😎 Rise of the social shopping!

TikTok Shop snatches big brands and hits $100M on Black Friday. TikTok Shop exploded to $100M on Black Friday (triple last year) and has now logged more than $10B in US sales across 600K creators. The platform now rivals eBay in volume. Giants like Disney, Ralph Lauren, and Samsung have already signed for livestream deals.

This is officially mainstream, optimize briefs for demo-style clips, and test Live Shopping. 🛍️🔥 ~TWISM

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Instagram adds AI voice translations for five Indian languages. Meta AI now translates and dubs Reels into Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Marathi while preserving tone and lip-sync. Edits adds Devanagari and Bengali-Assamese fonts, speeding localization and widening regional reach. 

This removes a huge barrier for creators who want to go regional: less editing, more authentic reach. 🌍🔥 ~TWISM

Instagram Edits adds animated masks and Stranger Things font. New dynamic masking creates animated overlays and slick transitions. Volume Ducking balances music with voiceover, and a Stranger Things font gives themed styling for promos.

Instagram adds Reels filters on profiles. Filter a profile's Reels by Latest or Most Viewed to spot recent uploads or top-performing clips for reposts, ads, or content audits. 

Meta adds conversion location to Value Rules. Meta lets advertisers set Value Rules by conversion location, Website, App, or Instant Forms, so you can raise bids where conversions matter most. Watch CPA closely when applying.

Meta adds AI options to ad creation flow. Meta inserts AI-powered creative and targeting tools into Ads Manager, letting advertisers generate visuals, captions, and audience suggestions to speed setup and broaden A/B testing. 

Use it to iterate fast, but always check brand tone. ⚠️ ~TWISM

Facebook pays creators $4 to post in Groups. Creators get $4 for crossposting six posts to suggested Groups, but if a Group admin deletes a post, you lose the bonus. 

Swedish publishers file criminal complaint against Zuckerberg. Scandinavian publishers accuse Meta of hosting scam ads that impersonate journalists and profit from fraud. Publishers say repeated warnings were ignored.

Meta blocks rival AI bots on WhatsApp. Meta bans third-party AI from WhatsApp Business API; ChatGPT and Copilot must leave by Jan 15, 2026. Brands should rework automations or migrate chats. 

Meta gets more ad revenue from scam ads than the entire online news ad revenue in the UK. Meta took about £600m from scam ads in the UK in 2024, more than the entire UK news industry's digital ad revenue. 

Threads tests AI interaction summaries on profiles. Meta prototypes AI overlays that summarize your past interactions with a profile and surface shared interests, giving marketers quick context for outreach. 

This could shortcut organic discovery if profiles get reduced to talking points 🤖 ~TWISM

Comments and replies sync between Threads and Facebook. Comments and replies on posts shared from Instagram now appear on both Threads and Facebook, centralizing conversations and easing moderation. 

YouTube tests text-prompt to tailor algorithm recommendations. Type prompts like "quick cooking tips" to steer recommendations and surface niche videos.

Play with phrasing: clear, searchable language may get rewarded. 😬 ~TWISM

YouTube Create generates videos from text prompts. YouTube's in-app Create tool lets creators generate short videos quickly from text, helping teams prototype ideas and scale content. 

YouTube swaps Subscriptions and You sidebar tabs. YouTube quietly swapped the Subscriptions and You sidebar tabs on desktop, breaking years of navigation habits.

TikTok creators outperform standard ads by 159% in engagement. TikTok reports that creator content gets 70% higher CTR and 159% more engagement than standard ads, and creators produce high-quality, culturally relevant content fast. 

TikTok adds AI rewrite for photo captions in the EU. EU users can ask TikTok to rewrite photo post titles and descriptions with AI, speeding caption creation, localization, and quick A/B options. 

TikTok sell-off deadline approaches. The US deadline to force a sell-off or ban is Dec 16, but Beijing hasn't approved any deal, so another extension or a ban is possible. 

TikTok lets users repost ongoing Live videos. Users can repost ongoing Live videos so followers see and join, boosting discovery and viewer numbers. 

X ranks your Following feed with Grok. X sorts the Following feed by engagement, not chronology, and defaults to For You. Marketers should monitor reach and posting strategy.

 Expect shifting reach, track impressions. 📉 ~TWISM

X is losing U.S. users to TikTok and Reddit. Pew: X's U.S. reach falls 23%→21% (2021–25); Reddit rises among 18–29s (18%→26%), and TikTok reaches 63% of under-30s. 

X's golden hour is Wednesday at 9 am. Data from 1M posts shows Mon–Thu 8–10 am (peak Wednesday 9 am); text posts beat video by 30% and images by 37%; avoid Sundays. 

X’s For You tweaks might spike polarization. A study found that one week of divisive posts in X's For You feed can mimic three years of political drift. Brands and community managers should watch feed tweaks; small algorithm changes can rapidly alter audience sentiment and brand safety.

Pinterest Q5: shoppers keep buying post-Christmas. Searches spike in Food, Fashion, and Beauty; people plan New Year's goals. Run Pins and promos for NYE looks, self-care and sale shoppers. 

Don't stop campaigns, shift to self-gift and resolution angles. 🎉 ~TWISM

Spotify adds cross-platform music import. Users can import tracks and playlists from other services into Spotify, making it easy to consolidate libraries.

Telegram adds live streaming in Stories. Use Stories Live for short Q&As or product drops; promote ahead since discovery may remain follower-only. 

Substack requires age checks for UK users. Substack requires UK readers to verify age using selfies or government ID under the Online Safety Act and will blur Notes, chats, and DMs until verification.

That’s all for today. Thanks for reading. Now…

Go BIG or go home!

~ Josh from “This Week in Social Media”

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