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 TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Meta, Messenger.
🗞️ News 1: Instagram adds two ‘algorithm-independent’ ways of seeing feed posts
Source: Instagram
🗞️ News 2: TikTok launches a new in-app creation tool, ‘Library’ with GIPHY content
Source: TikTok
🗞️ News 3: Twitter releases ‘Professional Accounts’ to all users worldwide
Source: Twitter
🗞️ News 4: Meta builds a new Subsea Cable System in Europe & Nordics region
Source: Meta
🗞️ News 5: Messenger adds new useful ‘Shortcuts’ in-app to simplify messaging
Source: Messenger
[News 1] Instagram adds two ‘algorithm-independent’ ways of seeing feed posts
Instagram made an interesting announcement last week about adding two new ways in which you can look at posts in your Instagram news feed. These two ways are called Following and Favorites. You can find them on the top left corner where you see the Instagram logo in the app, there’ll be a drop down and you can select one of these options. Now, before I go into the details of the options, the interesting thing is, both these are in chronological order – which means they are not dependent on the algorithm!
They are algorithm-independent way of looking at the news item and ‘Following’ is, as the name says, posts from the people you ‘follow’, so it will just appear as they post. And ‘Favorites’ is when you add someone as a ‘favorite’, you can see their posts. You can add upto 50 people as favorites. And they won’t know that you’ve added them as favorites, but you can look at all their posts. Very interesting! Especially interesting that it is algorithm free.
[News 2] TikTok launches a new in-app creation tool, ‘Library’ with GIPHY content
TikTok has launched a new tool called Library, which will live inside the TikTok app. It is meant to help creators pull out assets like memes, GIFs, videos, short videos and entertainment clips. Right now, they are starting with content from this company called GIPHY, which has one of the largest collection of GIFs in the world. And they are saying that as time goes by, they will be adding more assets to it. TikTok is full-fledged trying to help people make more entertaining content. And as you know, GIFs are the best way to add some fun to whatever videos that you’re creating.
[News 3] Twitter releases ‘Professional Accounts’ to all users worldwide
Twitter has announced that they have rolled out the option of converting a Twitter account to a Twitter Professional account to all users worldwide. This means that you can now take your Twitter account and make it a Professional profile which adds a few extra features to your Twitter account. We will link to all the details about these features. Also there are some regulations before you convert your account, those that you need to adhere to, in order to qualify for a Professional account. We will link to all those details also in the show notes. Do take a look.
[News 4] Meta builds a new Subsea Cable System in Europe & Nordics region
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has announced that they have completed construction of a Subsea Cable System that improves connectivity across Europe and the Nordics region. If you have been following us for a while, you know, know that I am very interested in any news related to better connectivity. Because that is the basis for us, as nonprofits, churches and ministries, to serve people in the digital and the social media space.
With metaverse, 5G, and all these new things coming in, connectivity is going to play a key role on how we use these mediums. And the announcement also says that this technology is based on aluminum, and not copper, because copper has its own problems with availability, etc. But also, they say that this new aluminum connector technology has better connectivity options from a technical point of view.
[News 5] Messenger adds new useful ‘Shortcuts’ in-app to simplify messaging
Facebook Messenger team has announced that they are adding new shortcuts to make it easier for you to go about messaging people. For example, you can ‘@everyone’ and send a message, and everybody in that group chat will get notified.
You can say /silent and whoever you are sending it to will not be notified. Now an interesting shortcut that they have buried in this announcement is /pay. So when you type /pay, it pops up the option for you to either send money or request money using messenger! It just opens up a pop-up and you can select those options. It’s interesting how feature by feature, Messenger, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp all of them are starting to get commerce built into them.
Author of The Connected Church. Social Media and Digital Marketing Consultant for Nonprofits, Faith-based Organisations, Churches and Ministries. You can subscribe to Natchi’s email newsletter by clicking here.
