March was an interesting month in the social media world. Typically, our monthly social media updates are heavily weighted toward Facebook.
This month, Facebook was relatively light in terms of changes, while Twitter and Instagram had several notable updates.
Here are some of the highlights surrounding what’s new in social media:
Facebook will now begin placing live videos higher up in peoples’ news feeds while those videos are live, compared to afterward when they’re just recordings. Live videos are viewed over three times more when they’re live versus when they’re no longer live. From now on when videos are live they will be treated as their own content type with greater ranking signals than recorded videos.
Learn More: Facebook to Favor Live Videos Over Recorded Videos in News Feed
Instagram announced it will extend the standard 15-second length for videos to a full 60 seconds. The company says it is doing this to “bring you fun, flexible and creative ways to create and watch video on Instagram.”
Learn More: Instagram Extends Videos from 15 to 60 Seconds
Instagram opened its search functionality to allow people to search through other peoples’ followers. The new search functionality is in the ‘Followers’ section, and there’s also a new search bar in the ‘Following’ section for quickly finding people your friends and/or colleagues are following.
Learn More: New Instagram Search: Look Up Friends of Friends
Instagram announced its reverse-chronological feed will soon become and algorithm-based feed, showing posts out of order according to what it believes people will care about most.
Learn More: Instagram to Introduce New Algorithm-Based Feed
Snapchat
Snapchat announced it has now reached 8 billion video views per day; which means it’s now serving the same amount of daily video views as Facebook. This is especially notable when you put into perspective that Snapchat has 100 million daily active users, compared to Facebook’s one billion daily active users.
Learn More: Snapchat on Par With Facebook When it Comes to Daily Video Views
Twitter’s 140 character tweets are not going away, but tweets may still be evolving from how they’re currently being displayed in people’s timelines.
Learn More: Twitter’s 140 Limit Not Going Away, Or Is It?
Twitter launched native polls this past October, which ended up being one of its most popular new experiments. Citing growing popularity in the feature, the company recently made the decision to extend polls from one day to one week, or even for less than 30 mins if desired.
Learn More: Best Practices for Twitter Polls, According to Twitter
Twitter turned 10-years-old and the company has not been shy about celebrating this milestone. CEO Jack Dorsey recently made media rounds regard his company’s 10th anniversary.
Learn More: 10 Ways Twitter Changed Marketing in the Past 10 Years
Twitter is going through the process of making its algorithmic timeline the new default; meaning people will have to opt-out rather than opt-in. It turns out the timeline, which sparked outrage when first announced, may not be so disliked after all.
Learn More: People Like Twitter’s Algorithmic Timeline, Going to Become the Default
YouTube
Ever wanted to know what people in your local area are publishing to YouTube? Now you can with this third party tool designed to find YouTube vids by location.
Learn More: New Tool Searches YouTube Videos by Location
Image Credits
Featured Image: Image by Paulo Bobita
In-post Photo #1: BrAt82/Shutterstock.com
In-post Photo #2: dennizn/Shutterstock.com
