New social media features and updates to know this week
Updates to X, Meta, TikTok and more.
It’s another glorious Tuesday, PR pros. With just two more weeks until 2024, there’s a lot to celebrate this holiday season, especially in the social media space. Continue on to learn what’s the hap with these apps.
X
Grok AI, the new conversational AI tool backed by Elon Musk, is now available for X Premium+ subscribers in the United States, “There will be many issues at first, but expect rapid improvement almost every day,” Musk noted on X. “Your feedback is much appreciated.”
X will also debut a less expensive basic tier for organizational verification, X News Daily posted. The basic tier lets verified orgs:
- Spend an amount of their choice and get that same value back in ads credit.
- Receive a gold checkmark.
- Access Premium+ support.
In other news, a community post can now be pushed to a user’s followers and appear on their profile, Dong Wook Chung, senior software engineer at X, This feature will be available soon for web and Android users.
Meta
Meta’s getting in the holiday spirit by gifting users with new ways to use AI. Some updates include:
- Virtual assistant Meta AI can now give “more detailed responses” and produce better search result summaries.
- Reimagine on Messenger and Instagram lets your friends “riff” on generated images with a text prompt to create a new image in a chat thread.
- Meta’s also experimenting with options to convert AI-generated images from landscape to portrait to make them more shareable on Stories.
- There is a search function now available for Meta’s AI characters. And a long-term memory element is now featured in the AI characters so a conversation with them isn’t gone when the chat is done. These new AI-powered virtual assistants elements are coming to characters like MMA fighter Luiz, portrayed by Izzy Adesanya. Or Charli D’Amelio’s Coco character, a dancer or Naomi Osaka who is portrayed as Tamika, an Anime enthusiast. To chat with these AIs, begin a new message and hit “Create an AI chat” on WhatsApp, Instagram or Messenger. These features are now available to everyone in the United States.
- The platform is also rolling out Imagine with Meta AI, a tool to create images using the platform’s Emu technology.
Meta’s is debuting an end-to-end encryption on Messenger, according to a Messenger announcement. “The extra layer of security provided by end-to-end encryption means that the content of your messages and calls with friends and family are protected from the moment they leave your device to the moment they reach the receiver’s device,” Loredana Crisan, Messenger vice president, said in the announcement. “This means that nobody, including Meta, can see what’s sent or said, unless you choose to report a message to us.”
The feature is available now but might not be ready in all Messenger chats due to end-to-end encryption update lags.
Say goodbye to cross-app chats on Instagram, according to an Instagram Help Center announcement. By mid-December, users won’t be able to message Facebook accounts on Instagram. Any current chats on Instagram to Facebook will turn to read-only.
Threads
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, announced on Threads that the platform is debuting a tagging system. “It’s like a hashtag on Instagram, but on Threads, you can only have one per post,” Mosseri said.
Tags differ from traditional hashtags in a few ways. They can include full phrases with spaces, not just single words, and can also include special characters.
Mosseri also noted in a separate post that a link referrer is now available on Threads, so it is seen as l.threads.net instead of l.instagram.com. “This will allow publishers and website admins to better understand the web traffic from Threads when people share links here,” Mosseri said. “If you’re a publisher, you should see this reflected in your analytics dashboard now.”
Also, Threads is launching in the European Union on Dec. 14, The Verge Reported.
Instagram is now featuring a “Hype” comments element for Stories, Matt Navarra, social media wizard, posted on Threads, which allows people to post comments directly on Stories rather than having those comments go directly to DMs.
WhatsApp is rolling out a disappearing voice message feature, according to a WhatsApp blog announcement. The View Once voice message feature will be available around the world soon.
TikTok
Social Media Today reported that TikTok is broadening its horizons with in-app Ticketmaster purchases in 20 countries. The partnership was initially rolled out in America last summer. Now the feature is available in places like Canada, Poland, Norway, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, France and more.
LinkedIn boosted its LinkedIn Newsletters feature with new analytics, according to a LinkedIn announcement. Some updates include:
- Newsletter-specific analytics that gives better insights on how content performed and audience demographic information.
- Access newsletter analytics data from your Profile’s dashboard and click on the particular newsletter edition to learn more.
Snapchat
Social Media Magazine reported that Snapchat developed the first Bitmoji with a virtual makeup drop. A Bitmoji avatar can rock e.l.f. lipstick using “Try On” lenses. Users can also buy that same lipstick brand in real life with an in-stream drop link.
Snap also announced that Snapchat+ subscriptions are available for purchase through Amazon to US-based users. Find out more information here.
Reddit announced that Carousel Ads and Product Ads are now available in in conversation threads on Reddit.
Sherri Kolade is a writer and conference producer at Ragan Communications. She enjoys watching old films, reading and building an authentically curated life. Follow her on LinkedIn. Have a great PR/comms speaker in mind for one of Ragan’s events? Email her at sherrik@ragan.com.
