This week, Meta is taking away the pain of daily mundane tasks with our own personalised AI agents. YouTube is testing out a new feed layout for a select few lucky users, Threads brings messaging to desktop, and Instagram is in the market for some long-form content.
Meanwhile, David Attenborough is 100 and social is wishing him the biggest of happy birthdays. A kebab shop owner in Japan has gone viral for his creative self promo and Apexing is the latest trend to take TikTok. Read on for more social media news.
Meta trains AI bots to take on users’ daily tasks
Meta is testing two new AI tools that could let users give control over to bots to complete daily tasks. The AI agent “Hatch” will not require users to ask questions and prompts but instead be linked into a user’s workflow and take on tasks independently. This includes: summarising chats messaging apps, providing an overview of promotions being run by competitors, scanning for questions being asked about products and creating campaign ideas based on them, sending happy birthday messages, and more.
YouTube is testing a new layout for its Home and Subscription feeds to make it easier for users to find relevant content. The new tests moves the Subscription feed from the bottom navigation bar to the top of the screen as part of a new swipeable Subscriptions and Home feed tab. The Explore menu can be accessed by pulling the screen to refresh or by scrolling up. The test is only available to select users on Android and iOS globally.
Threads is bringing its most requested feature to the platform, allowing users to finally send messages on desktop. When you open Threads on the web a new Message tab will give you access to your DMs. There is also a requests section, a search bar and the ability to start new chats. The launch is no surprise, with messaging becoming more and more popular on the platform. According to Threads (via TechCrunch) users are sending 30% more messages per week since the start of the year, and averaging around 350 million DMs weekly.
Instagram’s vice president of product, Tessa Lyons, recently spoke at Scalable Summit, telling audiences that the platform is looking at ways to move into long-form videos for CTV content. Lyons also said that within the next two years Instagram “will be a unique part of creators’ long-form strategy in addition to their short-form strategy.”
Pinterest has shared improvements to its ad serving with the model now using a user’s offsite conversion history and in-the-moment searches to serve more relevant ads. As per Pinterest: “This approach focuses on three major areas: a new model architecture, a novel training approach, and a hybrid serving flow.” Basically, Pinterest is now pulling in data from multiple sources to more accurately serve your ads to the right users.