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The social media space is constantly changing, but we've got you covered right here—every month—with all the updates savvy marketers need to know!

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Big Updates to LinkedIn's Experience Section and Groups

LinkedIn has been busy! Check it out:

Updates to GROUPS Functionality

A new version of LinkedIn Groups is currently rolling out to all users. The full rebuild of the Groups product is meant to:

• Improve visibility of group conversations (sounds like there will be a Groups section on the home page, for instance)

• Keep members up to date through notifications (instead of emails)

• Improve the admin experience with management tools in the LinkedIn mobile apps

As these changes roll out, there are a few important things to keep in mind:

• "Moderation queues will be temporarily unavailable" – A new moderation function will be released in the coming months.

• "Admin roles will be streamlined to just owners and managers" – This is meant to make it less confusing.

• "Admin and auto-generated group emails (including digests, automated templates, and announcements) will be unavailable" – It sounds like LI wants these types of communication to mostly come through as Notifications from now on.

If any of this raises red flags for you, check out the Help article for more information and recommended action steps.

Updates to Experience Section UI

To make a long story short, positions you held at the same organization are now grouped together!

This makes it a lot easier to tell the story of multiple roles filled at the same organization within your LinkedIn profile. Here's the before-and-after:

If this change isn't happening automatically on your profile, try to make a few edits and see if it works. If not, try again soon as the update rolls out globally in the coming weeks.

For more info, read the announcement blog post.

Admins of Popular Facebook Pages Must Now be Verified

Here's the important part of the announcement:

“people who manage [Pages with large US audiences] will be asked to complete an authorization process in order to continue to post, making it harder for people to administer a Page using a fake or compromised account.”

This basically means that if you have a large enough page, Facebook may soon ask you to verify that you are a real-life person. Luckily, the process will be initiated automatically at the top of your account's news feed and "should only take a few minutes to complete."

Enforcement of the policy will take effect in the next few months.

Instagram Testing a "Recommended Posts" Feature

In July, Instagram introduced a "You're All Caught Up" message that displays whenever a user reaches the "end" of their Instagram feed. It displays when you've seen everything the accounts you follow have posted in the previous 2 days.

Now, IG will show you content from accounts you don't follow. Touted as "a new way to see content you may like on Instagram," these recommendations are based on the accounts followed and content liked by each user.

This appears to be a way to boost engagement on the platform by encouraging people to expand their horizons. By introducing new, related accounts to users who have exhausted that day's available content, maybe they will continue hanging out on Insta for even longer.

New Facebook and Instagram Resources for Parents & Teachers

Facebook rolled out two big projects aimed at helping parents and teachers manage social media use by children.

The first is the Facebook Digital Literacy Library: "Find lesson plans designed by experts to help young people develop skills needed to navigate the digital world, critically consume information and responsibly produce and share content."

There are modules focused on things like data privacy, positive behavior, security, and more. You can find lessons based on age, skills, time, and more. The lessons are made available through a partnership with the Youth and Media team at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. (And, as a column on The Next Web points out, all of these lessons—and more—are available at Harvard's Digital Literacy Resource Platform (DLRP).)

The Instagram team rolled out similar tools recently, as well. The Parent's Guide is an addition to the "Wellbeing" focus we've at Instagram seen in recent months. The Parent's Guide includes a website (parents.instagram.com) with numerous tips and facts about Instagram, as well as a downloadable pamphlet for talking to teens about IG. The accompanying video interviews various Instagram executives and employees, highlighting those who are also parents.

Twitter Introduces New Ads Policies for Campaigns

Political ads will now have additional text meant to clarify the intention of the ad. Here's a wireframe example provided in the announcement:

The new policy that will affect these types of ads:

• Ads that refer to an election or a clearly identified candidate, or

• Ads that advocate for legislative issues of national importance

The ads policy also establishes "a certification process that verifies an advertiser’s identity and location within the US."

Snapchat’s “Addressable Reach” Maps

There were no large-scale updates on Snapchat in the past month or so, but Snap's business team did put out an interesting blog post outlining the platform's addressable reach—"the number of Snapchatters who can be reached with Snapchat ads in a month"—around the globe.

The post also notes that these figures are for Snap Ads only and this "does not include reach on Story Ads, Filters or Lenses."

As those investing in Snapchat continue to question the longterm profitability of the platform, it's likely we will continue to see posts like this that highlight Snapchat's advertising potential.

Recapping the Latest Social Media Scandals

For some time now, we've been highlighting the ongoing scandals and political intrigue surrounding social media companies like Facebook and Twitter each month, and the past 30 days or so have had their share of intrigue. Here are some of the most interesting things that have happened recently:

• Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey “rethinking the core of how Twitter works" -- "so it doesn’t enable the spread of hate speech, harassment and false news." (Aug. 15)

• Sheryl Sandberg, Jack Dorsey, and an empty chair testified to Congress -- the empty chair was Google (Sept. 5)

• The Justice Department will be examining whether social media companies are “intentionally stifling” certain viewpoints (Sept. 5)

• Twitter Bans Alex Jones and Info Wars, citing abusive behavior (Sept. 6)

Today, we permanently suspended @realalexjones and @infowars from Twitter and Periscope. We took this action based on new reports of Tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior policy, in addition to the accounts’ past violations. https://t.co/gckzUAV8GL

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) September 6, 2018

More Updates to Check Out

LinkedIn's Top 50 U.S. Startups – Lyft got #1 (sorry, Uber). Rankings were determined by "employment growth, engagement, job interest and attraction of top talent" determined by various metrics including LinkedIn company page views and "how many employees the startup has recruited away from LinkedIn Top Companies."

AdWeek + Facebook: How to Master Vertical Video – This is a really cool piece with tips and thought starters on thinking vertical when it comes to video production.

Facebook updated video ad metrics, again – These updates include the removal of the 30-Second Video View and Video Percentage Watched metrics.

YouTube's Digital Wellbeing Tools are Now Live – Announced last month, tools like time watched, break reminders and notification limits are now available.

Video Chat AR Games in FB Messenger – Users of Facebook's Messenger app can now compete with friends using augmented reality. Two games are available now: "Don’t Smile" and "Asteroids Attack."

Looking for More Social Media Help?

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Catch up on last month's social media updates (August 2018) →