Labor Day, the unofficial end of summer, arrives at the earliest possible date to kick off September, but aside from welcoming the fall (which actually begins Sept. 22), the month includes a host of days for agencies, brands, and creators to potentially tap.
Social media holidays in September honor people, products, and emotions including grandparents, beer, suicide prevention, and Hispanics (Hispanic Heritage Month kicks off on the 15th).
Social Media Holidays to Mark on Your Calendar
- Sept. 1: Labor Day
- Sept. 5: International Day of Charity
- Sept. 6: Read a Book Day
- Sept. 7: Grandparents’ Day
- Sept. 7: National Beer Lover’s Day
- Sept. 8: International Literacy Day
- Sept. 10: Suicide Prevention Day
- Sept. 11: National Day of Service and Remembrance
- Sept. 12: National Video Games Day
- Sept. 15: First day of Hispanic Heritage Month
- Sept. 21: International Day of Peace
- Sept. 22: First day of fall
- Sept. 27: World Tourism Day
- Sept. 28: National Drink Beer Day
Social Media Platform Updates
TikTok
Updated Community Guidelines
TikTok shared updates to its community guidelines, aimed at keeping its community safe while on the platform.
The company said the updates provide “clearer, simpler language, more transparency, and new or enhanced policies.”
In response to requests from creators for simpler, clearer language and definitions, as well as more consistent enforcement, TikTok added a rules-at-a-glance section to provide a high-level summary of each policy and crafted new rules and standards on topics including misinformation and bullying,
The platform also consolidated some of its guidelines for simplicity, such as creating a unified regulated goods and services policy covering gambling, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, firearms, and dangerous weapons.
Finally, the Accounts and Features section was updated to clarify safety measures for features such as direct messaging, comments, TikTok Live, and TikTok Shop.
The company said its new community guidelines will be implemented Sept. 13.
Executive Shuffle
TikTok merged its core product and trust and safety teams into a single organization.
Adam Presser, who had been head of operations and trust and safety, becomes general manager of TikTok USDS, the company’s unit that oversees safeguarding U.S. national security interests. He succeeds Andy Bonillo, who will become a senior advisor, reporting to Presser.
Presser will oversee the platform’s operations team, while Sandeep Grover is the new head of global trust and safety, and TikTok Live will be led by Jenny Zi.
Other TikTok News
- TikTok teamed up with a global coalition of creators to launch TeamWater, a global campaign in partnership with WaterAid to help bring clean water to 2 million people worldwide. Participating creators include MrBeast, Mark Rober, Kai Cenat, Nick DiGiovanni, Jimmy Kimmel, Gordon Ramsay, Hank Green, Fede Vigevani, and The Stokes Twins.
- The platform released an in-application experience backing new Jonas Brothers album Greetings From Your Hometown, as well as the band’s 20th anniversary and upcoming JONAS20 world tour.
- Finally, TikTok is aiming to help charitable organizations in Europe raise awareness, mobilize support, and raise funds for their causes with its launch of TikTok Pro and pilot of its Sunshine referral program in the region.
Several New Connection Features
Instagram introduced several features aimed at helping users of its platform connect with each other, including its own take on Snapchat’s Snap Map.
Users can now repost public Reels and feed posts as a way to share their interests with friends. Reposts will be recommended to friends’ and followers’ feeds, and they will appear in a separate tab on the profile of users who repost content.
Instagram stressed that reposts are credited to the original creator of the post, helping them expand their reach.
Instagram Map lets users share their last active location with friends that they choose, and the platform said location sharing is turned off by default and must be toggled on by people looking to use Instagram Map.
Users can choose to share their location on Instagram Map with friends, close friends only, selected friends, or no one, and they can opt to not share location in specific places or with specific people.
Instagram Map can also be used to see content that friends and creators are posting from nearby locations.
Content with location tagged that shows up on Instagram Map for 24 hours includes Reels, posts, and Stories from people a user follows, as well as notes from mutual follows.
Finally, a new Friends tab in Reels lets people see public content their friends have interacted with and recommendations from Blends they have started.
Instagram said it is rolling out controls for the new tab, including the ability for users to hide their own likes and comments on Reels, and the option of muting activity bubbles from specific people they follow.
Other Instagram News
- People must now have a minimum of 1,000 followers to use Instagram Live.
- Finally, stand-alone app Threads topped 400 million active users.
YouTube
Information Is Power
YouTube shared educational content and tips for creators related to short-form video option YouTube Shorts, YouTube Studio, and reaching Generation Z.
Shorts takeaways from creator Jordan Howlett and Todd Sherman, former head of product for YouTube Shorts, included:
- Your unique story is your superpower.
- Listen to your audience (and your gut).
- Use trends as a tool, not a crutch.
- Don’t give up.
- Authenticity is everything, from artificial intelligence to Collabs.
YouTube Creator Liaison Rene Ritchie and Product Management Lead for YouTube Studio Ebi Atawodi teamed up on a deep dive into YouTube Studio, the destination for creators’ content, analytics, and connections with their community.
They touched upon topics including the reasons why YouTube Studio was developed, how creators should think about analytics, the best ways to use thumbnail A/B testing, the eventual role of AI, and the future vision for YouTube Studio.
Finally, three Gen-Z creators—Ngân Đây Channel, Rah Gadget, and Jennie MJ—shared their thoughts on how to best use the platform to reach their age group.
Other YouTube News
- The Google-owned video platform will contribute $3 million to the Entertainment Community Fund, earmarked to help members of the Los Angeles-area creative community who were impacted by the wildfires earlier this year.
Agentic Web? Not So Fast
Pinterest CEO Bill Ready is not yet concerned about artificial intelligence taking over the process of shopping online.
Speaking during the company’s second-quarter earnings call, Ready said that while it was not a stretch to call Pinterest an “AI-enabled shopping assistant,” the “agentic web,” where AI agents shop on users’ behalf, is still a long way off.
“I think this notion of an agent just going and buying all the things for you without you doing anything … I think that’s going to be a very, very long cycle for that to play out, both in terms of how the users think about it, where the users are going to be ready to just let something go run off and do everything for them, save for maybe some very utilitarian journeys,” Ready said during the call.
Other Pinterest News
- The platform shared a guide to building an audience on Pinterest.
Snapchat
The Road to McDonaldland
Snapchat teamed up with McDonald’s on two interactive augmented reality lenses that help transport U.S. users to McDonaldland.
The McDonaldland Map Lens is a 3D map of McDonaldland that features users’ Bitmoji alongside iconic McDonald’s characters, enabling users to take part in experiences such as Grimace Island Dash, Fry Frenzy, Birdie’s Dream Flight, and Mayor’s Magic Glasses.
And visitors to any of the nearly 14,000 McDonald’s locations in the U.S. can unlock the Step Into McDonald’s lens, which transforms the walls, tables, and floors into the vibrant world of McDonaldland.
Other Snapchat News
- Snapchat teamed up with WPP and Lumen on Attention Advantage, a look at the attention economy and targeting Gen-Z.
- The platform also shared a guide to building better brands with Gen-Z.
Meta
Brand Rights Protection Updates
Meta detailed updates to its Brand Rights Protection tool aimed at helping businesses better combat fraud and scams.
Scam ad reporting was extended to all Brand Rights Protection accounts, enabling businesses to report suspected scam ads at scale, even when their intellectual property is not explicitly used.
This enables them to report instances such as suspected scams and misleading ads that exploit a brand’s name without authorization.
And Meta rolled out a simplified takedown request experience with sub-tabs for violation type: copyright, counterfeit, impersonation, and trademark.
Brands can also search or filter within the Reports tab by email report ID, keyword, trademark name, and report owner name.
The Power of Video
Meta shared some insights from its second-quarter earnings call related to how brands and creators can harness the power of video on its platforms. They include:
- As AI and automation play a growing role in digital advertising, having a robust creative diversification strategy has become the best lever to finding the most relevant audiences. By uploading multiple creatives with different themes and messages, businesses can leverage Meta’s AI to test and optimize at a scale that isn’t possible manually.
- With the continued rise of short-form video consumption, connecting with customers on Facebook and Instagram through Reels has become table stakes. The company said 79% of people it surveyed have purchased a product or service after watching Reels.
- In an era of AI-enabled advertising where the best performing campaigns are those that have the flexibility to find the most relevant customers, our goal is to help advertisers guide our ads system to optimize for the outcomes that are most important to their business.
Other Meta News
- CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during Meta’s second-quarter-2025 earnings call that AI-powered advancements in its platforms’ recommendation systems have led to increases in time spent of 5% on Facebook and 6% on Instagram during the quarter, adding that more than 3.4 billion people used one of its “family of apps”—Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and/or WhatsApp—on a daily basis in June.
- The company shared tips for maximizing success during the holiday shopping season via creator marketing.
- Finally, Meta announced its acquisition of AI voice startup WaveForms.
Games People Play
Mini Sudoku became the professional network’s sixth thinking-oriented game.
LinkedIn teamed up with Japanese puzzle magazine Nikoli, which created Sudoku 41 years ago, on its game, saying it marked Nikoli’s first collaboration with a Western company.
Three-time world Sudoku champion Thomas Snyder also took part in the project.
Look Out, Google
Reddit is looking to take advantage of the increased addition of “Reddit” to queries on traditional search engines by becoming a go-to search engine on its own.
The company said during its second-quarter earnings call that its search function has more than 70 million weekly users, joined by over 6 million for its AI-powered Reddit Answers question-and-answer product.
“Reddit is one of the few platforms positioned to become a true search destination,” CEO Steve Huffman said during the call. “We offer something special, a breadth of conversations and knowledge you can’t find anywhere else.”
X
Ads Platform Upgrades
X detailed several major upgrades to its ads platform.
Dynamic product ads on X were beefed up with new rich formats, a product recommendation engine powered by the platform’s Grok AI technology, and enhanced integration with ecommerce platform Shopify.
X said Grok has helped ads on its platform achieve an average brand safety score of more than 99.99% and an average brand suitability score of over 97%.
Finally, the company said its AI-powered recommendations drove conversion volume across web objectives up by more than 40%, slashed cost per action by over 15%, lowered cost per install across app objectives by over 31%, and cut CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) across all brand objectives by 7%.
Other X News
- X owner Elon Musk announced that the video archive for Vine, the short-form video platform Twitter acquired in 2012 and shuttered in 2016, has been located, and work is underway to enable users to access the content.
Slamming Scammers
Meta-owned messaging app WhatsApp rolled out new features aimed at helping its users dodge scams.
A new safety overview will show users when someone who is not one of their contacts adds them to a group they may not recognize, enabling them to exit the group without opening the chat.
Noting that scammers may initiate contact with WhatsApp users outside of the platform, the company said it continues to test new approaches to prompting people to pause before engaging.
More Calling Features
WhatsApp users can now schedule calls and invite people or groups to join in advance by pressing the plus button in the Schedule Call menu under the Calls tab.
All upcoming calls can be viewed and managed in the Calls tab, alongside a list of attendees and call links.
Participants in group calls can now raise their hand to indicate that they wish to speak, and send reactions without interrupting the conversation.
Finally, call link creators will receive notifications when someone joins the call.
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