This Month in Social Media - November 2025 Update

Social media moves fast, and so do the algorithms, features, and trends that shape your brand’s visibility.  Here's the social media updates for October. Bookmark it. Check back often. We’ll keep it fresh.

LinkedIn

• LinkedIn has launched an AI-powered “people search” that helps users find the right professionals just by describing what they need in simple language. Instead of searching job titles, you can now type prompts like “ex-META CMO who left and started a business with friends” or “Strategic Marketing partners specialising in B2B energy industry” and LinkedIn will surface relevant people across your network.

Why it matters:

This update makes LinkedIn more of an opportunity engine than a directory. For businesses, it means better targeting, smarter prospecting, and faster access to decision-makers, without needing perfect keywords

• LinkedIn is restricting how many competitors a company page can track through its analytics dashboard. Pages can now monitor fewer competitor profiles, and some comparison metrics (like follower growth and content performance) may be reduced or removed for unpaid LinkedIn company accounts.

Why it matters:

If you rely on LinkedIn’s competitor insights for benchmarking, you may see less data going forward. Brands will need to lean more on their own performance trends and audience signals rather than competitor comparisons. 

Facebook

• Facebook is rolling out a major update that lets Group admins convert a private group into a public one without exposing past member activity. This gives admins more flexibility to grow their communities while keeping member privacy intact.

What’s changing:

• Admins can now switch a group from private → public to reach a wider audience.
• All previous posts, comments, and interactions stay hidden from the public. Only admins, moderators, and existing members will still see them.
• When a private group becomes public, the member list stays private and is visible only to admins and moderators.

Why it matters:

This update lets brands and communities expand their reach without risking member trust. You can open your group to new people while protecting the history and identities of those who were already there.

• Facebook has launched Content Protection, a built-in system designed to help creators protect their original posts, videos, and ideas from being copied or reused without permission. It gives creators more control, stronger protection, and better visibility over where their content appears.

Facebook will now scan the platform to identify content that looks similar to yours, even if someone has:

• re-uploaded your video
• trimmed or slightly edited it
• changed the audio
• added filters
• posted screenshots or re-crops

You’ll receive alerts when matches are found so you can take action. This is specifically made to protect the creators and you can now set permissions and choose who can reuse your original videos, which videos are protected and what happens when a match is detected. You can apply rules to individual posts or to your entire content library.

When Facebook detects a possible copy, creators can choose to:

• Allow it
• Request takedown
• Apply restrictions (e.g., block it in some countries)
• Monitor it (track how it performs without taking action yet)

This makes it easier to protect your work without being forced to take the same action every time. Content Protection works across Facebook and Instagram, giving you one central dashboard to manage everything:

• matched content
• takedown requests
• allowed uses
• protected assets

You don’t need separate tools or third-party software. Meta says this tool is built for independent creators, small businesses, media pages,  video-first creators, communities sharing original content. Anyone producing original content can use it, not just big companies.

Instagram

• Instagram cuts hashtag limits from 30 to just 3.  Earlier this year, META had specified that hashtags would no longer serve much purpose with relation to views, and engagement.

Why it matters?

Hashtags are only meant to categorise your posts. Add hashtags that’ll help with your SEO, and also that helps your target viewers find you posts easily. This also means that social media managers from now on do not have to break their heads to find 30 relevant hashtags.

YouTube

• YouTube now lets creators start a live stream publicly and then switch it to “members-only” mid-stream.

What this means:

• You can attract a wider audience at the start of your livestream.
• Once viewers are warmed up, you can transition to members-only to encourage sign-ups.
• Existing public viewers will see a prompt to join as a member to keep watching.
• Great for creators offering bonus content, behind-the-scenes Q&As, or paid community perks.

Why it matters: 

This creates a natural conversion funnel, helping creators turn casual viewers into paying members, without needing separate live streams.

• YouTube launched Extend with AI, a feature that lets you take an existing Short and use AI to automatically extend it with new clips.

What it does:

• You select any Short (yours or another creator’s, where remixing is allowed).
• The tool suggests AI-generated visual extensions that match the style, pacing, and context of the original.
• Helps creators quickly build on trending content or continue a story with minimal editing.
• Works directly inside the YouTube app, making creation faster and more accessible.

Why it matters:

Shorts move fast. This tool helps creators jump on trends, experiment with formats, and produce more content without starting from scratch.

• YouTube has rolled out a revamped Shorts editor which now offers a full timeline view, meaning you can see all clips, audio, overlays and edits on a timeline, giving more control over your Short’s structure.

You can drag, reorder, trim or delete individual clips, as well as add audio, overlays or text,  all within the native Shorts editor.

Future updates planned by YouTube include tools like “slip editing,” clip splitting, and easier media import, essentially bringing editing power closer to what you’d get in dedicated editing apps.  

Why it matters:

This update makes editing Shorts far more flexible and powerful, without leaving YouTube. For creators and businesses, that means less friction, faster content turnaround, and more creative control.

With a mobile-first timeline editor, you can treat Shorts like full mini-videos: fine-tune pacing, polish edits, and optimise storytelling, right inside the app.

• Creators can now respond to comments with a voice note (up to 30 seconds),  instead of typing. The feature is available via both the mobile app and Studio mobile, giving flexibility for creators working on the go.

This update is part of YouTube’s push to make comment-replying more personal, faster, and more efficient for creators.

Why it matters:
Voice replies give a more human touch, especially useful if you want to build quick, authentic community interaction or respond to comments at scale without needing long typing sessions.

• More creators can now launch Courses on YouTube.  The “Courses” feature, which lets channels offer free or paid multi-video learning programs or serialised content, is now being expanded to more eligible creators under “Advanced features.”  

Once you offer a course, it gets a special badge on the Watch page, and completed courses give viewers a badge in their library, helping structure learning and giving prestige to learners.  

Why it matters: 
If you produce educational or tutorial content, this gives you a built-in “mini-course” framework,  useful for deepening engagement, building authority, or even monetising educational content in a more structured way.