Welcome to Connected Church News!
Top 5 latest Digital, Social Media & Web3 News in 5 minutes, to help your ministry stay on top of industry trends.
This week, we have news about TikTok, WhatsApp, YouTube, Facebook, Google.
🗞️ News 1: YouTube Announces a New Personalized ‘For You’ Section in Channel Page
Source: YouTube
YouTube made multiple important announcements last week about the changes they’re bringing to the channel page, including their decision to hide certain tabs. Now, if you go to YouTube, you’ll see Home, About, and all those tabs. So they’re saying they’re starting to think about hiding certain tabs that are empty that are never used, adding some new tabs, like courses and podcasts and so on. But the most important announcement is. About a section called For You, where it’ll be the first section that anybody will see the moment they land on your YouTube channel. And this will be customized or personalized for each user. The word for you is right now the one that most social networks are using to create this personalized section, and YouTube is following the same track. And this section will be based on the user’s interest, their history, and their algorithmic data based on their YouTube usage, and of course, Google usage as well.
🗞️ News 2: WhatsApp Releases Updates to Polls & to its Forwarding Feature
Source: WhatsApp
WhatsApp gets a couple of updates, one for the Polls feature. Polls are a very good way to engage with users on any social media platform or a messaging platform. Now WhatsApp polling gets three features. One is single vote polls. Second is the ability for you to search polls inside the chat. If you’ve been using a lot of polls now you can filter all your chat conversation based on polls, just like how you would filter with images and so on. And the third is staying updated on poll results. For example, every time somebody votes for your poll, you’ll get a notification so that way it’s easier for you to manage. The other update is for forwarding. Now you can forward an image and a document with captions and while you’re forwarding, you can actually edit those captions or delete them and, if you want, you can just send them as it is. Something for you to keep in mind when you consider your audience forwarding your messages on WhatsApp.
🗞️ News 3: TikTok Launches ‘Pulse Premiere’ a New Premium Ad Placement Option
Source: TikTok
TikTok launches a new feature called Pulse Premiere within their advertising options. This is an extension of their existing ad format called TikTok Pulse. What TikTok Pulse helps you to do, is to take your ad and show it alongside the top 4% of TikTok’s content on any given day. So the top 4% of the content will be having your ad in between so that way you get a lot of exposure. That is TikTok Pulse. Now TikTok is going to the next level and saying you can choose the brands or the verticals within which you would like your ad to appear. So if you see a big name and you know that lots of people are following that account, and you can say, now I want my ad to appear in between their TikTok content. Could be a useful ad option if you have a big event or a big launch or something like that for your nonprofit or ministry.
🗞️ News 4: Google Rolls Out ‘Passkeys’; Releases 8 Top-Level Domains in Registry
Source: Keyword | Google Registry
Google announced that they are rolling out the Passkeys password feature to all Google accounts and even workplace accounts. Passkeys are advanced password protection systems that Apple, Microsoft, and Google and a few others have come together to develop. So it is not just a Google thing, it is something that is developed across the industry. They have been talking about this for a long time, but now Google says they’re starting to roll it out to all Google accounts. Google also announced that they are releasing eight new top level domain names as part of their Google registry announcements. So there are some interesting new domain names like .DAD and .PhD. So if you’re a scholar you could look at a .PhD or if you’re having a family ministry or a Dads ministry, you can look at .DAD. Check out these eight new top level domains.
🗞️ News 5: Facebook Reels Gets Personalization Controls & Discoverability Features
Source: Facebook
Facebook announces couple of updates to Facebook Reels. Reels are the top form of content on Instagram and even on YouTube as Shorts. Now, Facebook is saying they are upgrading the experience on Facebook platform with two things. One is personalization. You can look at a Reel and you can say, I want to see more of these kind of Reels or less of these kind of Reels. You can even label them and so on, so that you get a personalized experience. If you don’t wanna see certain type of Reels, you can get rid of them. The second is discoverability. They are improving the discoverability by adding Reels to the top of Facebook Watch. You know that Facebook Watch is the section where you see Facebook videos, and now right at the top you will see Facebook Reels being featured. It’s like how YouTube gives importance to YouTube Shorts right at the top of a channel. That’s exactly what Facebook is trying to do here.
Author of The Connected Church. Social Media and Digital Marketing Consultant for Nonprofits, Faith-based Organisations, Churches, and Ministries.
