28 Sep September Monthly Social Updates
The ever-evolving world of social media continues to grow, and we’ve seen a lot of changes since August. Pinterest hit a major milestone, Twitter added a new timeline option and changes on Instagram could help improve your DM game. Plus, the Instagram co-founders resigned! Here’s the low down of what you may have missed this past month in our September Social Media Updates.
Pinterest Hits New Milestone
In early September, Pinterest announced a major new milestone. The platform hit 250 million active users. While over half of users are from outside the United States, those using the platform are a fan of the inspirational content that fuels creativity. According to Pinterest, there are more than 175 billion Pins on the platform – an increase of nearly 75% from 2017. That means all 250 million users have a lot of pins to explore. We think Pinterest describes it best, “At a time when the internet can feel increasingly negative and politicized, we think it’s remarkable that a quarter of a billion people are choosing to spend their time on Pinterest, a place that helps them feel positive and optimistic about the future.”
Twitter Switches Back to Reverse Chronological Timeline
Guess what’s coming back?! Twitter is adding a new way to switch back to the ever-popular and very missed chronological timeline. The social media platform made the announcement through a series of tweets. The platform explains that they changed the “Show the best Tweets first” setting option. When the option is turned off, users will only see tweets from those they follow in reverse chronological order. Before the changes, users would still see “In case you missed it” and recommended tweets in their timeline. Twitter says they are in the process of making it easier for users to switch between a timeline of relevant tweets and a timeline of the latest Tweets. It will be interesting to see if these new timeline changes will impact brands’ pages.
Big Changes for Instagram
There have been quite a lot going on for Instagram this month. For starters, the social media platform added the ability to include GIFs in direct messages. The feature also includes the option to send random GIFs, for all you GIF lovers out there. The new feature is pretty easy to use, too. Just click the GIF option in the compose bar and off you go.
The real change that caught several people by surprise – Instagram co-founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger resigned from the company. Their departure could mean big changes for the social media platform. The reason behind their resignation is not clear yet, and many are keeping their eyes on the social media platform to see what changes could come.
Before we go, I’ll leave you with this bonus potential update, and one I’m really hoping becomes reality! Instagram is testing the option of adding hashtags to your posts without including them in the caption or the comments. This feature would enable users to add their hashtags in a separate field on their posts, in a goal to increase hashtag usage. A bonus is that users wouldn’t have to clutter their copy or their comments with multiple hashtags. It’s unclear if it will actually happen, but here’s hoping, as I could see this helping brands and personal users alike.
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