This Week in Social and Digital (Week of March 8)
This Week in Social is a weekly digest of some of the biggest stories in social media marketing news. These stories are the show notes for the Brave Ad World Podcast. Each story is discussed at a deeper level on the podcast.
This week it’s just news quick hits.
News Quick Hits
Snap announced that it will continue to collect IDFA data even after iOS14 gives users the option to prevent apps from collecting such data. Facebook is also planning to continue collecting the data and is adding a prompt to encourage users to allow such tracking. LinkedIn announced it will not collect IDFA data. iOS14 is expected to reduce IDFA data by anywhere from 25% to 75%.
Virginia has joined California in passing a consumer data privacy law. While it is more lenient than California's law, it will allow residents to opt out of having their online information stored and sold, and it requires companies to ask permission prior to collecting any information classified as sensitive . It will also give users transparency into who is collecting what data along with the option to delete the data. Other states are looking at passing similar laws.
Facebook is testing placing Instagram Reels content in Facebook News Feeds in India. Public accounts there have the option to post their Reels to Facebook as well as Instagram in an effort to get more views of Reels content.
Twitter introduced new conversation settings for paid tweets this week. This gives advertisers the ability to allow replies from everyone, accounts a brand follows or only accounts mentioned in the ad. The feature has been available for organic tweets since August of last year. While it can be useful for users to limit cyberbullying, it's a brand safety tool for businesses. But with safety comes tradeoffs. Limiting replies limits the potential for a message to generate a social conversation, so use it carefully.
Similar to Twitter, TikTok added the ability to Filter All Comments, allowing users to disallow comments form being displayed on their videos until they approve them. Previously, filters were limited to spam, specific keywords and offensive comments. The intent is to limit cyberbullying.
Facebook is asking the courts to dismiss antitrust cases coming from the federal government as well as several states. One of the cruxes of the cases claim Facebook's Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions reduced competition in the market. Facebook claims that the two were "potential" competitors, rather than actual competitors in its motion to dismiss the cases.
Twitter Spaces will be available to all users starting in April. Spaces is a lot like Clubhouse in that it allows users to create audio chat rooms. It's the latest in a long line platform updates that have already been implemented on Twitter like Fleets and others that are coming like Super Follows.