Oct 23-2023: 10 Things That Happened in The Digital Space Last Week

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Here is a recap of what happened in the digital space last week

LinkedIn

LinkedIn announces new features for collaborative articles including new layout and feel, better articles matches and more rewards for contributing. LinkedIn Collaborative articles that launched since months ago now has over 1 million contributors and LinkedIn says collaborative articles are now the fastest growing traffic driver to LinkedIn.

LinkedIn lays off nearly 700 employees . Most of the cuts are hitting the business social network’s core engineering group

Meta

WhatsApp will Soon allow you to have two WhatsApp accounts on one phone within the app and Switch between two accounts

Instagram is testing ability to add a poll or vote on one in the comments of a feed Post or Reels. Also Instagram is testing a for users to turn on use stickers in Rees and Stories.

Meta announced Broadcast Channels are coming to Facebook and Messenger in the coming weeks after being successful on Instagram and WhatsApp.

They are testing the ability for Pages to create broadcast channels and expected to roll this out in the coming weeks. Pages will be able to share voice notes, text, photos/videos, and GIFs with anyone who joins their channels.

Meta negotiations between content moderator s, Meta and Sama in Kenya over labor dispute collapse. The suit will now proceed to Kenya’s employment and labor relations court.

Meta is showing is posts from Threads on Facebook in it's latest growth hack

X

X is introducing a Not a Bot program that charges a $1 dollar annual fee for new users & unverified users to be able to perform certain actions on the web version of the platform like Post content, Like posts, Reply, Repost and Quote other accounts’ posts, Bookmark posts. It's rolling out in the Philippines and New Zealand.?

Elon Musk has suggested X could stop being accessible in Europe to avoid new regulation enacted by the European Commission.

Note: I just wrote a review on X Premium Review: Is Paying To Be Verified On X Worth It? Give it a read

Snapchat

Snapchat allows websites to embed public content including Lenses, Spotlight videos, Public Stories, and Public Profiles. What were they waiting for all that while? This could improve traffic to the app

TikTok

TikTok is extending the current 10-minute video limit to new 15-minute upload

TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, launches CapCut for Business an all-in-one video creation platform that streamlines content production process from ideation, production, and delivery.?

Features:

??Ad Script to help you generate different ad scripts

??AI Characters to bring your creative ideas to life

??Smart Ads tool that generates video ads in minute

?? A collection of diverse business templates

??Collaborate with team members, agencies, and creators on your branded content

YouTube, Google

??Latest from YouTube to Support Journalists

??YouTube is introducing an immersive watch page experience for news stories on YouTube. It will pull together content from authoritative sources across the platform, live streams, podcasts, and Shorts, allowing viewers to? explore multiple sources and angles

??It's also launching? Shorts Innovation Program for News an initiative to strengthen news organizations’ short-form video capabilities through financial grants of?$1.6 million USD and specialist support

YouTube rolled out three dozen new features and design updates to help you to easily search what you are looking, connect with creators and have more control over how you watch

Google Chrome can now fix your typos, search your bookmarks, and generally help you get where you’re going without so many Google searches

Google is planning to disable third-party cookies for 1% of Chrome users starting in Q1 2024 and end by Q4 2024. This will cause a great shift in digital advertising and website tracking. Read how this affect advertisers and publishers ?

??Mobile Insights from Data AI??

1? Meta's was the most downloaded app on Google Play and iOS store combined in Q3 2023 worldwide. It reached 150 million downloads faster than any other app in history within 7 days

?2? ChatGPT by Open AI was the 2nd most downloaded app due to its launch on Google Play

?3? Remini, a photo editing app from Bending Spoon was the 5th downloaded app fueling the growth of AI

Slack

Slack is retiring its status account on X in order to focus resources on those most widely used by their customers.

Netflix

Netflix to discontinue the Free plan in Kenya by November 1st, 2023 while Netflix raises prices for its premium plan

Further Reading

What ad-free social media could mean for marketers and advertisers [Digiday ]

Naftal Obwoni, a Kenyan IT practitioner builds Wakili AI , an artificial intelligence-powered app with the knowledge of all Kenyan laws and judicial systems. Wakili has been trained to respond in English, Swahili, Spanish, Italian, French & Mandarin

Thank you for reading!

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I am a certified digital marketer and a trainer in love with digital trends and insights. I am open to influencer partnerships, collaborations, speaker invites, and suggestions.?Feel free to reach out via DM or [email protected]

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