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22 February 2023
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Social Media News to Know: Monthly Roundup

Social Media News to Know: February 2023

Alyson Nichols   |   Insights   |   No comment

Social Media News to Know, a monthly roundup

Tripepi Smith’s Always-Be-Learning (#ABL) culture drives us to stay up to speed on constantly changing social media platforms. This knowledge empowers our team to track, interpret and adapt to the latest and greatest social media trends on behalf of the public agencies we serve. The following is the latest installment of our regular roundup of social media news you need to know:

  1. Meta is testing ‘Meta Verified,’ a paid verification program similar to Twitter’s paid checkmark, Twitter Blue. The new verified program is still only in the testing phase but is set to cost around $11.99 per month for verification on both Facebook and Instagram. The monthly subscription will include a verified badge, proactive account protection, access to account support, and increased visibility and reach. There is a lot of speculation that this verification will be susceptible to the same issues Twitter Blue had during its first rollout, such as fake accounts getting verified, but Meta feels confident it can combat those issues. If this update proves successful, it could be extremely beneficial for cities and other local government agencies to have their pages verified so users know those profiles contain official agency updates. 
  2. Instagram is ditching live-stream shopping elements starting March 16, 2023. Instagram previously added live-stream commerce options to help organizations and brands sell to users during live-stream videos. However, after not receiving the type of engagement expected from the U.S. market, they are now pulling that feature on March 16. There will still be the opportunity for brands and users to link out to pages through second-party platforms such as link-in-bio, and sell to consumers. 
  3. Twitter announced that SMS two-factor authentication (SMS 2FA) will now only be available to accounts that pay for the Twitter Blue verification. This change is set to go into effect on March 20, 2023. If you currently use SMS 2FA directly through Twitter and do not want to pay for a Twitter Blue verification, you may want to consider switching your 2FA to a different app such as Google Authenticator. This is important for local government and City accounts that want to maintain secure control of their accounts but may not have a paid Twitter subscription. 
  4. YouTube has introduced “Shorts Replies” as its next update to help the platform continue expanding YouTube Shorts. This update allows creators to reply to a video comment with a short video. This could be beneficial for explainer videos, or if there is one part of a video receiving lots of comments the creators can create another video diving deeper into that section. It will help the users learn more about the product or service while helping the creators of the videos naturally increase channel views. 

For more #AlwaysBeLearning insights from Tripepi Smith: