Friday Fix: 5 Things You Need to Know About Social Media This Week 17.09.21

There are lots of things happening out there in the social media world and with all this news, there’s just lots of… words. We’re here to simplify it for you and share all the important bits without all the jargon.

Here are the 5 things you need to know about social media this week…

Instagram is testing the option to ‘favorite’ certain accounts and prioritise them to be shown higher in your feed.

We’ve all been there… sometimes you just want to prioritise which content you see in your newsfeed first. Well maybe, we soon can. Instagram is testing an option that gives users more choice in what they see, similar to the Close Friends feature that already exists for Stories. Accounts that are added to ‘favorites’ would be shown higher in a user’s Instagram feed, so it doesn’t seem like the user is scrolling forever to see that sweet content that they are looking forward to.

Instagram has launched a ‘Map Search’ tool to maximise business discovery in New Zealand.

This feature has been launched across Australia and New Zealand as a live test to enable users to find businesses within an in-app map, and if the location has been tagged in any posts, a grid of those posts will show in that location. We’re all super familiar with the current location search but this makes that search a little more interactive and is awesome exposure for those small New Zealand businesses out there. There’s no word on when this will be released officially so have a search and see if it’s available to you.

Instagram is looking at developing a new ‘Montage’ feature that converts Stories to Reels.

We’re all completely across the hype that is Reels, thanks to TikTok, but it looks like Instagram doesn’t want to miss out on having its piece of the pie. This feature is currently being tested internally, but from what we know already, users will be able to convert their frames from Instagram Stories into a Reels clip with music and everything. We’re not sure how this one will play out as you can already make Reels on the platform. Essentially, Instagram is looking to merge the two current functionalities in the hope of more people sharing their Stories to Reels. We’ll report back once we know more.

Twitter is testing emoji tweet reactions… and they look very similar to Facebook.

Twitter is starting a limited test of tweet ‘reactions’ and these reactions look… well, very similar to those on Facebook. Twitter says they believe that this update will give people “more ways to quickly show how they feel in conversations.” We’ve seen Twitter copy other platforms before, will this one stick, unlike Fleets (their version of Stories) which finally got the boot recently. Time will tell…

LinkedIn’s ‘Dark Mode’ has finally landed on both mobile and desktop.

Some labeling Dark Mode as far superior – if only for preserving our eyes – and LinkedIn has finally jumped on the bandwagon and released its very own Dark Mode for mobile and desktop. The Dark mode layout is designed with a dark colour palette which is kinder to the eyes when you’re scrolling. Will you be making the switch?