Social Media News – Midweek Media Breakdown #20

We’re back with another Midweek Media Breakdown, giving you the latest social media news and industry insights through a digital marketing lens. This week:

• NFTs on Instagram
• Know Your Audience Better With TikTok Insights
• Facebook To Remove Location History Features

🖼️  NFTs on Instagram 🖼️

Instagram has announced it will begin testing a ‘digital collectables’ feature, allowing NFTs to be shared across the platform. 

Instagram will allow users to share NFTs they have either made or bought across Feeds, Stories or via in-app messaging. Verified collectables will appear with a hexagonal tick to show authenticity.

Instagram has announced the ‘digital collectable’ update will start with a small-scale launch, with the intention to increase accessibility to the feature over time. The platform is also testing how digital collectables can be further integrated, including facilitating the sale of NFTs. 

Hang on a second, WTF exactly is an NFT? Here’s a quick run-down: 

• Non-fungible tokens are digital pieces of data stored on a blockchain
• It’s essentially an entirely unique digital item, like owning an original artwork
• NFTs can be purchased using cryptocurrency, with most NFTs being Ethereum-based tokens
• NFTs are purchased in an online marketplace and can be stored and viewed via a crypto-wallet
• Instagram now wants to facilitate this process

So, what does Instagram embracing NFTs mean and why should you care?

Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, said the change was inspired to “make Web3 technologies accessible to a much broader audience.” A change like this is designed to better support online creators, thereby attracting a certain type of creator to Instagram.

By nature, NFTs push the boundaries of digital ownership. So, it’s definitely worth watching how the conversation around centralised social media platforms distributing tokens such as NFTs will develop over time. 

Mark Zuckerberg has also hinted that NFTs will be playing a large role in the Metaverse marketplace.

🗣️  Know Your Audience Better With TikTok Insights 🗣️

This could really be a real game-changer for your TikTok campaigns! You can now access data and insights on TikTok users from around the world, at the click of a button.

TikTok has launched a new interactive market insights tool, letting you discover key information about your TikTok audience. 

Using a range of filters and presets, you can gain key insights to inform marketing strategy and development, including location, personal demographics and industry.

They introduced the feature with the goal to help marketers better inform their strategic planning and marketing decisions – thanks TikTok!

While this tool isn’t wildly dissimilar to Facebook’s own insights tools, it’s the first of its kind for the emerging social media. Anyone looking to break into the world of TikTok should definitely check it out. Insight tools are integral to knowing your audience better and allowing you to tap into the cultural conversation. 

We can only hope this database gets more populated over time, giving more specific and accurate insights. 

Here’s a link to the tool if you want to check it out.

📍 Facebook To Remove Location History Features📍

From May 31st, Facebook is removing some location history features, including Nearby Friends and Weather Alerts. Location history information, including background location, will stop being collected after 31 May 2022, even if previously enabled.

Users can access and download their own location history until 1 August. Following that, all stored information will be deleted.

This change to Facebook’s data policy comes after calls for greater location tracking regulation on the app. The trend in heightened data privacy has led more social media giants, such as Meta, to crack down on their own data policies and adopt more transparent practices. 

Being 8 years old, Nearby Friends is a trend that has certainly lost its appeal, with declining usage suggesting Facebook users are now more discerning of social media location tracking. 

While Facebook will halt certain tracking features at the end of May, the platform will continue to collect users’ location information via other experiences on Facebook, as specified in their Data Policy. Note that location data will still be used to personalise ads, Facebook Events and posts with check-ins. 

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Thanks again for tuning into another weekly roundup with The Graygency. Check out our blog for more Midweek Media Breakdown posts.

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