BREAKING: TIKTOK RELEASES A DISLIKE BUTTON

Happy Monday marketers and business owners!

I hope you all had a fantastic weekend and are ready to smash the new week. I’m super excited that we’re edging closer to our Quarterly Social Media Planning event - SocialHub taking place this October with the award-winning guest speaker, Marcus Sheridan. I’d love for you to join us and learn how to build a step-by-step, practical, relevant and tailor-made social media marketing plan. Grab your tickets here.?

Let’s dive right into this week’s updates.?

1. LinkedIn Adds a “Focused Inbox”

LinkedIn is launching a new type of inbox to assist users in organising their incoming messages. This inbox divides messages into two sections: a "Focused Inbox" for your most important messages and an "Other" inbox that essentially serves as a spam folder. Although it is unclear how LinkedIn prioritises relevant messages for filtering, the inbox is designed to adapt to your preferences. This presents an interesting challenge for sales personnel who have been utilising LinkedIn direct messages.

2. Instagram Is Testing A New “Repost” Feature

Instagram, unlike other social media apps, has never provided a simple way to share other users' content by reposting it. This may change soon, as Instagram is about to begin testing such a feature with a small group of users. The action of reposting could be enabled by a button next to each post in a user's feed, though influential whistleblower Alessandro Paluzzi recently suggested that the button could be hidden away in the share option. Since this is a test, there is no guarantee that Instagram's repost feature will be permanent. With many users urging Instagram to return to its roots, it's difficult to predict where the app is heading.

3. BeReal Reportedly Considering Paid Features

In a highly competitive social market, the viral photo-sharing app BeReal has accumulated 15 million users in record time. Unlike the social apps with billions of users that are attempting to imitate them, BeReal has yet to figure out how to monetise. According to a Financial Times report, the app is looking to earn funds through paid features or subscriptions rather than bombarding users with ads. BeReal's founders, Alexis Barreyat and Kevin Perreau, are notoriously tight-lipped about the app and have yet to give a media interview. The app has enormous potential, but it must figure out how to sustain itself in the future.

4. TikTok Users Will Now Be Able To Downvote Comments

TikTok recently announced the launch of a feature that allows users to downvote comments. The button will appear in the form of a thumbs-down icon next to likes on individual comments under videos, which users can click. According to TikTok, the feature, which was first announced as a test back in April, will now be accessible to users worldwide. Users can reverse their downvote by clicking the button again, and only the person who downvoted will be able to see that they did so. The feature is intended to help identify comments believed to be irrelevant or inappropriate, but the number of downvotes is not visible to the public, implying that downvotes will be used more as a back-end moderation tool.

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