Welcome to Connected Church News!
Top 5 latest Digital & Social Media News in 5 minutes, to help your ministry stay on top of industry trends.
This week, we have news about YouTube, Twitter, Google, Instagram, Binance, Web3.
🗞️ News 1: YouTube releases a feature to easily link your Smart TV & Mobile
Source: YouTube
YouTube rolled out an important feature last week that lets your audience connect their TV with their smartphone when they are watching YouTube videos. I know many of you ministries and churches use YouTube extensively to reach your audience. Your audience, who are increasingly starting to watch YouTube on their TV, are going to have this new experience very soon that you need to be aware of, where if they are logged into the same YouTube account on TV and their phone, there’ll be a pop up that says Connect. It’s just as easy as clicking the Connect button and their phone will become an extension of their TV. Now they can read descriptions, they can leave a comment, they can share your video, they can do all of that. It’s almost like a remote control for the TV, but only for the YouTube app. I think it’s a significant thing. It’s not a novel thing, because many platforms have been trying to do this for years. But I think YouTube has finally got it right, and has made this very simple, very easy from an audience perspective.
🗞️ News 2: Twitter allows admins & mods to pin, spotlight Community Tweets
Source:Twitter
Twitter announced that they are bringing a new feature to Twitter Communities where the administrators and moderators will now be able to pin a particular Tweet and highlight it or spotlight it to their community. This is a much requested feature and they have finally brought it. They are saying it’s now available on the web version. It will also soon be available on iOS and Android. It’s much easier for the administrators and moderators to do that. If you have not used Twitter Communities, if you have not checked out Twitter’s Community feature, it is like Facebook Groups but on Twitter platform. So if your audience are on Twitter, or as a nonprofit or Ministry you want to focus on Twitter as a platform then (especially for nonprofits) this community’s features is very useful. Do have a look. They are bringing in more feature into this particular aspect of Twitter. It (Communities) even has its own tab on Twitter. That is how important it is on Twitter platform. So take a look at the Communities feature
🗞️ News 3: Google Marketing Live event features new tools for Ads & Insights
Source:Google
Google made multiple announcements at their marketing event called Google Marketing Live. They talked about the improvement they are bringing to Search product, augmented reality, machine learning and many other items. But the two things I wanted to highlight to you which could could be important for you and me, as nonprofits and ministries, is the announcement about YouTube Shorts. The announcement says “…your video action campaigns and app campaigns (if you have been using both) now will automatically scale to YouTube Shorts… because YouTube Shorts now average is 30 billion daily views and we want to help you reach people immersed in the short form content”. So basically they’re bringing YouTube Shorts into the campaign mix. And the other interesting announcement was about analytics and insights, where they are adding experimentation, optimization, and various other new features. I will link to all of this in the show notes. Do take a look and pass it on to your measurement or analytics team. They may find it very helpful.
🗞️ News 4: Instagram announces visual rebranding; launches AMBER Alerts
Source:Instagram | Meta Newsroom
Two announcements from Instagram. One is about a branding visual refresh where Instagram is looking at experimenting with a new typeface, a new way of presenting content. All the details are available on this website brand.instagram.com. If you’re like me, who is interested in branding, getting into the heads of UI/UX designers and seeing what they think about a particular brand, especially a big brand like Instagram, then you will find this fascinating. It’s one of the best brand webpages I’ve seen. Check it out. The second announcement is an important one about a new feature called Amber Alerts that has already been on Facebook but now comes to Instagram, where the announcement says, “we know the chances of finding a missing child increases when more people are on the lookout, especially in the first few hours. With this update if an AMBER Alert is activated by the law enforcement, and you are in the designated search area, the alert will now appear in your Instagram feed, thereby helping the whole process.” So, a very important feature.
🗞️ News 5: Web3: Binance raises $500mn & Google builds in-house team
A couple of news items from the Web3 space, which is fast evolving and it will definitely have an impacton what you and me do as a nonprofit and ministries in the days to come. First is: Binance, which is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has announced that they are raising $500 million for a new startup fund that is going to focus on the Web3 space. This venture is called Binance Labs, which is their venture capital arm, and they will be focusing on Web3 projects. Just wanted to bring this to your attention to show you how much action is happening in the Web3 space. The second is also an important indication of the growth of the Web3 space, where Google, which is one of the large tech companies…you know all the conversations about decentralization moving away from the big tech and so on, but now all the big tech companies are embracing Web3… Google has announced… Google cloud team has announced that they are putting together an in-house team just to focus on Web3-related services because of the heavy demand. Check out these two articles.
Author of The Connected Church. Social Media and Digital Marketing Consultant for Nonprofits, Faith-based Organisations, Churches, and Ministries.
