Welcome to Social in Sixty with Seed Group, where we share news and updates from the social media world. This week, we're talking Facebook business accounts and longer Pinterest videos, as well as looking at the latest food news and trends! 🍕

Quick Twitter News👇

More news from Twitter as they reportedly lay off another 200 staff as Elon Musk struggles to right his newly bought company. How the platform will fair this year will be interesting to watch, so keep your eyes on the news.

Business Accounts Are Go 📈

You can now create your own Facebook business account separate from your personal one and even without a personal one. Watch out LinkedIn, this could be a great new way to connect with other like-minded people in your industry. 

It also means that agencies will be given access to certain levels of their clients' accounts such as ads or data, making their clients more secure online and the job easier for us. 

Changes on Instagram 😭😁

Instagram is adding a Gif option to the comment section of posts and talking about removing the ability to reply with emojis to Instagram stories. An interesting decision given that brands now use stories as an opportunity for visibility and engagement since the algorithm put a damper on organic reach. If it does roll out the change, how will this affect engagement data across brands? 

Short form vs Long form 

Pinterest expands idea pin videos to 5 minutes, following in TikTok’s footsteps and playing to longer-form content across platforms. This provides another way to maximise engagement with your content and enables creators to tell a story. Great news for brands that like to build on their relationship with their followers. However, is long form a potential for the future given that attention span data for videos show that people will scroll on after a mere 8 seconds. Paris may have created ripples with her Hilton 10-minute TikTok but let's see if those ripples stand the test of time. For the food and agency world, this could mean longer recipe reels, greater emphasis on the story behind the food and more time spent on storyboarding video content and production. 

News from BeReal 🥱

BeReal’s newness has officially worn off. Lack of variety and the enormity of keeping on top of social channels has meant that BeReal usage has halved since the height of its popularity. The question is, will anything else start taking a back seat as Gen Z try to balance out life and screen time this year? 

Trending foods 🍞

Recent food trends have taken the form of the cloud pizza, tiny calories and minimal effort, but is this one really up to scratch in the taste department, one for us to try at Seed so keep your eyes on our socials. Painted sourdough has also been trending, and is one of the most relaxing food trends to hit our phone screens: mediation in bread-baking form!

The media have also been reporting on the lack of fruit and vegetables on supermarket shelves. We could see another big swing towards the Buy Local movement as smaller, independent, seasonal and British-led shops rise in popularity as larger supermarket chains struggle to fill their shelves with imported products as the UK food industry gets hit by climate change and inflation. 

Keep an eye on our social channels for all the updates on social media, food and agency news and stay tuned for some food trend tasting. Have you tried any food trends recently?