Social Media Industry Round-Up #2: BeReal Reaches 10 Million Users, Instagram’s Optional Full-Screen & New Google Metrics

Every week, the Marketing team at The Social Shepherd puts together all the relevant industry updates in a round-up newsletter sent every Monday morning. This way, we keep our team, clients and interested marketers up to date with what's going on in the social media industry :)

Last week, BeReal reached 10 million daily users, which shows a swift change in what users want from social media platforms, as it focuses on sharing real moments with friends and family.

In a nutshell, BeReal sends a daily notification, at a different time, to take a picture (front and back camera) in less than 2 minutes, so users have no time to ‘prepare’, making it as real as possible.

After numerous complaints, Meta has announced that they're building a customer service group to help users resolve platform issues.

This is great news for brands and creators as, up to this point, it was challenging to get in touch with Meta to get assistance (other than Help forums) when their accounts got deleted or content is rejected because of community guidelines, with no further explanation.

This would be a new feed in addition to the ‘For You’ and ‘Following’ tabs.

The new feed would display content posted by users in the same location and would be relevant to show local updates related to the user’s interests.

This new feed doesn’t come as a surprise after knowing that social media platforms are quickly becoming search engines for the younger generations, and a ‘Nearby’ feed could be a very powerful discovery tool.

Remember that earlier this year we announced TikTok’s ‘Instant Pages’?

‘Instant Pages’ are lightweight native landing page built within TikTok itself that loads faster than being redirected to the website’s landing page, increasing the chances of users staying and looking at the landing page instead of closing the ad due to short attention spans.

The latest news is that TikTok has released new tips on how to improve performance on campaigns using ‘Instant Pages’.

Needless to say, social media platforms have shaped a new path to purchase, especially TikTok.

The company has shared new insights on the path to purchase on TikTok and best practices to optimise campaigns for better results, especially now that we’re heading towards the holiday season.

It doesn’t come as a surprise that users didn’t like the TikTok-inspired full-screen feed.

That’s why Instagram is now testing a switch option that would allow users to choose between the classic 4:5 (or 1:1) or full–screen 9:16 ratio.

We could see this become challenging for all brands & creators, as it's important to create content that's optimised to the dimensions a user will be viewing it.

A couple of weeks ago, we announced that Instagram released a very BeReal-looking feature that allowed users to film Reels with front and back cameras simultaneously.

The latest update is that they’re testing an ‘IG Candid Challenges’ feature that would essentially be the same as BeReal: Everyday users would get a notification at a different time to capture and share a photo within 2 minutes. Then, it would be shared on Stories.

The platform Hypeauditor has released a study where they proved that Reels is the content type that generates the most reach and also more likes.

However, image posts are still the number one content type shared on the platform, which tends to generate more comments.

This proves how the Instagram algorithm benefits short-form video content and should be considered in every social media strategy to grow on the platform.

We’ve seen more and more people complain about the fact that Instagram is not Instagram anymore. The main feed is mostly recommendations and ads that users don’t find compelling anymore, and going to the ‘Following’ or ‘Favourites’ feed is too much of an effort.

And that’s why Instagram keep facing a significant backlash.

Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, admitted that maybe they’ve gone too far with pushing video, but Instagram is still testing and seeing how communities react to new features. In a nutshell, they will keep making changes.

Instagram will not go back to what it was in the beginning as they need to find ways to monetise content, and support creators and brands. Still, these constant changes might turn audiences away as they continue to lose interest.

Google has added new customisable performance metrics to its Display & Video 360 campaigns.

More specifically, they want to allow marketers to value ‘attention’ metrics by adding ‘player size’ (how big the screen of the device where the ad is being shown is), as well as ‘audibility’ (to know if the user saw the ad on mute or with sound on) metric options.

Listen to our Founders Zoe & Jack discuss why we take progression so seriously across all levels and the process they've implemented to ensure everyone is moving forward in the business.