3 Social Media Updates You Should Know About
In the world of social media today, there are a lot of changes and updates happening. From the emergence of a new platform to Google introducing new AI capabilities and YouTube ending its stories feature. Here are your social media updates for May.
Say Hello to Bluesky
Former Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, announced in December 2019 that a project called “Bluesky” had begun. The goal of the project is to create a platform that is designed to be decentralized, making it easier to govern against misleading information.
The platform itself is supposed to be a direct competitor to Twitter. The platform works similarly to Twitter as well. For example, Bluesky posts are allowed up to three-hundred characters, and four images and links.
Bluesky will attempt to be an alternative to the traditional platforms that we use today. Mainly aimed at bloggers and short-form storytellers, the platform is meant to be what Twitter was when the platform first launched.
There is a bigger picture to this puzzle, however, and that is how we interact with and share content. The Bluesky team is developing what they call the AT Protocol. This networking tool allows users to “connect with any on any services that are using the AT Protocol.”
According to Bluesky, you will also be able to control what you see on the platform through “an open market of algorithms”. This grants you the ability to control what content means the most to you. You will also be able to change the host of your application. This will allow your page to keep the content and followers you accrue over time.
It is not known how this new platform will perform yet because it has not been launched. It has been rumored that Bluesky will be released sometime in June. You can join the waitlist for the beta or wait until it is available to the public.
YouTube Stories Will Be No More
Five long years ago, YouTube gave content creators the ability to post YouTube Stories. It acts in the same vein as Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. You would post photos or short videos to your story, and the content would then disappear after twenty-four hours, or in YouTube's case, it would stay for seven days.
On May 25th, YouTube announced the feature is ending. On June 26th, you will no longer have the ability to post to your story. Any YouTube Stories content that is live on that date will be deleted 7 days after the posted date.
The war for short-length video supremacy continues to be a battle fought by the industry’s most popular platforms. The main takeaway from this news is that YouTube is placing its focus on providing more features to YouTube Shorts and Community posts.
This switch seems to be the right move, though, when you consider that YouTube Shorts generate around thirty billion daily views globally, according to Statista. Not only that, but YouTube Shorts sees 1.5 billion logged-in users per month.
With a large population of active users on the platform daily and the ever-increasing popularity of short videos, it is no wonder that YouTube is pivoting to put more emphasis on its bread-and-butter features.
If you are currently using YouTube Stories, it is encouraged that you change your posting strategy by utilizing YouTube Shorts and Community posts to engage with your audience.
Google A.I. Is Providing Business Owners with More Creative Tools
At the Google Marketing Live event, Google showcased a slew of tools to help small business owners create more engaging content. They introduced a tool that allows Google to create multiple versions of Google Search Ads based on the text on your business site.
The first tool is called Product Studio. The new tool uses generative AI from Merchant Center Next to assist small businesses in creating imagery for their products. Google states that product offers with more than one image had a 76% increase in impressions and a 32% increase in clicks.
With this new tool, you can create custom product scenes. This is useful depending on your campaign because it could alleviate the need to create new content pertaining to your product.
You can remove unwanted background space to make it so your product is the only thing that consumers will see. Along with that, you can also change the resolution.
The second tool allows for multiple versions of an ad to be created based on the text on your website. The potential benefit to this is giving you more freedom to manage your ad campaigns, with multiple versions of an ad being created to give your campaign more flexibility.
These features will begin to roll out in the coming months, but it is important to know how you can maximize your ad budget, creative ability, and your time.
Thank you for reading May’s social media updates. If you have any questions about how we can manage your business’s online presence, please call and we will be happy to assist you.