SOCIAL
Instagram’s Testing a New Stories UI Which Could Have Big Implications for Your Content Strategy
This is not going to please marketers that have made Instagram Stories a priority.
Over the past few weeks, Instagram has been testing a new Stories presentation UI that essentially hides Stories posts after a certain frame count.
As you can see in this example, shared by Content Strategist Claudia Flannery, some Stories are now only displaying the first three frames, along with a tiny ‘Show all’ prompt in the top left of screen.
That would be easy to miss, which could mean that if you’re posting more than three frames to your Story, those later ones will be significantly less likely to be seen.
As noted by Flannery:
“This obviously will lead to a significant decrease in views and reach, given that most are unlikely to actively go and click to show all.”
That, I suspect, is correct – so why would Instagram do it, and will this be rolled out to all users?
We asked IG for some insight, and it provided this response:
“This feature is in early development and testing with a very small percentage of people.”
So no real insight there, just confirmation that this is in testing.
My speculation would be that this is tied into Instagram’s Reels-first focus, which has also seen it launch a test of a new, full-screen UI, which would incorporate feed posts, Reels and Stories in a single stream.
As you can see, in this format, Stories would be shown with the frame count along the bottom of the screen, indicating that users can swipe left to see more – and maybe, within that, Instagram feels like including too many frames will be off putting, taking users out of the vertical swiping experience.
Or maybe it’s a technical capacity thing, and Instagram can’t make it work beyond a certain frame count. Either way, if it is rolled out, you can expect your Stories performance to decline, especially, again, in those latter frames that few people will manually tap through to see.
It seems like the wrong way to go – but with Reels now becoming the key growth element on Instagram (Reels now make up more than 20% of the time that people spend on Instagram), maybe this is just another subtle push from the platform to get people focused on Reels instead.
Maybe that’s the only basis needed – we don’t know, because Instagram hasn’t given use any additional context, but again it is in testing, and its impact on content strategies could be significant.
We’ll keep you updated on any progress.
SOCIAL
Musk regrets controversial post but won’t bow to advertiser ‘blackmail’

Elon Musk’s comments at the New York Times’ Dealbook conference drew a shocked silence – Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP Slaven Vlasic
Elon Musk apologized Wednesday for endorsing a social media post widely seen as anti-Semitic, but accused advertisers who are turning away from his social media platform X of “blackmail” and said anyone who does so can “go fuck yourself.”
The remark before corporate executives at the New York Times’ Dealbook conference drew a shocked silence.
Earlier, Musk had apologized for what he called “literally the worst and dumbest post that I’ve ever done.”
In a comment on X, formerly Twitter, Musk on November 15 called a post “the actual truth” that said Jewish communities advocated a “dialectical hatred against whites,” which was criticized as echoing longtime conspiracy theory among White supremacists.
The statement prompted a flood of departures from X of major advertisers, including Apple, Disney, Comcast and IBM who criticized Musk for anti-semitism.
“I’m sorry for that tweet or post,” Musk said Wednesday. “It was foolish of me.”
He told interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin that his post had been misinterpreted and that he had sought to clarify the remark in subsequent posts to the thread.
But Musk also said he wouldn’t be beholden to pressure from advertisers.
“If somebody’s gonna try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money?” Musk said. “Go fuck yourself.”
But the billionaire acknowledged that there were business implications to the advertiser actions.
“If the company fails… it will fail because of an advertiser boycott” Musk said. “And that will be what will bankrupt the company.”
Musk, who met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Israel earlier this week, insisted in the interview that he holds no discrimination against Jews, calling himself “philo-Semitic,” or an admirer of Judaism.
During the interview, Musk wore a necklace given to him by a parent of an Israeli hostage taken in the Hamas attack on October 7. The necklace reads, “Bring Them Home.”
Musk told Sorkin that the Israel trip had been planned earlier and was not an “apology tour” related to the controversial tweet.
SOCIAL
TikTok Encourages Creators To Make Longer Videos, With Focus On Ad Revenue 11/30/2023

A new report by The Information shows the company’s recent efforts to convince
creators to put out longer videos in order to provide more room for ad placements.
According to the …
SOCIAL
X Adds Option To Embed Videos in Isolation From Posts

Next time you go to embed an X post, you may notice a new step:
Now, X will enable you to choose whether you want to embed the video element in isolation, or the whole post, as normal.
And if you do choose to embed just the video (or GIF), it’ll look like this:
Which could be a helpful way to present X-originated video on third-party websites, and add context to, say, your blog post, without the clutter of the full X framing.
But it could also reduce brand exposure for X, which is likely why Twitter didn’t enable this before, though it did once provide an “embedded video widget” which essentially served the same purpose.

Twitter gradually seemed to phase that out as the platform evolved, and there’s no specific reason that I can find as to why it removed it as an option. But either way, now, it’s back, so you have more options for using X-originated content, and putting more focus on video elements specifically.
Though I don’t know why they didn’t also take the opportunity to remove the ‘Tweet’ reference. Since the re-brand to X, the platform seems to have gone to little effort to weed out all the tweet and bird terminology, but then again, with 80% fewer staff, that’s probably understandable as well.
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