Three ways your favourite social media platforms are changing

The social media sites that we use the most are always trying to stay relevant. That’s how they end up avoiding the fate of Myspace and Friendster. If you don’t recognise those sites, then that’s because they haven’t been relevant for a long time.

Your favourite social media platforms have to grow and change to be able to adapt to a changing world. Here are some of the major changes that are taking place.

Twitter adds voice messages

Audio tweets are coming soon to Twitter. That’s right, the social media platform known for its character limit and short messages is expanding to include audio DMs or direct messages.

There has been some blowback about the move, as some people aren’t happy about the accessibility of this feature and how it might limit the ability of those with hearing problems to be able to take part in everything that Twitter is doing. However, the social media giant has said that they are working on accessibility options and ensuring that everyone will be able to use the entirety of their platform. How that will roll out has yet to be seen, but it is likely that they will use speech to text recognition software to pull off accessibility.

Some sort of text conversion option would be helpful for businesses that use the feature, as they want people to be able to create links to their sites and access links when they send messages. Without some method of converting speech to text, it would be difficult for business such as an online casino to use the service to draw in new players with this tool or for an online shopping company to promote its website.

The voice message feature ought to be very simple, likely with only play and pause functionality. Like the rest of Twitter, it is being designed for everyone and meant to appeal to a wide range of age groups and technology usage levels.

Facebook is receiving oversight

Just about any news story that talks about Facebook these days is going to mention the lack of oversight and the problem of filtering and content control. It seems like more and more hate groups are finding a home on the site and more false news and bad information is being spread through the social medial site.

With so much division happening across the world right now, it’s a dangerous time for these kinds of negative influences to be so pervasive. Facebook has been advised to take steps to monitor and control the spread of hateful and negative and false posts, and it looks like they are taking that advice seriously.

Facebook is establishing an internal content monitoring committee, called the Oversight Board. The board will be in effect starting in October, at a key time that’s about a month off from the US elections. There were reports during the last US election cycle that Facebook allowed international powers to influence the elections and were lax in their monitoring. It makes sense that they want to avoid that kind of bad publicity again, so they have taken definitive steps to increase oversight and improve the user experience.

Instagram makes reels longer

Reels is Instagram’s video highlight tool. It lets users make and share videos, and up until now the clips have been limited to just 15 seconds. Instagram is extending the video tool, though, and increasing the length up to 30 seconds. That will allow users to make more complex videos that have the potential to reach a wider audience. It gives users more control over their videos and lets them do more with the videos. It offers a greater chance for creativity as well.

Reels is changing in more ways than just the length of the videos, though. New tools are being made available to make the video creation process easier and smoother. This update may help Reels and Twitter gain traction in places where TikTok is banned or limited, like India and the US, and it may help it to stand up to the juggernaut spread of TikTok, since they offer a similar video experience.

Expect more changes like these to come all the time as social media platforms vie to stay relevant and stand out from one another.

The editorial unit