Social Media updates and what they mean for you – June 15th

Meta’s stealing the show with a whole host of AI-based updates, TikTok is highlighting gamers, Instagram is joining the chatbot revolution, Instagram is finally giving creators access to its API, and Twitter’s having a rare week of sharing useful updates. Here are all the social media updates you need to know.

Meta/Facebook
Let’s start with the big guns this week – Meta and Microsoft have both signed on to the Partnership on AI Responsible Practices for Synthetic Media initiative, which aims to get industry agreement on ‘responsible practices’ for using generative AI.

An Inspiration hub, Reels templates, an integrated editing window, Professional Account prompts, a new ‘Creators to Follow section of the feed, better insights, and more monetisation options for creators. Phew, they have been busy!

Ever the advocate for new tech, Meta continues to develop generative AI capabilities (something it’s been doing for years). Its latest paper looks at predictive visual modelling based on the broader understanding of an image. Essentially it’s training AI to understand context rather than just pixel-matching.

MusicGen is Meta’s latest AI model that can create music from text prompts, which is pretty futuristic stuff when you think about it. Trained on 20,000 hours of music (amateur), you tell it the type of track you want to make and it spits out variations of that audio.

What does this mean for me?
This is a case of the generative AI companies (Microsoft has a big stake in OpenAI and Meta is developing its own generative AI offering) regulating themselves… Which isn’t a great thing. In terms of what it means for you, we’re not sure right now but generative AI isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

Let’s start with the Inspiration hub – this will highlight top Reels trends including data on the most popular hashtags, topics, and music. The aim is to make it easier for you to create Reels on Facebook without having to spend hours researching. As part of this they’re also dropping a Templates Hub which will do exactly what it says on the tin, allow you to create Reels from pre-existing templates.

The integrated editing window will include Reels text, audio, and music options which will look very similar to the Instagram version (no surprises there).

The professional account prompts will help you complete your account setup so you can get the most from the platform as a creator and boost your engagement and interactions.

The Creators to Follow prompt in the feed will highlight rising stars in the app to potentially interested users, and professional accounts will get a ‘follow’ button next to their name every time they comment.

They’re also adding more Reels performance insights to the Professional Dashboard which will include reach numbers, engagement data, new followers attributed to specific Reels, and retention graphs. It will look very similar to the insights you get on TikTok.

The updated monetisation options include the ability to cross-post from Instagram and an expansion of their Performance Bonus Program which will invite more creators to participate in Reels revenue share.

The music industry has hit out at musically-inclined generative AI such as MusicGen, which is pretty understandable. Right now, the tool isn’t available to everyone, but if/when it is, it could raise some interesting points around copyright.

Instagram
Finally, Creators will be able to use Instagram’s API to link with third-party apps! Thank. God.

What does this mean for me?
If you’ve been manually posting or had to switch to a business account to take advantage of a scheduler, this update will be very welcome. You’ll also be able to tag users and rename original audio within Reels via the API.

TikTok
TikTok’s celebrating 30 days of gaming this month as a way to thank creators using the platform. They’ll be collaborating with a range of gaming partners to cover key gaming events, have launched the #GamingonTikTok hashtag, releasing new CapCut templates, and more.

The video platform has launched a new way for creators and brands to connect, called ‘Open Applications’.

What does this mean for me?
This is pretty exciting stuff if you’re in the gaming industry and taking advantage of the events going on could help you tap into new potential partners. Or if you’re a big gaming nerd like Liam, just provide you with tons of gaming content to enjoy!

Brands will post upcoming opportunities on Open Applications and then creators will respond to them. If you’re a brand this could be a great new way to find talented people to work with, and if you’re creator it will help you find new opportunities. Simple!

Twitter
It looks like Twitter is experimenting with job listings for verified organisations. The job listings will be displayed on the company’s Twitter profile, with a backlink to the application page on their website or third-party provider’s.

Twitter will begin sharing revenue with creators for ads shown in their tweet replies. Although given that ad revenue is down overall and it’s only available to Twitter Blue subscribers (ofc), it’s unlikely this will make too much of a difference to creators.

What does this mean for me?
This could be a good way to find new talent for your organisation, although given how the Twitter algorithm works we’re not sure how useful it’ll actually be as it could result in the need to sift through a whole bunch of spam.

If you’re a Blue subscriber, there is the potential for some earnings here, but we doubt it’s going to be enough to retire on. Sorry!

And that’s it for this week folks! Sign up for weekly updates direct to your inbox every Thursday and follow Jordan on LinkedIn for daily tips and tricks. See you next week!