Friday Social: YouTube Monetisation, Type, and Cheating in the Digital Age
- Social Media
Our #FridaySocial is a weekly round-up of the key social media news stories from the previous seven days. Let us know your thoughts in the comments or via Twitter – @Umpf
Facebook to Change How its Feed Works
In response to community feedback, which revealed that users think posts from businesses and brands are overshadowing the more personal and emotional moments, Facebook’s co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has announced that the network is changing.
In the first stage of the roll-out, users will notice more content from their friends and family, as well as posts from groups. There will also be less public content from businesses, brands, and media, with Facebook encouraging those pages to implement more meaningful strategies.
Zuckerberg has said that he predicts the time users spend on Facebook will go down, as well as declining levels of engagement. In his words “By focusing on bringing people closer together – whether it’s with family and friends, or around important moments in the world – we can help make sure that Facebook is time well spent.”
Cheating in the Digital Age
Infidelity over social media has taken a new form: micro-cheating.
Australian Psychologist Melanie Schilling told the Daily Mail “Micro-cheating is a series of seemingly small actions that indicate a person is emotionally or physically focused on someone outside of the relationship.”
So how does micro-cheating rear its head? Well, it can be as simple as sending a winky face or aubergine emoji, liking a photo from weeks ago, or following your ex and liking their selfies.
‘Type’ by Instagram
Instagram is testing a brand new feature for its Stories. ‘Type’ is shining a spotlight on written stories, allowing users to type in a range of different fonts on a pre-selected background or their own image.
Additionally, in a similar move to rival Snapchat, Instagram is also testing the capability to send a notification when someone takes a screenshot of a story.
On the first offense, a warning notification will pop up on your screen. However, any future sneaky screenshotting will result in a notification being pushed to the other person.
Read more about these developments here.
YouTube Strengthens Requirements for Monetisation
YouTube is changing its eligibility requirement for monetisation from 10,000 lifetime views to 4,000 hours of watch time within the past 12 months and 1,000 subscribers.
In a blog post, YouTube said “We’re making changes to address the issues that affected our community in 2017 so we can prevent bad actors from harming the inspiring and original creators around the world who make their living on YouTube.”
“A big part of that effort will be strengthening our requirements for monetization so spammers, impersonators, and other bad actors can’t hurt our ecosystem or take advantage of you, while continuing to reward those who make our platform great.”
The move seems to penalise smaller YouTubers, but it’s the site’s attempt to address the issues affecting its community.
Facebook Introduces Watch Party
Facebook has started testing its new ‘Watch Party’ feature which allows groups to watch and engage with videos at the same time.
The feature allows any video, whether it’s live or pre-recorded, to be included in a ‘Watch Party’ and seems to be part of Facebook’s continuing attempts to make the network more sociable and engaging.
Read more here.
