Tired of toggling back and forth between video and searching for more videos on YouTube? The video platform has a fix for your itch! Meanwhile, just in time for holiday shopping season: Pinterest rolls out enhanced shopping. Finally, Facebook updates users on inauthentic activity. These are the top stories in social media this week.
YouTube Develops Mini-Browser
Are you a big video consumer on YouTube?
If you are, then you may have spent years frustrated at the inability to watch a video while searching for additional videos. Now, YouTube is paving the way for a better experience on the mobile app by introducing its mini-player.
According to The Verge, the new tool allows users to continuously play the video they are watching while actively searching for the next video to watch.
The new controls give us the ability to exit out of the player or control playlists and queued up videos that we want to watch next.
Pinterest’s Shopability Soars
If you’ve been an avid Pinterest surfer, you know doubt have thought about an easier way to purchase what you’ve seen pinned on the platform. Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Pinterest has enhanced our ability to buy from boards.
In the story, reported by Tech Crunch, the platform has seen retail sales increase by 40%.
Here are the three new features:
- Up-to-date pricing and stock information
- Introduction of a “Products Like This” function
- Shopping Shortcut to similar products that you are browsing
Pinterest’s head of shopping product Tim Weingarten said of the changes, “When you see something on Pinterest you’d like to own you should be able to buy it, or something just like it, that matches your unique style. That’s our vision for shopping with Pinterest. Pinterest is like your personal stylist. We can give you recommendations for products to buy based on your unique taste and what’s trending, and show you a range of visual ideas.”
Will your brand take advantage of these new sale features on Pinterest?
Facebook Finds and Flunks Fake Accounts and Pages
Facebook is making good on its promise to clean up the platform and its most recent update reported more actions against inauthentic accounts.
In a recent blog post, Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s Head of Cybersecurity Policy and Oscar Rodriguez, Facebook’s Product Manager, discussed the mission to keep the platform safe.
The post began, “People need to be able to trust the connections they make on Facebook. It’s why we have a policy banning coordinated inauthentic behavior — networks of accounts or Pages working to mislead others about who they are, and what they are doing.”
Gleicher and Rodriguez discussed that some of the areas of improvement surround the removal of fake products, spam, multiple accounts with the same name, clickbait, and fake engagement.
It also talked of a recent sweep of fraudulent accounts and the platform removing 559 pages and 251 accounts that have broken Facebook’s spam guidelines.
The article also promised more purging to come, including using AI to help protect the platform’s community.
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