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August 2023 Social Media Updates:

New Features and Innovations - Part 1

Instagram New Threads Features:

1 new features on thread

Image via @mosseri on Threads

This new feature will be available on iOS and Android but hasn’t yet been rolled out to all users.

On August 9, 2023, at 10:00 AM PT, Mark Zuckerberg announced that they are rolling out three new features:

  • Share a thread to Instagram DMs 
  • Use the new mention button to easily mention people in your Threads
  • Edit the automatically generated alt-text description of photos and videos before posting.

AudioCraft - For Audio & Music:

2 AudioCraft
Highlights on their webpage include the following:
  • AudioCraft allows you to easily generate high-quality audio and music from text.
  • We’re open-sourcing MusicGen, AudioGen, and EnCodec for research purposes to help advance the field of AI-generated audio.

Their assertions include, for example, a professional musician being able to explore new compositions without having to play a single note on an instrument or a small business owner easily adding a soundtrack to their latest Instagram video ad.

 Specifically, they stated that:
“AudioCraft promises to generate high-quality, realistic audio and music from text.

While we’ve seen a lot of excitement around generative AI for images, video, and text, audio has seemed to lag a bit behind. There’s some work out there, but it’s highly complicated and not very open, so people aren’t able to readily play with it. The AudioCraft family of models is capable of producing high-quality audio with long-term consistency, and they’re easy to use.

AudioCraft works for music, sound, compression, and generation — all in the same place. We see the AudioCraft family of models as tools for musicians and sound designers to provide inspiration, help people quickly brainstorm and iterate on their compositions in new ways.”

There is a lot more info on this AI tool – we have presented just a snapshot, but for those of you who are music, audio, and/or techno buffs, you can find further info here:

https://about.fb.com/news/2023/08/audiocraft-generative-ai-for-music-and-audio/.

TikTok New Format – Text Posts

As a platform that inspires creativity and self-expression, TikTok announced the expansion of text posts just over a week ago. In their own words, they continue to push ‘the boundaries of content creation for everyone on TikTok, giving the written creativity… a dedicated space to shine’. While text posts are nothing new for many of us who use Social Media, it is certainly new to the world of TikTok. I personally like the features of adding stickers, background colours and sound to the written content, to help make messages pop. With fierce market competition among the various Social Media platforms, this avenue is possibly a response to the release of Instagram’s Threads as well as the buzz surrounding X (which was previously known as Twitter). For your convenience, we have copied the steps and features below from the webpage:
  • Creating a Text Post When you access the Camera page, you’ll be able to choose from three options: photo, video, and text. By selecting text, you’ll be directed to the text creation page, where you can type out the content of your post. 
  • Enhancing Your Text Posts Upon reaching the Post page, you’ll find familiar options to customize your content. These include adding Sound, tagging a location, enabling comments, and allowing Duets, among others. These features result in text posts that are just as dynamic and interactive as any video or photo post.
  • Features to Try Text posts offer a range of features that empower you to make your text-based content stand out. Here are some highlights:
    • Stickers: Enhance your text by selecting stickers that relate to your content and add some pizzazz to your post. 
    • Tags and Hashtags: Just like in video or photo posts, you can tag other accounts, as well as add hashtags that relate to relevant topics or trends. 
    • Background colors: Choose from a variety of background colors to make your text pop. 
    • Adding Sound: You’ll be able to add tunes that readers can groove to as they peruse your writing. 
    • Draft and Discard: Similar to video or photo posts, you can save your drafts and store them with other unpublished posts for later editing or discard them entirely 

WhatsApp Video Messages

Highlights from their website:
  • You can now record and share short personal videos directly in WhatsApp chats.
  • Instant video messages can be up to 60 seconds long and are protected with end-to-end encryption.

WhatsApp announced a little over a week ago, their video messaging feature allowing you to record and share directly in the chat.

Sixty seconds sounds very short but in testing it, I thought it was sufficient. What is nice about this feature is that there is a timer that shows you the countdown as you are videorecording your message. This mode of messaging adds a nicer touch and is more personal than voice recordings; whether it’s to congratulate someone, wish them happy birthday or share good news. 

The Video messages are protected with end-to-end encryption to keep your messages secure. They have begun rolling out and will be available to everyone in the coming weeks. 

It is a very easy process but it seems there are a couple of ways you can create a video message on WhatsApp. One of them can be found here, towards the bottom of the article:

https://about.fb.com/news/2023/07/video-messages-on-whatsapp/

Hope you found this information to be useful. If so, stay tuned for more updates from us!
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