Facebook and Apple have been at war for a while, and now Facebook is busy coming up with ways to circumvent Apple’s 30% in-app purchase fee, and also looking for other ways to keep creators happy. Meanwhile, there are some big changes coming to Facebook groups and Instagram and Twitter are on speaking terms again. This, and a couple small changes to Twitter and YouTube Shorts. Let’s look at what’s happening this week!

1. Some interesting developments for Facebook Creators

Zuckerberg shared some new Creator benefits. In a nutshell:

• There is now a promotional link that allows users to Subscribe without 30% of the fee going to Apple
• Creators will be getting a bonus of $5-$20/new subscriber up to $10,000
• Creators will be able to download the email addresses of their Subscribers

These are some powerful tools.

2. New Facebook Group features are rolling out

There are a bunch of new features coming to Facebook Groups. The list is long, and things like storefronts and subgroups could be game changers for larger groups. Here is a quick list of everything they’re working on:

• Easily customize the colors, post backgrounds and fonts that display in groups, along with the emojis members can use to react to content.

• Use feature sets to select preset collections of post formats, badges, admin tools and more that can be turned on for their group with one click, so that communities can engage in the ways they want.

• Suggest preferred formats for members to use when they post in their group. This will appear in a new posting button that stays with members as they browse the group, eliminating the need to scroll back to the top when they’re ready to post.

• Create a unique greeting message and share group rules that new members will automatically receive when they join a group, so they can develop a sense of belonging sooner.

• Admins can pin announcements and choose the order in which they show up in a new Featured section at the top of groups, to ensure their community sees the most important details first.

• We’re updating Admin Assist to give personalized suggestions on criteria to add, provide more information around why Admin Assist declines certain content and make Admin Assist accessible across all platforms with availability on Facebook Lite.
• Community Chats will allow admins to create a chat for the admin and moderator team so that they can better coordinate decisions in real time.
• Create community fundraisers to raise money for group projects, to offset the costs of running the group or to enable members to show their appreciation for their admins and moderators.
• Sell merchandise they’ve created through a shop in their group, enabling members to show their support and deepen their sense of community.
• Create paid subgroups that members can subscribe to for a fee to gain exclusive access to more content, experiences like coaching or networking or deeper conversations. As part of our broader paid subscription effort across Facebook, this new feature enables admins to sustain their communities while offering more meaningful experiences to their members.

3. Instagram previews are back on Twitter

Instagram and Twitter have not played nicely for a long time. Instagram links have been a cluttery mess on the platform, but it looks like a tweet exchange between Twitter product chief Kayvon Beykpour and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri turned into something useful.

If you want to share your latest Instagram post on the Twitter timeline too, you’re in luck: now when you share a link to an IG post in a Tweet, it’ll show up as a card with a preview of the photo.

Rolling out on Android, iOS, and web.

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) November 3, 2021

It is by no means a seamless integration—you’re not getting a full size rendering of your Insta image—but the preview is better than nothing. For now.

4. Twitter is making is easier to search for Tweets on user profiles

Just to be clear, users have always been able to search if they know how to format an advanced search. Really, it isn’t new. But it does make it easier to access. From TechCrunch:

Still, this easily accessible search button makes it easier to find tweets from a specific user — so, using the same example, if you didn’t know how to perform an advanced search, it would be much easier to use the search button to look for “Twitter” on TechCrunch’s account, rather than scrolling through dozens of daily tweets to find what you’re looking for.

Of course, it’s possible that this feature could make it easier for people to dig up others’ old, troublesome tweets. But, as always, it’s a great social media strategy to just not tweet potentially harmful content in the first place (also, delete old tweets).

5. YouTube is testing direct access to Shorts

Every single social media platform is trying to ride the TikTok wave of short consumable, endlessly streaming videos. They’re already generating billions of daily views for the app, but it looks like they’re trying to streamline the experience:

“We’re currently testing out a new Shorts experience – if you’re in the experiment and you close the YouTube app while watching Shorts, you will be dropped into the Shorts player when you reopen the app (so you have direct access.) If you exit the YouTube app while watching any content other than Shorts, we won’t direct you right into Shorts next time you open the app.”

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