reddit Developing Clubhouse Competitor
Reddit looks set to be the next audio social competitor to Clubhouse. It’s an interesting move, and one that brings the platform closer to its brother in Discord, but if you’ve ever used Reddit you’ll know that they’re among the last people online that you’d want to actually speak to.
Android Clubhouse Encroaching
Speaking of Clubhouse, their Android app is nearing fruition just in time for all of their competitors to catch up. Clubhouse Android developer Mopewa recently tweeted these screengrabs that confirm the coming the release.
Stay tuned next week for more.
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