Issue #43 - Facebook Now Allowing Multiple Personal Profiles plus more social news.
Hello and welcome to the next edition of What's The Point. The nights are finally getting darker a lot quicker as I found on my walks each night and they are certainly getting colder. I am currently sat writing this with a hot chocolate and a hot water bottle, freezing in a jumper but, I'm not complaining because I'm loving it! I will admit, my mind is also sidetracked What I am also loving is the social news this week!
X
This week we will start with X. I feel like we never start with X because it's always the story that is usually the most controversial so I tend to save it till the middle. All for the engagement rate! So this week the great and brilliant Elon Musk announced that he was going to potentially start charging people to use the platform. Now we already know that you have to pay a premium subscription to get your blue tick and various other features, which currently sits at around £9. Despite this, people already aren't paying that and I don't think people will pay to use the platform without the premium features. Many already refused to pay the £9 for the blue tick so I don't know what Elon Musk is thinking! I think he's way in over his head. CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, has stated in previous years that he wants to keep social media free, or at least his platforms however, I don't think Elon Musk has the same mindset.
X just seems to be continuously spiralling into criticism after criticism and I'm sure many of you can see why. Whether this will get the go-ahead or not I'd like to think somebody at the X headquarters is saying no to this proposal. It seems like each week we've had a new feature being added to the platform that is just for Premium members or the features have been removed. This week is a primary example of another feature being removed from X... this we will get to.
A big question I've got, and I'm sure many do as well, is why? Is it for money? Is it to try and get people to stop using the platform or is it for some other reason? Maybe stay in the press? Well according to Sky News, the reason he wants to get people to start paying for the platform is to 'combat bots.' Not being funny but at this rate, they're going to be the only things using the platform if things keep going the way they're going.
There’s not a lot more detail in this story as it seems like this was just almost a passing comment for Elon Musk however give it a couple of weeks and I'm sure further details will be given.
To read more have a look at these articles:
Talking of features closing down, the next one to go is a feature called Circle. Now I wasn't 100% sure what Circle was as I hadn't heard of it or come across it on the platform however TechCrunch reports that this was something similar to Instagram's Close Friends. The Circle feature allowed users to share posts with a selected group of people therefore making the comparison between Instagram's Close Friends and Circle quite relevant between one another.
The feature hasn't been around for that long, having only been launched in August 2022 therefore, it's not like users are missing out on a vast amount of history between the feature. Despite this, users will still be able to be allowed to view their previous Circle history after the planned frightening shutdown date of October the 31st 2023.
X’s support page posted the following “X is deprecating Circles as of Oct 31st, 2023. After this date, you will not be able to create new posts that are limited to your Circle, nor will you be able to add people to your Circle. You will, however, be able to remove people from your Circle, by unfollowing them as described below,”
To read more have a look at these articles:
Now on to a funny social story we have for you today. If you're an Instagram account holder you may be aware that a certain feature has now been launched in the UK. I've previously discussed it in other editions however this week saw the launch of this new feature and many people in the UK were very much aware of that. So what was this feature? Broadcast Channels!
It was only a few weeks ago that I was reporting on this new social feature however, there was no official date for when it was going to be launched here therefore personally I assumed it was going to be a few months and seeing as how quickly time is going it probably was a few months ago that I reported it however, it only feels like a couple of weeks ago. The new feature, for a split second, made everyone feel as if they were popular on Instagram however it was just a vast amount of invites to the Broadcast Channel's pages that had been set up.
On my personal account, I was invited to pages such as Jane’s Patisserie, Memezar, LadBible and a fair few others and I can admit - it was annoying receiving all the invites and I dread to think of all the users who are following more meme accounts than I am.
To see more have a look at these videos:
Meta
Why have one Facebook profile when you can have multiple Facebook profiles? This is something that Meta evidently thinks as they have now brought out this feature. As someone who follows a variety of accounts from baking-related accounts to singers to marketing accounts, I do think it would be nice to have separate accounts where I can just follow that particular interest. I know I would love to have a separate Instagram account just for marketing-related content and any marketing work that I want to put on my profile but not necessarily on my personal profile. It keeps things nice and separate and I guess it helps with forming relationships within that interest. For example, I may follow someone who is in the same marketing sector as myself but they see my personal profile and see all my ice hockey-related content and realise they want nothing to do with me or want to follow me. I'm sure in other situations you might be able to relate to this? No? Just me? Okay.
Meta arr claiming this new feature allows people to organise their experience on the social platform which I kind of understand. They state “We already offer controls that let you choose what audience you’re sharing with on Facebook, but after experimenting with multiple profiles over the last year, we heard from people that clearer organization of friends, groups, and interests helps them feel freer to engage with the audience they believe is most relevant. And we’ve seen the success of separate interest-based accounts on Instagram, so we’re excited to bring this option to Facebook.” However, could this just be another way for Meta to get more data on us? Push more of our personal interests on us so that we stay on the platform for a longer amount of time?
They haven't claimed how many profiles we can make up to, in the recent blog post, so for all I know I could make up to 20 different accounts. I mean I do have a lot of interests! Meta do however state that some features such as matchmaking and marketplace will not be available just yet on the other profiles that you create. If you’re interested in this, you won’t have to wait for long as the new feature has already been rolled out on a global scale! Including me! So tonight I might have a plat around and see what this feature can bring.
If you would like to see how this works, Meta has put a video on their blog demonstrating how you can find this new feature. Click the first link below to have a watch!
Recommended by LinkedIn
To read more have a look at these articles:
TikTok
Now if you work in a marketing agency or you run a social media account you might just be interested enough to know who you're targeting and where you're engagement is coming from, which, on occasion, can actually be pretty exciting. It seems like each week TikTok introduces something new for us to be able to understand our audience and this week, out of the whole of the summer, this new analytics tool may just be the best for you. Understandably if you're a designer and you have no interest in the analytics, I do understand why!
The platform is introducing something called Attribution Analytics. (Tiktok going for the alliteration there) which will help ‘capture the holistic value driven by TikTok,' found within Tiktok Ads Manager ‘to help advertisers measure the results of TikTok advertising campaigns and gain a deeper insight into users' behaviour on TikTok.' Attribution Analytics will be a first-party measurement solution.
The article from TikTok goes on to explain how they will launch a series of features for this new analytics feature and they state that the first feature will be called 'Performance Comparison' which will be a measurement tool that visualises conversions across different time windows to help advertisers find an attribution strategy that works for their business.
As evidence shows, TikTok is becoming the platform that is the go-to for everything. TikTok has essentially become Google without even trying to be, whilst X (and it's crazy owner Elon Musk) is trying to be the app for everything. Tiktok is doing it without even trying therefore I can see why more businesses are using the video-based platform to host their business - in hopes of seeing that high ROI.
To read more have a look at these articles:
On the 19th of September, TikTok released a blog post about AI labels. A few editions ago it was discussed how AI-generated content that was posted on TikTok would have to be disclosed. This now seems to be the case and, more or less official so it seems. This is because there is now an official statement from the platform. Yay! We do love official statements.
People are not so keen on AI-generated content it seems that TikTok are embracing creators who are using AI in their day-to-day content. (Another reason why Tiktok is a favourite for many social users and content creators)
Whilst TikTok are not condoning the use of AI content they state in their recent blog that “The new label will help creators showcase the innovations behind their content, and they can apply it to any content that has been completely generated or significantly edited by AI.' TikTok's justification for the statement is that it will ‘comply with our Community Guidelines' synthetic media policy, which we introduced earlier this year. The policy requires people to label AI-generated content that contains realistic images, audio or video, in order to help viewers contextualize the video and prevent the potential spread of misleading content.’
Will this be another feature that you have to add on yourself? Every time you post an AI release piece of content will you have to manually label it? For the time being so, yes. You will have to manually add the label however the blog states “This week, we will begin testing an "AI-generated" label that we eventually plan to apply automatically to content that we detect was edited or created with AI.”
To say I don't have an opinion on this new feature isn't true. I like it. I don't necessarily think it's a bad feature to have seeing as we look at how content is being produced and how it's changing so much from real-life content to AI-based content. I think it will be good to have that clarification for users. I think for me, where I work in an industry where it's AI just everywhere, I feel like I can sometimes kind of tell the difference but that's why I think it's important to have that clarification for those who aren't surrounded by it in their day-to-day world.
To read more have a look at these articles:
Other articles we're reading:
I'm pleased to say as we move into the autumn season Snapchat has come out of its summer hibernation to deliver some news. Check out the article below to see what's happening in the world of Snap.
Has YouTube just dropped a big bombshell to shake up the video editing world? I think so. CapCut move over - 'Create' is now in town. Read about the new app that YouTube has just debuted.
Opinion of the week:
'The word brolly should be banned and everyone should have to say umbrella'
I don't know what it is about the word 'brolly' but I hate it. I'm now sat here at my desk, having shifted from the bed, hot water bottle and hot chocolate setting, to my desk next to the window and it is chucking it down. The reason this opinion of the week came to mind was because after work, when I work from home, I will do a workout session and then go for a walk. Today, in Emily mind my thought process went from "I'm going to head out on my walk after this. Oh no it's raining. Should I take a brolly? Eww, the word brolly is a horrible term. Definitely say umbrella from now on. And that ladies and gentlemen is how I came up with this week's edition of Opinion of the Week.
Have a great weekend if you're reading this on Friday or the weekend. And have a great week if you're reading this on the last week of September! Oh my god... last week of September already...