Industry Update: June 2020
What a month we’ve had! With the #BLM movement taking over social media for most of the month, Facebook has been actively working on increase hate and racist speech on it’s platform, and have employed organisations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and NAACP to update their definitions and policies. They’ve also pledged to invest a significant amount of month (like, over $1billion) into supporting black and diverse suppliers and communities in the US alone.
We are committed to advancing equity and racial justice by investing in the Black community, elevating Black voices, directly funding racial justice organizations, and building a more diverse and inclusive workforce. And we’re taking steps to review our policies, ensure diversity and transparency when making decisions on how we apply our policies, and advance racial justice and voter engagement on our platform…
We’re continuing to invest in people and technology to proactively detect and remove hate speech and other violating content from our platform. In May 2020, we shared that we now proactively detect over 88% of the hate speech we remove before anyone has reported it to us, up from 23% in 2017.
~Mark Zuckerberg
Aside from these initiatives taken by Zuck, there’s also been plenty of practical updates across all the social media platforms that businesses and personal users can make use of!
Copy your Facebook photos to your Google Drive! Facebook has now announced that its photo and video transfer tool, which enables users to copy their Facebook photos and videos over to Google Photos, is now available.
Shops on Facebook! Facebook is working on providing eligible businesses with a link to a new ‘Shop Builder’ platform, which will enable them to upload their product listings one-by-one, or connect to their existing eCommerce provider. ie. create your shop, upload your products, and allow your customers to go through the entire purchasing process without ever leaving Facebook!
Shop in your caption or on your Live! Instagram is testing the ability to tag your products in a range of new ways including in your caption and during a Live video
Instagram messenger rooms! Making it easier to connect with up to 50 of your closest mates, Instagram messenger rooms is like Zoom… but on Instagram. (How to: create the room -> share the link -> up to 50 people can join even if they don’t have an Instagram account!)
Make Insta-plans! Instagram is testing a new sticker for stories called ‘Plans’ which enables users to set a schedule for an online meet-up, which also could potentially link to Facebook and their new ‘Rooms’ feature
Save your Live! Instagram has officially added the option to save your Instagram Live broadcasts straight to IGTV!
Tweet with your voice! Twitter is rolling out the ability to post 140-second audio clips as a new tweet option (Available to selected users on IOS)
Find relevant accounts to follow! Twitter is working on a new list discovery feature that would enable users to find relevant lists of Twitter accounts to follow based on a range of topics.
Shop what you love! Pinterest is adding a new ‘Shop’ tab to its Lens search results, making it easier to find buyable items that match your visual search queries.
