While December is Christmas season for some, Hanukkah season for some, Kwanzaa season for some, and even Festivus for the rest of us, it is shopping season for all.
Other key social media holidays during the month include World AIDS Day and, like everyone isn’t already eating enough, National Cookie Day.
Social Media Holidays to Mark on Your Calendar
Dec. 1: World AIDS Day
Dec. 2: Cyber Monday
Dec. 3: International Day of Persons with Disabilities
Dec. 4: National Cookie Day
Dec. 10: International Human Rights Day
Dec. 10: International Animal Rights Day
Dec. 21: First day of winter
Dec. 23: Festivus
Dec. 24: Christmas Eve
Dec. 25: Christmas
Dec. 25: First day of Hanukkah
Dec. 26: First day of Kwanzaa
Dec. 31: New Year’s Eve
Social Media Platform Updates
TikTok
Long-Form and High-Quality
TikTok hosted an invite-only creator summit in Los Angeles with a focus on horizontal long-form video and high-quality content.
Global Head of Creators Kim Farrell, Creator Manager Norissa Samuels, and Head of Established Creator Management in North America Melissa Tecson defined high-quality content as being well-crafted and engaging, driving growth and demonstrating expert knowledge about a specific theme or topic.
Tecson said during the event that creators producing high-quality content earned an average of 15 times more per month from the platform than the average creator, and she recommended subscriber communities as a way for creators to ensure predictable monthly revenue.
And Samuels said during a keynote address that TikTok is seeking creators who have mastered the art of storytelling.
Corporate Synergy
TikTok users can now access the Lemon8 application, also owned by ByteDance, directly via their TikTok accounts.
The platform said the integration gives creators more options for creating, editing, sharing, and uploading photo content.
Lemon8, which will remain a separate app, offers features such as collages, creative tools, effects, filters, stickers, and text templates. A unified user login will let people access both Lemon8 and TikTok.
Sharing Is Caring
The new Share to TikTok feature enables people to share music from streaming services Apple Music and Spotify to TikTok.
Users can share albums, playlists, and tracks to the For You page and Stories using the app’s green screen feature or photo mode.
Or they can share music content with friends via direct message, and those friends can open the music in the platform it was shared from.
Music content shared to TikTok will include a link to the original source on the streaming platform.
Other TikTok News
TikTok marked the release of Happy, the first solo album by Jin from BTS, with multimedia campaign #HappyProject, a TikTok-exclusive hub offering interactive experiences and content that can only be found on the platform.
Another in-app experience, for the release of the Cosa Nuestra album by Rauw, lets fans buy exclusive merchandise, save the album, and unlock a themed profile frame.
TikTok is teaming up with the National PTA on interactive program “Create With Kindness,” which is aimed at sparking conversations between teens and their families about online safety and civility, and how to create positive digital boundaries together. The platform also updated its TikTok Guide for Parents.
The company committed $1 million to 10 nonprofits that support veterans and their families via its new “Veteran Voices” initiative.
YouTube
New for Brands and Creators
YouTube announced several new features aimed at enabling brands to stand out on the platform and creators to collaborate with those brands.
The Google-owned video platform is enhancing customization options with format buying controls, which let brands take approaches like running a campaign exclusively in the Shorts feed, or showcasing only horizontal creative in-stream.
Format buying controls were already available for video reach campaigns, and they were extended to video view campaigns.
YouTube is also in the early stages of testing Shorts-only buying for demand generation.
Stickers on Shorts ads, which will be available to all retailers by year-end, allow brands to make their ads more creative by automatically creating stickers from images in their product feed.
Animated image ads, which pull product images from Google Merchant Center and animate them into a single unit, are now available for demand generation campaigns worldwide.
New video enhancements were also introduced for demand generation campaigns, such as the option of letting Google AI flip the original video and create videos in new aspect ratios, while preserving key elements.
Viewers of Shorts can now be added to data segments across both organic Shorts and Shorts ads.
And third-party sales lift measurement for Shorts ads from partners like NCS will debut in the coming months, joining recently launched brand life surveys in the Shorts environment.
On the creator side, partnership ads powered by BrandConnect are now available to all advertisers globally across all artificial-intelligence-powered campaigns. These ads are authentic creator videos that brands can use to drive performance in their campaigns.
YouTube is also introducing a new video linking application-programming interface to let brands simultaneously manage multiple requests.
Creators gained the ability to tag partners in their brand videos.
YouTube is testing a new central destination within Google Ads for brands to manage creator partnerships.
Finally, YouTube Select Creator Takeovers are generally available in the U.S. and set to expand to other markets next year, giving brands the chance to own 100% share of voice on select top creator channels for awareness campaigns.
Other YouTube News
YouTube introduced Green Screen, which lets Shorts creators in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the U.S. instantly generate video backgrounds with just a few words.
Hit the Reset Button
Instagram began testing the ability for users to reset their recommendations by clearing recommended content across Explore, feed, and Reels, and starting from scratch.
Recommendations will become personalized again over time as the user interacts with accounts and views content on the platform.
People will also be given the chance to review accounts they are following and unfollow those they are no longer interested in.
DM Updates for Creators
Instagram rolled out an update to its direct messages inbox that lets people who receive many inbound messages, such as creators and influencers, filter their message requests based on controls they set.
Those message requests can be sorted by brands, creators, follower count, verified accounts, and other factors, helping creators identify the messages that are most important to them.
Instagram also added a Story Replies folder to function as a single destination for replies to Stories.
DM Updates for All Users
DMs on Instagram were beefed up with a host of new features.
The platform added 17 new sticker packs, for a total of over 300 new stickers, and users can favorite stickers so that they can reuse those shared by friends or created with cutouts.
People can assign themselves or their friends nicknames, which will only appear in DM chats.
Instagram users can now share their live location for up to one hour or pin a spot on the map, helping them plan activities and arrival times, or find each other in crowded places. Locations are only shared privately within DMs.
Other Instagram News
Instagram adjusted the ranking for stand-alone app Threads to prioritize content from people a user follows, with Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri cautioning that creators will see unconnected reach drop while connected reach rises.
The ability for Threads users to choose a custom feed, Following, or For You as their default is being tested.
Also being tested on Threads are the ability to search within a specific date range or search for posts from a single account, as well as an expanded test of Trending topics in the U.S., complete with AI-powered summaries.
Threads topped 275 million monthly active users last month.
Finally, tapping on the speech balloon icon under a Threads post to compose a reply will now let users simultaneously read other replies.
Views Are the New Primary Metric
Facebook officially has a new primary metric for posts, Reels, Stories, and videos.
Views will give creators information on the number of times a Reel or video was played, or the number of times photo or text posts appeared on screen, mirroring recent updates to sister platform Instagram.
Creators can also see when people view their content multiple times.
Views replaces Plays on Reels and videos, and takes the place of impressions for photos, Stories, and text posts.
Facebook is also replacing Watch Time and Average Watch Time with Minutes Viewed and Average Minutes Viewed, respectively, calculated down to the second instead of to the closest minute.
Other Facebook News
The European Commission announced a fine of €797.72 million ($842.9 million) against Facebook parent Meta for violating European Union antitrust rules with the way online classified ads platform Facebook Marketplace is connected to Facebook itself, saying it creates “unfair trading conditions” for other classifieds providers. Meta said it would appeal, adding, “The EC’s decision claims that Meta imposes Facebook Marketplace on people who use Facebook in an illegal ‘tie.’ But that argument ignores the fact that Facebook users can choose whether or not to engage with Marketplace, and many don’t. The reality is that people use Facebook Marketplace because they want to, not because they have to.”
Meta
Meaning Business When It Comes to AI
Salesforce CEO of AI Clara Shih joined Meta to lead a new unit focused on building AI tools for businesses that use Meta’s family of apps to reach people.
Shih said in a LinkedIn post, “Our vision for this new product group is to make cutting-edge AI accessible to every business, empowering all to find success and own their future in the AI era.”
She continued, “200 million businesses each month turn to Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp to connect with billions of consumers around the world. Meta’s Llama models have over 600 million downloads to date, and Meta AI now has more than 500 million monthly actives—not to mention the incredible ways Meta Reality Labs will bring these AI advancements into the physical world through augmented reality glasses and virtual reality headsets. Meta’s global reach and leadership in AI represent a generational opportunity for businesses, and I couldn’t be more excited and grateful to help take this from zero to one to scale.”
Other Meta News
Meta said it will “significantly reduce” its subscription price in the EU for users who opt for an ad-free experience on Facebook and Instagram, and it will serve fewer personalized ads to people using those platforms free-of-charge.
Meta AI is now available for Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses in France, Ireland, Italy, and Spain.
Vice President and Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis stressed the need for “new EU regulation that provides clear, consistent protections for teens online and applies to all apps they use … based on a set of core principles.”
Meta promoted Derya Matras to VP of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
The company detailed how it took down 2 million accounts linked to scam centers in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines, and the United Arab Emirates, with help from law enforcement and its peers in the private sector.
Finally, Meta launched the Meta for Education beta program, teaming up with more than one-dozen universities in the U.K. and U.S. to test new education apps for its Quest devices.
Snapchat
Where’s My Teen?
Snapchat added location sharing features to Family Center, its in-app hub of parental tools and resources.
Caregivers and parents can send a request asking their teen to share their live location, and they can share their locations with their teens, as well.
Parents will soon be able to see their teens’ location sharing settings, enabling informed conversations about which settings work best for the family.
And a new travel notifications feature will give families the option of designating up to three specific locations and having parents receive notifications when teens arrive at or depart from those locations.
Other Snapchat News
Snapchat teamed up with Dentsu and Kantar on a study analyzing video consumption trends across screen sizes and the implications for brands.
This Halloween has come and gone, but for brands looking to get a jump on next year’s Halloween, the platform released a study by National Research Group on how Snapchatters incorporate the app into celebrating and planning the holiday.
Holiday Shopping News
Pinterest added new features to help users create and share their wish lists, as well as over 1.000 unique gift guides curated by celebrities.
The platform’s new quick save feature lets people find and save Pins from its gift guides with one tap, and Pinterest will automatically pull those saved Pins into a shoppable wish list.
And the experimental holiday finds tab uses Pinners’ unique searches and saves to create a personalized feed of gifts they might like.
Finally, nearly 40,000 gifts are included in the 1,000-plus gift guides from celebrities and influencers such as Molly Baz, Emma Chamberlain, Paris Hilton, Alicia Keys, Laufey, RuPaul, TWICE, and Bowen Yang; from brands such as Carhartt, Flamingo Estate, Mejuri, Rare Beauty, Savage x Fenty, and Sezane; and from publishers like Air Mail, Eater, GQ, Poosh, Refinery29, The Strategist, Vogue, and Wirecutter.
Are You Open to Volunteer?
LinkedIn rolled out a new Open to Volunteer feature that lets members find open volunteering opportunities with nonprofit organizations that match their skills and interests.
Open to Volunteer is available globally in English.
Members can access it via the “Open to” drop-down menu under their profile picture, at which point they can enter causes they support, skills, and preferences, such as location and whether they wish to volunteer in-person or virtually.
Once this is completed, details about the member’s volunteer interests will be displayed in the top section of their profile, and they can share a post with their network expressing their interest in volunteering.
Other LinkedIn News
LinkedIn made three reports available to the public as part of its compliance with the European Union’s Digital Services Act.
X
Updates to Block Function
X began rolling out its updated block functionality. Here are the details:
If your posts are set to public, accounts you have blocked can now see your posts.
Blocked accounts cannot engage with your posts, such as like, reply, repost, etc. They also can’t follow you, send direct messages to you, add your X account to their lists, or tag you in a photo.
Accounts you have blocked cannot follow you, and you cannot follow an account you have blocked.
Blocking an account you are currently following will cause you to unfollow that account (and them to unfollow you). If you decide to unblock that account, you will have to follow that account again.
If your posts are set to protected, blocked accounts will not be able to see your posts, since they are shown to only your followers.
Blocked accounts do not receive a notification alerting them that their account has been blocked.
Posts from blocked accounts will not appear in your timeline.
Other X News
iOS users can now hide engagement buttons and numbers below each post and interact with posts via custom swipe gestures.
Adtech company PubMatic is now an authorized seller of ads on X.
More contributors gained the ability to write Community Notes on images and videos.
Users can now select custom gestures for posts in their timeline.
X-branded swag is available for purchase via the X Shop.
Messenger
New Messenger Calling Features
Users of Meta’s flagship messaging app will soon be able to use AI backgrounds in Messenger video calls.
Those video calls will now be clearer and better-quality following the introduction of HD video calls (enabled by default for video calls made on WiFi), background noise suppression, and voice isolation.
Tapping the Record Message button enables users to leave audio messages for unanswered audio calls and video messages for unanswered video calls.
Finally, iOS users can take advantage of hands-free calling and messaging with the assistance of Siri.
Voice Message Transcripts
Voice messages on WhatsApp can now be transcribed into text for situations where users are not able to listen to them.
Those transcripts are generated on the user’s devices and cannot be read by anyone, including WhatsApp.
Transcripts are rolling out globally in a few select languages, with more to be added in the coming months.
Open Influence’s team stays on top of the latest trends and is here to help you maximize your creator campaigns. Open Influence is a leading global creator marketing agency dedicated to creating engaging campaigns.
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