Digital Debrief | December 2022

The Digital Debrief is a monthly digest of the top digital marketing news. My goal in creating it is to give professionals a "by marketers, for marketers" download of what's happening in social, websites, SEO, and tech. If you have thoughts or feedback, please drop me a line.?

Twitter??

TwitterBlue paid verification plan re-launches?

After suspending the paid verification plan just days after launching, Twitter has officially relaunched TwitterBlue. For $8/Month or $11/Month on iOS devices, Twitter users get a blue check mark and access to several premium features such as longer video uploads and delayed tweet sends allowing for edits.??

Brand profile images take on a new square shape?

To continue combating impersonation issues with their new $8 Twitter Blue verification program, Twitter is updating all verified brand profiles to have a square Twitter profile image instead of the standard round image. Brands will also receive a gold-verified Twitter check mark per earlier reports.??

Resolving dormant usernames and adding view counts?

Twitter will soon free up dormant accounts, making many @handles available once again as part of Elon Musk’s Twitter 2.0 plans. The platform will also add view counts on text tweets, similar to video view counts. This will showcase that tweets reach more users than engagement numbers suggest.??

Revue Newsletter Platform due to shutdown?

Following former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s first-ever article post to the newsletter platform Revue, the platform will be shut down in January. The post was in response to the Twitter Files leaks which seek to uncover past moderation actions taken by Twitter. Revue was purchased by Twitter last year.??

Moments feature meets its end??

Twitter announced that Moments are no more. While users will still?be able to view previously created Moments, the option to create new Moments is going away. Moments provided a highlight reel of the top stories each day curated by Twitter’s news team and the individuals who create them.?

Twitter bans links to other social media platforms??

Twitter users can no longer use the platform to promote their profiles on other social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. As explained by Twitter:?

“We recognize that many of our users are active on other social media platforms. However, we will no longer allow free promotion of certain social media platforms on Twitter.”?

This means that users will need to remove links to other social networks from their bios and avoid tweeting links to other platforms or risk removal from Twitter... yikes.??

New ad controls to reassure advertisers??

Twitter is rolling out new Adjacency Controls in their Twitter Ads platform that will enable brands to prevent their promotions from appearing alongside Tweets that include chosen keywords they’d prefer to avoid. They are also expanding their partnerships with brand safety partners DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science.??

Stock pricing now appears with cashtag searches??

Now when you see a cashtag like $META in the Twitter app, you can also check the current stock prices and see a pricing graph by tapping through on the tag link. The pricing information is sourced from TradingView and will give an up-to-the-minute overview of the current stock price.??

Meta?

‘Super’ app bites the dust?

Meta announced that they are shutting down their Cameo-like ‘Super’ app. The app operates very much like Cameo but focuses on streamers and online influencers allowing fans to pay for celebrity shout-outs within video chats.??

Avatar usages options continue to grow??

Meta’s adding more ways to use your 3D avatar within Facebook and Instagram in a step to further align users with these cartoon versions of themselves. On Facebook, users can now select a new avatar-specific posting option to create an entire post focused on their digital character. They also added an Avatar Stories sticker to Instagram and 3D avatars on WhatsApp. All of these are examples of Meta pushing users towards the version of themselves they will connect with in the metaverse.??

Instagram??

New connection tools lean into engagement trends

Several new Instagram features are rolling out to encourage connection and engagement. The first is Notes, a new conversation-prompting option that sits above your messages in the inbox and highlights chat prompts from your connections. The feature looks a lot like Stories for your inbox and prompts your connections to pose a question and spark a chat.

Next is a Group profile option that will only be visible to group members, and Collaborative Collections. Group Profiles are shared profiles where you can post content for the entertainment of the group, like a private, curated Instagram feed. Collaborative Collections will enable you to save posts to a private collection within your group chat.??

Finally, there are new features coming to Instagram Stories and not surprisingly, they look a lot like other social media networks. First, there’s ‘Candid Stories’ or Instagram’s copy of BeReal. Candid Stories prompts users to capture and share what they’re doing in the moment, in a story that’s only then visible to those who are also sharing their own contribution. When a user opts into Candid Stories once it will prompt them daily, just like BeReal. Second, is a pass-it-on prompt in stories called “Add Yours Stickers.” The stickers invite users to ask questions and create a chain of responses using the same prompt.??

Users get more insight into account status and ‘Shadowbans’??

A new Instagram update gives creators more transparency on if their content is eligible to be recommended by its various systems. The new element in account status will show whether your content is eligible for recommendation and if there is an issue with anything that you’ve posted. If you notice a yellow alert in your account status display, you can tap through to learn more and see a sample of what post is in violation of Instagram’s rules.??

LinkedIn??

Focused InBox is here??

The new Focused InBox from LinkedIn rolled out which re-routes less valuable messages into an ‘Other’ tab in your LinkedIn message stream. This takes LinkedIn messaging one step closer to making it another email inbox with a dedicated area for spam messages, which we are all too familiar with. This update will pose a new challenge for social selling programs that rely on cold outreach via LinkedIn.??

YouTube?

New chat emotes, Shorts editing tools, and automated audio dubbing in other languages??

YouTube announced a range of new tweaks and updates that will be a big help to marketers who are focused on Shorts in 2023. Shorts creators can now choose a frame to set as the thumbnail within the creation process. They also uploaded a series of Shorts myth-busting clips on the YouTube creator's channel that cover various aspects of the Shorts process, questions about the algorithm, and best practices. YouTube has also publicly launched its new automated system for overdubbing your YouTube content into another language.?

TikTok?

Lawmakers call for a full ban??

TikTok faces yet another legal challenge in the US. Republican Senator Marco Rubio introduced bipartisan legislation to ban the app from operating in the US due to concerns around data collection and links to the Chinese government. The bill calls for TikTok to be cut off entirely in the US to avoid sharing data with ‘America’s foremost adversary’.??

TikTok’s future in the U.S. was put at risk further on Decemner 23rd when it was found that its parent company, ByteDance, had been spying on several American Journalists whom it believed had been in contact with staff, and gained access to commercially sensitive information.??

As reported by The Financial Times:?

“Over the summer, four employees on the ByteDance internal audit team looked into the sharing of internal information to journalists. Two members of staff in the US and two in China gained access to the IP addresses and other personal data of FT journalist Cristina Criddle, to work out if she was in the proximity of any ByteDance employees, the company said.”?

Testing new horizontal, full-width display for videos??

TikTok continues to keep competitors who push to copy its key features on their toes. A new YouTube-style horizontal layout for videos is their latest test. If rolled out more widely, this would provide an entirely new way to view TikTok clips and open new avenues for TikTok creators. Combined with 10-minute video uploads, this could be used in many ways to boost engagement and position the app to take more of YouTube’s market share.??

Search Engine?

Continuous scroll comes to desktop?

Google is rolling out continuous scroll on the desktop search results page. The feature originally came to mobile in 2021. Continuous scroll eliminates the need for users to click to the next page for the first few pages of search results, combining them in one long page. This is a continuous scroll and not an infinate scroll so after 3 – 4 pages of content, the users will have to click the dreaded “next page” button.??

If you’re using Google Subscribe, you may see an increase in clicks?

Google posted on December 6th that it’s created a new search result feature for sites that use Subscribe with Google. This new feature has resulted in an increase in clicks for publishers who use Subscribe with Google.??

Helpful content system update is rolling out now?

Google’s helpful content update specifically targets “content that seems to have been primarily created for ranking well in search engines rather than to help or inform people.” This global update to the ranking algorithm aims to help searchers find “high-quality content” and reward better, more useful content that was written for humans to help users. The update aims to downplay the performance of websites built to perform on search engines at the expense of user experience and promote more helpful websites that are designed for humans above search engines.??

Google adds an extra E to E-A-T on their search quality raters guidelines??

Google’s newly revised search quality raters guidelines adds a second E to their E-A-T acronym to stand for Experience. The acronym now reads – Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. The new E for experiences adds another level of quality to access search results. Google said when you write content, does that content also demonstrate that it was produced with some degree of experience like using a product or visiting a place, or communicating what a person experienced.??

New Google Analytics 4 tools make the transition easier??

Google Analytics 4 or GA4 will now let you use the Migrator for Google Analytics Sheets add-on tool to recreate many of your Universal Analytics properties into a GA4 property. You can also personalize the home page to make what’s shown more relevant. These new tools help make GA4 a bit easier to use as migration continues through July 2023.??