September 23-2024: A Recap of What Happened in The Digital Space Last Week

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To new readers, welcome to Digital Trends and Insights Newsletter, where I curate and aggregate social media feature updates, tech news, digital trends, and weekly insights to keep you updated and informed!

Here is a recap of what happened in the digital space last week that you need to know. To catch up with previous updates, click here.

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Meta, Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp

• Meta introduces Instagram Teen Accounts to automatically place teens in built-in protections and reassure parents that teens are having safe experiences.

?Teens under 16 will need a parent’s permission to change any of the built-in protections to be less strict within Teen Accounts.

?Teens will also get access to a new feature, that lets them select topics they want to see more of in Explore and their recommendations so they can focus on the fun, positive content they love.

• Meta Connect event will take place on Wednesday, September 25. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg will? deliver a keynote address about all things AR and VR, chatbots, headsets, smart glasses, and generative AI
• WhatsApp is making it easier to find Channels!?Users can now browse between seven different categories within the directory to find the channels that most interest them.

• WhatsApp is rolling out a feature to mention contacts in status updates, and it's available to some beta testers! When a contact is mentioned, they will receive a notification, making it easier for users to engage with their intended audience
• WhatsApp has introduced a like reaction feature for status updates.
• WhatsApp is testing a new privacy feature that will automatically block messages from unknown accounts when they exceed a high volume.
• Threads now allows users to add up to 20 photos or videos in a carousel on Threads.
• Instagram now allows you to schedule ads directly from the app

• Instagram has added the ability to include link in Reels.
• Instagram is testing an animation where spiders (???) crawl across your screen after sending the skull emoji Instagram has new updates for DMs

?? Ability to cutout stickers from a photo or video and share them on Reels, Stories and now DMs

??Doodles, effects and text on photos and videos

?? Birthday Notes ??

• Instagram was the most downloaded app in August 2024, with 64M downloads. If you compare with July 2024 chart, the top 5 apps retained their positions but with different download numbers. Threads moved to position 6, and ChatGPT entered top 10, kicking out Messenger

#TikTok

• TikTok is currently testing a new option that would enable you to start over with your in-app video project by removing all of the edits that you’ve made and re-creating your clip.
• TikTok added a new accessibility feature for horizontal clips, “Auto-rotate”.

#Telegram

• Telegram Messenger is making some changes after Pavel Durov arrest last month. They have removed People Nearby feature that had issues with bots and scammers and disabled new media uploads to Telegraph, their standalone blogging tool, "which seems to have been misused by anonymous actors."

FYI, Telegram has reached 10 million paid subscribers and has over 950 million monthly active users.

#Snapchat?

• Snap Inc. is introducing a new AI video-generation tool for creators which will allow select creators to generate AI videos from text prompts and, soon, from image prompts.
• Meta, Snapchat and TikTok team up to address self-harm related content.
• Snapchat is testing a new and simplified Snapchat design that organizes the app around communicating with friends, using the camera, and watching Snaps from friends and the broader Snapchat community, including creators and publishers.

YouTube

• Google announced 9 new features from Made on YouTube 2024

• YouTube now allows users to share videos with timestamps on Android and iOS as well.

#LinkedIn

• LinkedIn allows you to select texts on LinkedIn articles and share as a quote directly to the LinkedIn feed. You can try it out with any of these updates today!

• LinkedIn and its affiliates is /has been using your personal data and content you create on LinkedIn to train generative AI models that create content. The Data For Generative AI Improvement settings on your LinkedIn is turned on by default. To change, go to the Settings>Data Privacy>Data for Generative AI improvement and turn it off

• The Best Time to Post on LinkedIn to Boost Your Following + Engagement in 2024 analysis by Buffer

??The best time to post on LinkedIn for high engagement is generally between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays.

??Friday is the best day of the week to post on the platform

Posting frequency

The ideal number of times you should be posting is two to five times per week and up to 20 times per month.

X, Bluesky

• X begins rolling out the ability for mobile users to style their text with BOLD or ITALIC formatting
• X is working on the "Grok Actions" button for the posts that allows you to use Grok to perform certain actions on a post! For now, it allows you to analyze the image in a post!

• The ban of X in Brazil has resulted in the growth of BlueSky as one of the most sought-after alternatives. BlueSky has now hit 10 Million Users. When one social media is banned in a country, another thrives! If TikTok will be banned in the US, expect users to switch to Instagram as alternative cause of Instagram Reels.
• Brazil seized about $2 million from a Starlink bank account and another $1.3 million from X to collect on fines issued to Elon Musk's social network, the country's Supreme Court
• Sports remain the top topic of discussion on X
• X is most loved social media app in Kenya according to analysis by Mailsuite. TikTok is the most loved social media app in 30 countries.?Interestingly, Facebook is most hated social media app in Kenya

PayPal

• PayPal rebrands...new logo. Pentagram helped PayPal refresh its brand identity to reflect and bolden this simplicity.

AI, Generative AI

Generative AI in music is here. Have you come across "African Dreamscapes" channel YouTube? All the songs and playlists are AI-generated, including Swahili songs.?

When I first came across the first playlist, I tried Shazam but couldn't find any. Later on, I checked comments and found the owner of the channel confirming the songs are AI generated. The thumbnails are AI generated and music is worth listening to.?

The channel has 10.9K subs, 15 videos and they keep uploading and the channel was started in July 2024 in Nigeria.

???The most popular mix has over 331K views

???Total views so far 712K

I have seen similar channels yet to confirm if they are AI generated music and AI tools used

I would love to hear the perspectives of artists on this

#AIart #AImusic #AI

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