The Top Twitter Updates for March 2019
Were you on top of all the latest social media platform updates and news stories in March? As always, social media is constantly changing, with new ad tools coming in, new features being rolled out and new options to connect with your audience. If you’re not paying attention, you can quickly get left behind.
In March, there were fewer social media platform controversies, giving the platforms the chance to focus on new refinements and updates to their systems. This meant that there was a heap of smaller, but relevant, changes and updates announced which could have a significant impact on your marketing strategy.
Here is a rundown of the big announcements from each platform over the past month.
Last month Twitter announced a significant update to its camera feature in an effort to make sharing pictures, videos and live footage even easier. The update adds a Stories like presentation style to your Twitter visuals – and here is what you can do with it:
- Now, to access the camera, you simply need to swipe left – you no longer have to look for it under a tweet composer button.
- After you take a picture/photo, you can add a short description, hashtag or location tag.
- Twitter will recommend hashtags based on big nearby events and other signals.
The way that media is captured via the new camera is presented on your timeline has also changed – media captures with Twitter camera will have overlayed text at the bottom of the image or video. This redesign is clearly aimed at encouraging people to report on things that are happening in real time through pictures and videos.
Twitter confirmed to TechCrunch that it is not giving tweets created with the camera an algorithmic boost, however a Twitter spokesperson did suggest that its combined human and technology curation team may seek to spotlight Twitter Camera tweets in the “What’s Happening” section about live events in the Explore tab.
Twitter is Testing “Subscribe to a Conversation”
It seems like Twitter does actually listen to its users sometimes. Twitter, as we know, is an amazing platform for lively discussion, and a lot of users would like to know how those discussions are progressing, even when they are not participating. The good news is that, quite soon, you may be able to do exactly that.
Twitter has confirmed that it is currently working on a feature which would enables users to follow certain Twitter threads by hitting a “Subscribe to conversation” button. It reminds me a bit of a similar feature on Facebook, where you can choose to receive notifications from comment threads on specific posts.
(False) panic over likes removal
In March, Twitter finally started admitting people to its “twttr” beta testing app, which, at present, is focused on getting user feedback on its new, “conversational” UI ideas. Apparently, one of the changes that Twitter’s trying out is hiding vanity metrics like likes and retweets. In order to see them, you would need to tap on the specific tweet.
The idea behind this is to make Twitter more egalitarian, and level the field. However, many Twitter users were less than enthused about this change. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has previously discussed his vision for a Twitter without the presence of such metrics, but the negative reaction in response to this test could well prevent the option from ever becoming a reality. To many users, the idea of putting trolls and bad faith debaters on a more equal footing with their targets sounds more like a nightmare than a positive shift.
Callum Stringfellow - Limitless Digital