1. LinkedIn Business Highlights from Microsoft’s FY22 Q1 Earnings - On Oct 26, 21, Microsoft announced Q1 FY22 Earnings. Included in the report on the financial performance were the following LinkedIn highlights:  

You can also see LinkedIn’s quarterly product highlights, releases and enhancements in the Q1 FY22 product list here. For more information, see the Q1 FY22 earnings release here.

2. LinkedIn Updates Pages to Quickly Attract Top Talent With New Tools - According to the Glint’s Employee Well-Being Report, employees who are satisfied with their organization’s flexibility on work schedules or location are 3.4x more likely to balance work and personal obligations, 2.6x more likely to be happy working for their employer, and 2.1x more likely to recommend working for their employer.

And workplace policies matter when it comes to attracting top talent, and being ultra-transparent about those policies, from day one, can benefit your brand. To help, LinkedIn has invested in a feature that allows you to convey whether your organization is working remote, hybrid or on-site in your LinkedIn Page header, and additional space to clarify your evolving policies on vaccines, pay adjustments, and more.

And remember, LinkedIn has added customizable competitor analytics to your LinkedIn Page Analytics Tab, in which you can add up to nine of your competitors to benchmark their LinkedIn Page performance. This feature also allows you to track and compare their follower growth and organic content performance with yours. 

3. PayPal Confirms: ‘Not Pursuing an Acquisition of Pinterest at This Time’ - A rather big rumor that was brewing across the internet has now been shut down, with PayPal declaring that it is currently not interested in buying Pinterest. They shared it via a news release post on their website.


4. Instagram Makes Links in Stories Available to All Accounts - Instagram has announced that links are now being made available in Instagram Stories for all users, not just those with 10k followers or verified accounts. Now, all users will now be able to access the link sticker for Stories, which Instagram introduced as the primary link sharing option, instead of ‘Swipe up’ links, back in August.

Instagram does note that new accounts, as well as accounts that repeatedly share content that violates its Community Guidelines, will not have access to the Link sticker. That provides it some safeguards in limiting misuse of the option – though the details of what qualifies as a ‘new’ account in this context have not been communicated.

5. Facebook Launches Virtual Training Sessions for Female Business Owners - Facebook has launched a new series of virtual training sessions for female business owners, in celebration of Women’s Small Business Month, which provide tips and insights to help female entrepreneurs succeed in the post-COVID landscape.

The videos, which you can view here, each run for around 10 minutes and include lessons on effective financial management, business leadership as well as tips and tricks on ways to leverage digital marketing tools to maximize sales leading into the holidays.

6. Facebook Manages To Have A Successful Q3 - Facebook recently posted results for the company's Q3 2021 revenue, displaying steady growth in users while revenue ($2.8B) remains about the same when compared with Q2, 21. Which goes to show that despite the number of controversies they wade into, corporations find a way. The Q3 2021 report can be easily found on the platform's investors section but we'll break down some of the more important and relevant details here. Starting off with perhaps the most important metric of them all: userbase. Facebook added 22 million new daily active users (DAUs) to its platforms, leading to an overall massive number of 1.93 billion DAUs. With such a track record, all Facebook needs is another solid quarter, and Q4 will push the numbers over the 2 billion DAUs line.

The most active site of growth proved to be the Asia Pacific region, with numbers going from 788 million DAUs in Q2 2021 to 805 million this quarter. Europe, & the US and Canada regions displayed the least amount of growth, with numbers going up by 1 million DAUs from Q2 to Q3 for both. This very much plays into the current perception that the West continues to be less and less enamored by the likes of Facebook, with platforms such as TikTok displaying more engagement and success

The only major hit that Facebook has taken across Q3 is that ad revenue still seems to struggle a little bit. Most of this, if not all of it, has to do with Apple's Tracking and Transparency features, which were introduced to the iOS 14 all the way back in 2020. Tracking and Transparency features mean that third party apps and advertisers cannot take any form of personal user data without explicit consent being provided by the users. This means that advertisers can no longer gauge information such as location data or browser history; the sort of information that makes targeted advertisements easier on these companies.

7. YouTube Explains Why They Recommend Old Videos - In a new video on the Creator Insider channel, YouTube’s Rachel Alves, says that YouTube’s system is designed to match viewers with videos that they’re likely to enjoy, regardless of when that video was published. That means that even older videos, which still see relatively high engagement, will continue to be recommended in line with viewer interests.


8. Maximizing Discovery On YouTube: Specific Tags or More Broad Matching Topics? In a new video on the Creator Insider channel, YouTube’s Rachel Alves says that YouTube’s video tags provide another way for creators to align their content with specific queries, though YouTube specifically notes that tags are not a major algorithm consideration.

Alves reiterates this, advising creators to focus on the elements that viewers make decisions about when they’re choosing what to watch – so the title, thumbnail image and description. Alves says that creators would be better off focusing on what’s working for other, similar videos related to their topic, as opposed to optimizing tags.

9. Do Share Your Videos Outside of YouTube, Even When YouTube May Not Be Able to Attribute All The Engagement Metrics - Creators should ‘absolutely’ share their videos outside of YouTube as that can only increase your chances of discovery based on viewer activity, regardless of direct attribution. “If your videos are getting more traffic from external sources, like social media, it’s likely increasing your potential to be discovered by more viewers. Another benefit is that those viewers now have that video in their watch history, so there’s a higher likelihood that they may be recommended one of your other videos in the future.”

10. YouTube Ads Is The Breakout Star of Google’s Q3 Earnings Report - Revenues for Google’s parent company, Alphabet, went up a whopping 41% YoY according to the report, with ad revenues driving $51.3 out of the $65.1 billion. YouTube advertising revenues reached $7.2bn, an increase of 43% from the previous quarter thanks to both direct response and brand advertising. This increase is a big deal since Apple’s App Tracking Transparency had the potential to affect YouTube similarly to other video social media apps.

While shoppers are returning to physical stores, the company’s also seeing 'strong growth in local shopping queries' at the same time.