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, WhatsApp, TikTok, Facebook, Messenger.
🗞️ News 1: YouTube updates ‘Permissions’ to help Live Stream management
Source: YouTube
🗞️ News 2: WhatsApp releases ‘Default Disappearing Messages’ privacy feature
Source: WhatsApp
🗞️ News 3: Facebook launches ‘Professional Mode’ for individual profiles
Source: Facebook
🗞️ News 4: TikTok launches ‘Sellers’ app indicating new eCommerce trends
Source: TechCrunch
🗞️ News 5: Messenger & Facebook ‘Pay’ get deeper integration with a new feature
Source: Messenger
[News 1] YouTube updates ‘Permissions’ to help Live Stream management
Last week, YouTube team made a very significant announcement related to live streaming on the platform. If you are a Church or a Ministry that’s live streaming on YouTube, which most of us do, then this is important for you. Please listen, it could be a big value addition for your team. They call this new feature ‘Permission Support for Live Control Room’… I know it’s a long name… but what it essentially means is: you know that there is something called Permission control, which means you give certain permissions to certain team members and volunteers in your ministry, for doing some things on YouTube, right? They call the roles: manager, editor, viewer. All of these are permissions.
Now, inside those permissions, YouTube has brought in Live Control – live Streaming control. So far it was not there. So you now have the ability to assign… for manager and editor role… you have the ability to assign the permissions, for them to start a live stream, edit a live stream, etc., This could be a big step in your workflow. You could use this for including volunteers, including staff members in your Ministry. I will link to this in the show notes. Do have a look and definitely pass this on to your live streaming team.
[News 2] WhatsApp releases ‘Default Disappearing Messages’ privacy feature
Whatsapp has announced a new Privacy feature that lets you turn on disappearing messages by default, for all your new chat going forward. If you choose to switch that on, then all the chat that you’re going to have, either with one person or with a group, will disappear after a certain period of time. The options are to keep the chat for 24 hours, or 7 days, or 90 days. These are the options that you have. When you turn it on, it goes away.
It is kind of a very interesting and seems like a good option for some use cases, especially in ministries and churches where you are having confidential conversations. Or something that requires a lot of Privacy, then you could consider using this and switching this on, at least for certain groups, so that people feel safe. Sometimes when you’re interacting in a prayer group or something like that, or even one on one conversations, people feel much more private when you know that this is going to disappear after some time, because when you switch it on, the other person will know that the disappearing message option is on.
[News 3] Facebook launches ‘Professional Mode’ for individual profiles
Facebook announced last week that they are bringing a new mode called ‘Professional Mode’ into individual Facebook profiles. So far on Facebook, if you wanted a professional presence, you had to open a Facebook page. So your page will be your professional thing, and your Facebook profile… the individual profile will be something that’s personal. Now, Facebook is bringing the professional angle into the profile itself. They’re saying certain creators who are starting out would like to have their profile itself showcase their professional side as a creator. So they are bringing insights, they are adding monetization options, etc., inside the individual profile itself. This is similar to LinkedIn.
If you’re used to LinkedIn Creator Mode, LinkedIn has something called Creator Mode where you don’t see your LinkedIn profile and your professional side has two different things, you have this Creator Mode that lets you do extra things. Similarly, I think this is inspired by LinkedIn Creator mode, but this is a big announcement from Facebook. It will be interesting to see how this goes into the future.
[News 4] TikTok launches ‘Sellers’ app indicating new eCommerce trends
TikTok has launched a new app called ‘TikTok Seller’ App in Indonesia. They are launching it as a test in Indonesia before they roll it out widely, and it indicates an interesting trend. So I wanted to bring this to your notice. What TikTok is doing is: they are setting up this app as a backend app for sellers on the main TikTok platform. This app will allow you to manage your products, your orders, your refunds, and all of those things related to ecommerce, in this dedicated app so that you can focus on your marketing efforts in the main app. Quite an interesting and a smart move by TikTok. Because once sellers buy into the ecosystem and they have have an easy facility to manage all these complicated ecommerce processes within the same ecosystem, like TikTok, then it’s very hard for them to leave. A very smart move.
[News 5] Messenger & Facebook ‘Pay’ get deeper integration with a new feature
Facebook messenger team released an announcement about new features that they are bringing to the app. Some of it is related to AR effects and other ‘look and feel’ of your chat window. But what I wanted to bring to your notice was the interesting part, which they had kind of buried under the article… which talks about ‘Split Payments’. They are bringing Facebook Pay into the app with a slightly deeper integration. They’re saying if you are all in a group and you want to split your payments, in a restaurant or something like that, you can use Facebook Messenger, and the Facebook Messenger will use Facebook Pay to split your payments. It seems like a very simple ‘just a couple of lines’ kind of announcement, but seeing the integration of Facebook Pay deeper into the Messenger app does sound very interesting (and is a big deal).
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.
