What Facebook's New Link Rules Mean for Your 2026 Strategy

Facebook has been running this test where you need to pay more money if you want to share links in your content. But it's not the same as paying for ads. They're saying, look, if you pay for the Meta verified subscription, they'll give you more reach. Another big story around Facebook is that Meta has gone out and acquired another AI company. They've acquired Manus, which is a leader in autonomous general purpose AI agents. Zuckerberg said everyone will have their own personal super intelligence, meaning AI agent. I can imagine actually Manus agents handling customer support for Facebook. I, For one, was a little surprised by this recent announcement where a meta unveiled something called Sam Audio. SAM, Facebook seems to be slash meta kind of, um, growing a suite of products to attract creators to them. Powerful, yet accessible tools will be the differentiator going forward. It's about removing friction. Hello. Hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media Marketing Podcast, brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers, business owners, and entrepreneurs who want more exposure, more leads, and more sales. Today we're excited to introduce a brand new addition to this show. Every other week, we're gonna be bringing you relevant social platform updates that marketers need to know. Now today, Jerry Potter and I are exploring important updates from Facebook with our special guest, Mari Smith. Jerry, take it away. Awesome. Thank you, Mike. It's great to be here. There's been some important Facebook changes to discuss, including Facebook has been running this test where you need to pay more money if you want to share links in your content, but it's not the same as paying for ads, so we'll break that down and discuss it. Also, meta has taken a hugely forward in the AI race by acquiring another company. So we'll talk about how that might affect your marketing strategies this year. And after moving sharply away from audio content, a few years ago, meta just made a big announcement, which feels like they could be leaning back into it. So we're very excited to be joined by Mari Smith. Mari is a globally recognized Facebook marketing expert, speaker and author of the New Relationship Marketing. She helps small and medium businesses, owe Master Organic Marketing through Facebook consulting, training and coaching. And today, Mari, Mike and I are gonna explore what these latest updates from Facebook and meta means for small business marketers and owners like you. So, Mari, welcome back to the show. Thank you Jerry. And Mike. A pleasure to be here. I'm loving this new format. I'm excited you're here too because we gotta talk about this link testing, uh, that Facebook is doing. So they've just, we've seen screenshots of this. Some people have seen this pop up, but basically testing posting limits if you don't have a verified professional account. So if you don't pay 15 to $500 for one of the verified accounts, they're saying you may only be able to share two links per month in the post. An important detail of this, this is, you can still share links in the comments. So, Mari, let's start with where do you think this is coming from, from Meta's standpoint? Well, if we look at Meta's as Facebook, actually, Facebook's widely viewed content report, which they bring out typically every quarter. It's a ridiculously low number, like 2% of the most widely viewed posts on Facebook have a link in them. And so it's kind of something that marketers have known and been working around for, I would say at least eight years, if not 10. And then Facebook, actually not that long ago, started literally putting in little notification saying, Hey, um, if you don't put a link in this, you might get more reach. So this is just that I'm kind of making it a little bit more official bottom line. They don't want people to be going off platform. But, uh, it's interesting, Jerry, with this whole connecting it to the meta verified, Yeah, that was the part I think that kind of caught us all off guard because it was kind of saying, unless you pay us some money, then you can, then you can keep sharing these links. But as you've, you know, preached for years for, you know, hey, all you have to do is share the link in the first comment should be fine. You're gonna get less reach with these links. So it, do you feel like this is just a ploy for Facebook to start, you know, like building up that meta verified subscription revenue Big time and, and so far as, you know, what I'm starting to see just a barrage of ads that meta's running in my fees to push meta verified. And they're using, you know, a little, not so much UGCs as like case studies, little nuggets, testimonials, and they put the little disclaimer, you know, uh, results are self, self-proclaimed. Self-disclosed, and results may vary. That kind of thing. Because I personally have yet to come across somebody who just raves and jumps up and down and going, my gosh, you know, meta verified is so worth it. You get so much support, you get more reach, you get all of these benefits and yeah, okay, the entry level is 15 bucks a month.

Us, you know, but everything else I, I've experimented with over the years. I turn it on and turn it off. The number one thing I think meta is doing is making a vanity plate. People just like to have that little blue check and it makes 'em look more official. But ultimately for the whole package of benefits, like you said earlier there, Jerry, it's, it's astonishing. These higher level programs, I have no idea if somebody's paying, you know, whatever it is, 50, how much is it they pay? Uh, four, Four up to 4 99 US a month. $499. Yep. 500. Clarification. Uh, ma just so I understand what's happening here. So first of all, um, I think what you're saying, and I wanna make sure everybody understands this, 'cause I'm still trying to wrap my brain around this, it, you've known for a long time that you shouldn't put a link in, uh, your organic post, and that's kind of, unless it's an ad, and we've kind of known that forever, but now what they're saying is, uh, if you have the check mark, right, the little blue check mark, which is what meta verified is Yeah. Then all of a sudden, what are they, what are they promising? Are they saying that you can, you can do something different? Help me understand. Well, yeah, it's, it's basically what they're saying is it's not like you will go there and if you make a link post, all of a sudden Facebook's gonna pop up and say, oh no, you can't do that. You probably just get like no reach, uh, at all. You know, they're not trying to prevent people from, from making posts at all. But this is interestingly enough, it's, uh, if you have your personal profile switched over to the professional mode, which a lot of us do, and of course if you've, uh, everybody has a, a business page, public business page. So they're saying like, look, if you pay for the meta verified subscription, then, uh, you can post more than you know, or you can post as many links as you want, but you'll get, they'll, they'll give you more reach, you know, uh, in the Oh, okay. In the, so yeah. So what I'm hearing you say is, Hey, maybe it's worth it if you have the blue check mark. Yeah. And to try, if you wanna promote like your podcast, which doesn't live on Facebook, right? Or you wanna promote an article, um, you might be able to just try it where in the past you would never do it if you have the check mark. Is that kinda what I'm hearing you say? Test it out? Yes. Correct. Yeah, that's absolutely correct. Mm-hmm. Yep. Okay, cool. What's the word on the, in the community about all this? 'cause I thought there was, there's a pretty big hubbub when this thing came out, right? Yeah, really good point. I, generally speaking, I think the community of marketers are just like, yeah, whatever, Facebook, you know, I'm not gonna pay, I'm not gonna pay meta verified and, and I'm not going to, you know, limit my links or post more links. I think generally speaking, most marketers are savvy or realizing that the link in the comments is just fine. Um, there's other places you can put links, for example, many of us do the link in comments, so that's fine on a page, a profile, a group or an event. Two other places to keep in mind is, uh, stories, right? You can put CTA links in your stories and that's always worthy of, of testing and experimenting. And the number one, my number one recommendation is Messenger. Get people into the dms. That is what Meta wants with their whole ecosystem. Instagram, Facebook is like, you know, do the comment trigger the automations is an aspect of what they actually offer. Uh, I'm sure we'll get into this in a little bit here, but I'm that, that there's more coming, you know, business ais is currently right now in beta, you people can go check and see if they have access, uh, on Meta Business Suite, and then all tools engage audience, and you'll see it says Business AI beta, and you can, and then you just click that little link right there, business AI beta, and see if you've got access or not. That is gonna help you to have those, those comments and be able to begin the dialogue in the dms and Sure. Pop links in there. Cool. Yeah, that's certainly aligned with what we're hearing on the Instagram side too, where they've been talking about it for a year or two now, or this is just a place where we want people to share content with their friends in the dms. Um, I have a 15-year-old and I couldn't believe, you know, when he got a phone, he was like, I want Instagram. And we were like, not TikTok or YouTube, like that was the one that he wanted, you know, 'cause it felt like Instagram was aging up, but obviously that's what they're describing now. They've tied this link sharing, like, oh, we'll still let you do it if you're on one of these meta verified plans. Mm-hmm. And just so we have the context for everything, they start at 1499 per month per profile. So you would have to pay once for Instagram, once for Facebook, or once for a personal, once for a business page. And then they have a $50 a month, a one 50 a month, and a $500 a month plan. The big things they talk about the blue check mark, which may be ego, as you mentioned, Mike, um, impersonation protection, enhanced support, where you can actually chat with somebody, which I think I've heard you say the same experience that I've heard ma people have hit or miss experiences. Sometimes it's great to talk to somebody and they get their problem resolved and they don't, they do say you'll have better

search optimization. Uh, and another part of it too is this isn't in the $15 a month plan, but in the next few plans you can actually share links in reels. So that's, uh, that second level plan. At $50 a month, you could share two links in reels, four on the next one, and then six in the one if you had $500 per month. So at what point does this become worth investing in, do you think, Mari, for a business? 'cause I follow and listen to pretty much everything you say, and it's been very mixed. But you also mentioned you've been seeing, uh, you know, I don't wanna call it propaganda, but the ads trying to get people to sign up for meta verified. So what are some of these messages that you feel like might make it worth considering for a business or for a marketer F first to quickly? Um, anchor the point about the ads? It, it really, to me, it's a revenue play. It really is. It's just anothers source of revenue. Um, and because it's outsourced support and it's not the greatest, except if you really, you know, get lucky, but is it worth it? Honestly, I would say to people, keep your money, use it on ads there, mic drop. Well, that well said. Yeah. Well, and you know, even with, uh, depending on what you're promoting, yeah, you could certainly get a lot, even if you were just throwing $15 behind the right piece of content. Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah, because like you said, with the links and reels, I'm gonna pay $50 to be able to get two links in my reels. Well, I even make sure that my whole engine is, is properly in place and that I'm, where I'm sending people to is a high converting landing page, and I'm able to track, oh my gosh, it's so worth this 50 bucks a month because these two links that I'm allowed in my reels on, you know, Instagram and or Facebook is really driving, uh, quality leads and, and conversions. But otherwise for 50 bucks a month, yeah, you could just have a nice ad going there and, and reach potentially, I don't know, a wider audience. Now, I guess the only exception to that would be if you are a creator that really gets a lot of views on reels. Yeah. And it's totally worth it because sometimes reels can have millions of views, and if there's a link in there that somehow can benefit you as an affiliate link product or something along those lines, that could be really, really valuable and that might be worth it. I guess it's all about context, right? You, You are right, Mike. And then just to anchor too, on the premium and max levels, the one 50 and the 500, you can request a call from an agent. So it's very, very different than just doing the, the chat or the email. You're, you're gonna get, you know, a real human to speak to on the phone. So that, that can make a difference too, if you really run into sna some snafus and need some support. It'd be interesting to see if you could sign up, like let's say you had a reel start to go viral and it was about a product. If you could go and sign up and all of a sudden go back and add a link to a reel, I'm guessing not just because they're, they crack down on editing things and generally if you edit an add, it has to start over anyway. But, um, so let me ask you this, Mari, going forward here in 2026, if you want to drive traffic off of Facebook, is it still possible? And how would you go about it other than paid ads, which is obviously the, the obvious solution. Yeah, well for sure the linking comments, and that goes for your page, your profile, your group. And then as I mentioned stories, uh, I think stories are a perfect place to go ahead and every, you could do every story you want, but maybe like every third story, throw a link in there and you see how it goes. You know, and, and like Mike just said about the millions of views in a reel, if you happen to get a lot of views in your stories, you may as well test out some links. But, um, I can't even think of any other way other than the messenger automations that we, we just touched on briefly of to really, really encourage and maybe even set up those like the comment triggers, which you can do fairly rudimentary, even if you don't have the business AI beta access yet, that you can, uh, set up, it's under automations if you go into Meta Business Suite and into your inbox, and then you'll see it up the top, it's called automations, and you can set that up for free. Otherwise you're gonna get, you know, platforms like ManyChat or customers. ai or there might, uh, what's the other one? Chat fuel a few different, uh, possibilities. But of course we'll get to that in our topic coming up in a little bit of the, the agentic ai. Sooner or later we're gonna find some really profound, uh, use cases for AI in the Messenger to be able to service your clients and potentially put all the links you want in your, in the inboxes, you know, in the chat, the dms. Yeah. Just before we get into some of these other stories today, do you think if this works, I mean, let's say that they move forward out of testing and this just becomes the standard, do you think other platforms will copy it as quick as they can? Oh, in terms of the, the link testing last links? Yeah, Instagram, LinkedIn. I mean, you think this is gonna become like, like a, you think they're setting a foundation here on Facebook where all the other social platforms are gonna follow if this works? You know, okay. So first of all, um, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, they all have paid premium subscriptions

with various benefits. Predominantly might be a little, you know, extra reach or supports, but in as far as like link limits mm-hmm. I, I highly doubt that other platforms are actually gonna try to deploy that. Um, yeah, just we just, marketers have generally come to accept Oh yeah. Post with links, simply get lower reach and we come up with our creative workarounds. But yeah, I don't see this as gonna be a social media wide, you know, um, approach or strategy to, to charge people for putting more links in. Yeah. Alright. So another big story around Facebook is that Meta has gone out and acquired another AI company. They've acquired Manus, which is a leader in autonomous general purpose AI agents, which can do tasks like market research, coding, data analysis, and a lot more. Um, this was a $2 billion investment. So this was not a small purchase, obviously. And the agent technology is supposed to be integrated into meta's consumer and business products. So we could see it on business pages and professional profiles, including meta AI as well. Manus is still going to continue to operate and offer its standalone service. Now. I remember when Manus first was announced, it was outperforming in all of the benchmarks that the tech people run for some of these, and Mike, you probably remember this, but it was a, originally a Chinese owned company, so there was a lot of apprehension about it initially, is that right? Yeah, I mean, I, I don't know Mario if you've ever used Mamo, but I have a maus account and when it first came out it was invite only and, um, it was, the best way to describe it is it popped open in a browser what looked like a browser, like a private browser. And then you could give it commands and controls and it would effectively just surf the web and go do whatever the heck you wanted to do. And at the time when I used it, which I feel like it's probably about a year ago, uh, when it first came out, I believe, um, and I, I'm getting the timelines probably wrong, I just couldn't think of an application where I would want it to do this for me, because in my mind I chat GPT and Claude and Gemini can do a lot of the same things, go out and get information report back to you. But the big thing that Manus does that other, uh, social, I mean AI platforms does not do, is it actually will do workflows. So it will actually, you, you can teach it to do something and it will do it. And um, and it's kind of, there's this thing called, uh, agentic AI that's been around for a little while, and last year you were hearing a lot of really big companies like Salesforce, talking about it, HubSpot, and many others. And the promise was that these agents, these AI agents will effectively allow, um, businesses to not have to hire as many people and they will do the, the, the work that nobody else wants to do. Mm-hmm. But the reality of it is that these things have not panned out the way everybody expected. Um, it's not being adopted by larger businesses as much as everybody had hoped. And, um, I'm curious to think, I could talk about a lot more, but Mari I'm curious what your take is on it from, uh, the acquisition. 'cause this is twice the size of the Instagram acquisition. Isn't this one of the biggest acquisitions Facebook has ever made? Yeah, next to WhatsApp? Yeah. So what's your take on all this? Okay, so, um, early 2025 meta AI was kinda leading the race with the, their open source. And then they, uh, they, they bring out LAMA four and it was, you know, a bit a flop Thad. And if there's one thing that Zuckerberg, mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta is, is exceedingly competitive and in the, whatever it's been 24 years since the company started, 22 years, that, um, he's just, he doesn't ever seem to get like a real leg up on the competition and be first to market, even though they're the largest social media ecosystem on the planet, right? 3. 5 billion people use at least one meta app every day. So if there's one thing that Meta has in spades that nobody else has is distribution at scale. Yes. And he knew he Zuckerberg's team there started to lose the race a little bit with ai and, and meta AI is not really high on everybody's like AI tools of choice. Yeah. They're baking it into the whole ecosystem. But with this acquisition, what it did is radically positioned meta back in the race, if you will, was okay, we're not just about generative ai, throwing it into our apps and being, you know, summarizing posts or doing search, but now, hey, we really are in this Egen AI race, if you will. Zuckerberg said, gosh, was it July of last year? He put out a statement on how he's saying that everyone will have their own personal superintelligence, meaning AI agent, which he believes will be a most meaningful impact of AI empowering individuals to achieve their goals and improve their lives. It's that vision is a cornerstone of Meta's ai strategy. So you're right, in terms of Mattis, they started out

with China in 2022. They made a very strategic move to get over to Singapore, which apparently I was learning is called Singapore washing in the tech industry. And so the fact that they were so successful so fast Manus to the point where the end of 2025, along comes a major corporation like Meta willing to spend $2 billion on them. I think that it not only signals, yeah. And for kind of like self-serving reasons, meta is back in the ai, ag agentic super intelligence race, but also to the whole industry of where tech startups happen and the acquisitions. And of course we can talk about this in a minute of where like the Chinese government is now going, Hmm, what the heck happened here? We don't wanna lose more talent to America or more competition, right? Yeah. And I think it still has to go through their approval process because, um, it was all started in China. China, and it's so fascinating. Jerry, if you don't mind me just like talking a little bit more about where I think this could go for Facebook, um, Manus is really designed for business. Okay? So your average human being isn't going to be creating an agent agent, your average consumer to do something for them, at least not yet. Um, but maybe Zuckerberg has a vision that you're gonna use these agents to shop for you. Yeah. Um, is that kind your point? I mean, do you, do you have a, a big game? Tell me what Zuckerberg has said about the acquisition. I would love to get your thoughts on, oh, He's playing his cards tight to his chest right now. We, we don't know for certain, but here's the thing that, uh, creators and, you know, small business owners and everyday users will end up engaging with agents. It's not so much that everyday user, the consumer will go and try to create their own, but yeah, on Instagram or Facebook shopping discovery and quote, you know, personal expression, I'm saying quote, just looking at my own notes. But then also, okay, so we could do a side-by-side comparison with open AI atlas, right? That the browser, I don't know if y'all have tried that, that creeps me out. I have no interest in trying that. I don't want deploy, oh, just go log into my bank account and he will go book a flight for me and do all the things that agents can do. But yeah, their meta AI in conjunction with Mattis could help everyday users, of which there's three and a half billion assist with browsing, comparing products, managing prospects, excuse me, managing, uh, purchases, assembling wishlists, coordinating returns. And oh, by the way, on the creator economy side of things help you create and edit posts, real stories for your, you know, everyday friends and family. So I think there's extraordinary output potential, you know, entertainment driven output as well as real, true agentic use for workflow on the business side and like shopping and content creation on the consumer side. So whenever I'm looking at this, I'm always, it's the same way that I look at a quarterly report from the company. If I'm a marketer and I'm investing my time and in some cases money into marketing on Facebook, when I see something like this, I'm wondering, is this to help me market better on Facebook or are they investing in another part of the company? Because we all remember you just mentioned that Mark Zuckerberg envisions, we all have a super intelligence and maybe we will, but Mark also said at some point we'd all be walking around with goggles on our face living in the metaverse all the time too. And they invested a lot of money in that. Sounds Like company named the Meta, right? Yeah. So do you feel like this is, you know, potentially a move away from Facebook and Instagram for the company or something that will be integrated in some of the ways that you and Mike just mentioned? Not a move away. No. Okay. No, because so long as the company has this extraordinary number of users, which rarely do we see a decline in these quarterly reports. If we do, it's like maybe slightly down in Americas, but then, you know, in India it's way up. And so it all seems to balance out. Um, but no matter what, they're still, they're still cranking away on their main, as they call it, the, the big blue, the big blue app. Um, so yeah, I don't see them like moving away from their standard apps. If anything, what they're gonna be doing with this, the AI is like baking it in, like having it baked entirely on Facebook, Instagram threads, WhatsApp Messenger, maybe even like the AI glasses and Meta Quest because, um, with Manus already being long established, then they can bring it in and, and see how much more it could do. Right. With these, as you said, Mike, with the workflow, the multi-step tasks to completion, research, analysis, coding, planning, content generation, and all the things. Uh, I have a couple other thoughts on this just 'cause uh, I mean some folks that listen to the show know I have another show called AI explored.

And, um, I, Zuckerberg has been trying to acquire, as you know, Mario, a lot of talent and pay a lot of money to get AI talent because as you mentioned earlier, his open source AI model called Llama, I believe, uh, just didn't really get accepted by the general population. And, uh, because he's behind, um, acquiring Manus, which has gone through incredible growth, um, they were actually generating a hundred million dollars in revenue. And that's a lot of money for such a short pipeline of this company. Um, I think that there is not only a possibility that Manus is integrated into, um, Facebook. I can imagine actually Manus agents handling customer support for Facebook. 'cause you remember how we mentioned this could be a major customer support solution for them if they can create these automated agents that handle customer support inquiries. I also think that, um, Zuckerberg is really smart and he would not make a $2 billion investment in this if he didn't also see a potential pipeline outside of his normal pipeline. So what I mean by that is, you know, the, they're known as a, um, social platform company, but I think they also want to be known as a social tools company. And I do think that this tool, um, under the control of Meta, uh, and used by so many people is going to potentially open doors for other acquisitions of other AI tools. Uh, 'cause there's so many of them right now. There's so many that are on the chopping block that may not survive like perplexity and, um, mid Journey, mid journey and all these other tools, you know, that are, that are image creation tools and all these tools that I could see Zuckerberg coming around and, and 'cause he's got a massive amount of money, right? And, and I think they could come back into the race and maybe down the road catch up a little bit and compete with, with Google. That's just my 2 cents. The future will reveal itself. But I do think that, I'm sure Zuckerberg has much bigger plans here. I, I agree. And just a real quick speak to the monetization models. I, I believe that Meta is gonna actually offer some kind of advanced agent capabilities potentially through a tiered subscription plan for businesses. We see how they're trying to do that. Obviously meta verified with who knows about the benefits as we spoke about earlier, but potentially just really shifting how companies are budgeting for that automation and, and productivity software. Um, at the same time, you'll remember Workplace by Facebook. Yeah. That got early adoption, but you know, ultimately it failed to become deeply embedded, uh, enterprise platform. So I, I would caution businesses and marketers listening to this today, don't be like rushing to standardize on Manus. Treat it as a pilot until meta's integration strategy becomes clear. Yeah, smart. Um, and what I'm hearing you say, Mike, is that, uh, pretty soon on the $15 a month plan, you won't be able to talk to a real person at Facebook. You'll just be talking to the Manus agent. And That actually might be preferable if I'm intellectually honest with you, because if, which you all need to understand. If they've been trained on all the data that a human is trained on and they're available 24 hours a day and they can actually solve the problem, I think humans would be very happy with that. You know, and then they'll point, they'll just save the really, really rough problems for the actual agents. And we internally use, uh, ai, you know, support agents to solve a lot of our customers problems. And we only route the real serious ones to, uh, to real humans. And I think there is something to very quick, uh, response and diagnosis. So we'll see what happens. I love AI tech support. It, I mean, the companies that I work with that have it, I just, it's, it's fantastic. So, um, now when Manus first sort of came onto the scene because it had destroyed all of open eyes speed benchmarks or however they mentioned, however they measure ai, this is outside of my area of expertise, but in the AI business society, which is social media examiners, AI community for business owners and marketers, you know, some of the reaction was, this is amazing. And oh, it's a Chinese company. I'm not, I'm not gonna go through that. So with its Chinese roots, do you think that this is going to raise even more alarm bells in the United States? Because meta, I think already has a little bit of a trust issue because of how much data that they have access to, not to mention data leaks that have happened. So do you think that this is going to raise alarm bells even more than perhaps TikTok did as this move forward? Or do you feel like they've taken the right steps? And I would love to hear from both of you on this. Go ahead, Mari, what do you think? Well, I think it's fascinating. It was literally only 10 days after the acquisition announcement that the Beijing authorities began to scrutinize this deal. They wanna see, wait a minute, did Manis blatantly disregard the country's laws and regulations on export controls? And what the main thing the Chinese government is not, not wanting to, to is wanting to make sure that doesn't happen, is this ripple effect effectively pulling out the best of Chinese AI and funneling it over to the US unintentionally even, right? Because I, I'm sure that Mattis didn't move to Singapore thinking, oh, Meta's gonna inquire us, but obviously that's what happened. Who knows? Maybe that is what happened.

But, uh, there the primary motivations to move Madison's move from, uh, China to Singapore in 2025 was to secure global funding and to reduce that regulatory scrutiny. I don't think there's gonna be as much hubbub as around the whole TikTok situation, but who knows? I think the main thing is we wanna make sure I'm saying we the collectively to protect countries to make sure that it's not all concentrated in the US with the AI talent and the dominant AI companies. Well, I don't think your average, uh, person that's not tracking Facebook like you are mari and that's not tracking AI like I am, is gonna know anything about Manus when it rolls out. That's right. And I think that people trust Facebook with a lot of information about themselves. And if Facebook, uh, meta rolls out some things, new features, I think that they will use them. As you mentioned earlier, Mari, their big advantage is they have this massive audience that they can distribute this, uh, to. Mm-hmm. The big question is gonna be user adoption, but, uh, I don't think your average user is going to give a hoot. I wouldn't be surprised if they rename it. You know, they'll probably, they'll probably give it a completely different name so they can kind of like, um, uh, separate themselves from the bad press that may or may not be out there right now about the acquisition from it being a Chinese company, because I don't know if they have a history of that. I know they didn't rename Instagram. Um, Mario, has there been any other acquisitions that you can think of from Facebook where they renamed the product? Uh, What, well, What was the Quest thing that used to be called something that, yeah, It used to call Oculus, right? Yeah, yeah, Yeah. They dropped Oculus. So I wouldn't be surprised if the, if when this is rolled out, it's gonna have a new name and a new branding and all that kind of stuff. So we'll see if that happens. I will adopt it. 'cause most, most people aren't, they don't care where it comes from. They just care what it does for them. No, no. And just a real quick interject here, related points. So I'm sure you've been tracking Jan Laun, they're the French American Mets former chief AI scientist of 12 years. Hello. He announced his departure in November of 2025, and he is off to start his own AI startup. And then he, there was a brilliant interview in the Financial Times, uh, with Jan Lain. And, uh, he was, he was not holding back. He was saying about how Meta had been fudging some numbers and who knows where all this is going. It's crazy. There's a lot of crazy stuff going on behind the scenes at, I don't disagree with you at all. Um, but at the same time, I just an, I don't think most people know kind of what goes on politically behind the scenes with a lot of this stuff. And we'll just kind of see what happens. I'm pretty confident if the acquisition goes through that Facebook is gonna do everything to make sure that American regulators are happy with this, which means all the data's gonna have to be stored, you know, in, in safe countries and all that kind of fun stuff. Good Point. I think we'll probably be okay. We'll see what happens. Well, We'll see, by the way, with a meta AI or meta AI chats, everything you use in your chat is, is actually, they put out warnings, I think it was starting December 16, that everything you chat with meta AI is used to further train the AI and personalize your organic content and your ads. Makes sense. Well, this has been interesting discussing all of the things that, uh, meta or Facebook has predicted or invested in that hasn't necessarily worked out. And we all remember Clubhouse blowing up during the pandemic and everybody added audio, including Facebook's live audio rooms, podcasts were gonna be all integrated in Facebook business pages. And then a few years ago, they shut it all down. So I, for one was a little surprised by this recent announcement where a meta unveiled something called Sam Audio, SAM, to basically give you an AI model that will give you professional grade sound editing, so it can segment audio using text visual or time span prompts. Um, they talked about isolating specific sounds. So you could have a song and isolate the vocals or certain instruments or background noise, um, all these different things using ai. And they said it'll be able to be used across film, podcasting, TV research, accessibility, all of these different things. And so the first thing when this came out, it was like, wait, okay, now we're talking about audio again here. So Mari, where do you think, uh, all of this came from and is it part of the vision for the social platforms and the marketing part of Meta? Well, that was hilarious, right? When you're talking about audio, I had a very loud helicopter go over my house. I had to quickly mute. We pick it up there, Did not hear anything. Good timing. Okay. So first of all, for the listeners, Sam is Segment Anything model, and Sam Audio is not really an isolated launch. It's part of a bigger picture. So meta launch, the SAM segment, anything model in 2023, starting with image segmentation. So to be able to, what's that thing called a polygram or something where you can, like, you draw around it, but now you just click on it and it selects it. And then they've since added on to the sound playground

as they call it a video 3D and now sound as pretty darn sophisticated. So it's this powerful foundation model for computer vision Sam, all altogether. And, and it can identify and separate any object in images or videos, even unseen ones. And you can use text clicks, visual prompts, and enable applications from real-time video editing, uh, real-time video editing to 3D reconstruction in robotics. Now with Sam Audio, Matt is encouraging creators, uh, what do they call 'em, like dabbler and, um, experimenters to full on professional musicians to experiment with what they call the, this segment. Anything playground. It's all about content creation. Yeah. I got a couple questions on this. Um, so is this more something mostly for the metaverse and was this like a, you know, Oculus quest kind of thing? Or was this just some random side project? Because I'm trying to like understand why they would even have a tool like this in the first place. It, it's for content creation. It's to make con it's to empower creators to, of all types and shapes and sizes from brand newbies to professionals to just make content creation easier and more fun, more engaging. It kind of connects in like with the Instagram, uh, edits app if, if you will. Right? So it's like what more tools can meta, uh, produce that gets people to crank out more content and that have fun doing it such that they keep coming back to do more. Uh, I don't think it's connected to the metaverse, but it could be wrong. You know, they're probably, oh, I mean, it's kind of cool because, you know, the camera on the, you know, on the, on the various apps has all these cool features and capabilities so that you don't have to use third party tools like Kaf Cut. Yep. Do all this editing. So this sounds like it's a move in that general direction. It's just interesting because it seems so, um, different than what I would've expected from, uh, from Facebook. But I am not someone who's out there actively creating videos on Instagram. So maybe that's part of the reason why I'm not processing it properly. But I do have a couple of interesting takes on this because in the AI world, uh, there are a couple of apps that are really good at this. On the audio side of this one is called Suno, SUNO. Yeah. It's one of the leading apps for creating music. Mm-hmm. Um, and also generating like, um, different tracks for different instruments and vocal tracks and stuff like that. And then of course you've got Adobe products that allow you to do a lot of this kind of work. So it's interesting that Facebook seems to be slash meta kind of, um, growing a suite of products to attract creators to them. Yeah. So that those creators will create for their platform. Right. And we are seeing a big movement if, if I'm not mistaken, Mario, with a lot of video creators having great success on Facebook now of all places. Mm-hmm. Right. Not just Instagram. So do you think this is a play to try to just give creators, uh, powerful tools to allow them to create more products on the meta platforms? Oh, Absolutely. It is. You know, so like Adam, er, he published a very lengthy carousel. I think you guys put it in the social media examiner newsletter as well, uh, on December 31st. And he's basically outright addressing, okay, the world of ai. Now anybody can reproduce anything and authentic, creator driven, raw real, if you will, you know, content is going to increasingly matter. And he's talking about how, you know, okay, AI isn't replacing you, it's changing what audience cr audiences crave authentic human content supported by powerful, yet accessible tools will be the differentiator going forward. That is what Meta is trying to do here, because they have the resources, they don't want people going off onto all kinds of different platforms and apps and tools. I mean, literally, the Edits app now has its own little ecosystem. You can go into their Discover tab and see reels in there. I maybe at some point they'll make edits its own little like social, social media app, who knows? But with the sam, yeah, that's what it is. And, and maybe there'll be some subscription model for like higher, higher use cases. But right now it's definitely a content tools play, I would say. And I think that's a trend we're gonna continue to see. I mean, TikTok made cap cut, obviously to make video creation easier, and it was completely free for a while. Now they had these paid tiers, YouTube made the create app, same type of thing. So I definitely think we'll see more of that. Um, apple just announced this week, they're making all of their audio and video tools available for, I think, $13 a month up against Adobe, which is, I don't know, 50 to a hundred for their entire suite. So I definitely see that. 'cause the more content that's created, I mean, it's harder for us as marketers to break through the more content that's there, but from the platform standpoint, if they've got a million pieces of content and they need to find a thousand for a certain user, they're gonna be able to choose that best thousand. And if they've got 2 million, they're gonna be able

to choose, you know, a even better top 1000 pieces of content. Yeah. And bottom line here too, by the way, it's not necessarily these tools, the edits app, the whole Sam, um, segment, anything model, it's not necessarily about having creators make more content or anybody may make more content. It's about removing friction, right? If it's already baked into the apps that you're using, or it's just a one click away or a app that you can create and then press a button and voila it goes onto Facebook or Instagram or Threads or whatever, then that's what they mean by like removing friction. So it's giving the creators and the marketers these AI tools that they don't have to go off and invest somewhere else to, to use. And I think that's a huge, huge point that we need to like put an exclamation point on because the social platforms absolutely need creators without creators making content. Then they're gonna go somewhere else where there's good content. And the more that AI helps these people, um, become creators, the more valuable, um, that platform is to those creators. And we'll see people that say, wow, I'm a creator because these tools allow 'em to do things they could not do before. Yeah, yeah. Brilliant. You know, and so cleaning up the background noise, just being able to tap with a button or a text prompt and isolating a speaker's voice or cleaning up podcast clips or improving the, improving the clarity of like live event recordings. You could also do like content repurposing, multimodal storytelling for use in ads, swapping out audios for split testing, multimodal being, you know, okay, let's try an audio and an image and a video and see which one performs better. You know? Yeah. I can't wait for the, I love the accessibility angle too, because I can't wait for the AI video editors and they're close to be able to go in and automatically adjust the music to the perfect level so that it'll sound great, uh, to anyone with any hearing level, but also on a $1 set of headphones and, you know, uh, a $600 set of headphones. So that just kind of sounds the same and everywhere. So, um, one of the thought I had on this, I was at the consumer electronic show, CES in Las Vegas last week, and we got to see all the new tech, the robots are coming, everybody just be ready robot, uh, you know, vacuums that can climb stairs now and robots that can fold the laundry. They're not very good at it yet, but they're getting there. But one of the biggest things we saw there tech-wise was wearables. And these, a lot of these were AI listening devices where they can basically record your day and then you can ask them questions about it later. And another recent, recent acquisition by Meta is they bought the Limitless pendant, which I think was the first one that I saw in the markets. And people were wearing it at Social Media Marketing World in 2025, remember going, what's that? And so, um, it's interesting, certainly from a data standpoint, considering Meta is kind of a data company in a lot of ways, but do you think that these devices, the way that they, and I don't know the tech, the way that they record audio, could be part of why they meta might be investing in more audio production tools using ai? Wow, that is a really good point. 'cause Zuckerberg is always, he calls 'em the form factors, right? And his favorite form factor, of course is the rebound glasses, right? The smart glasses. And he's always saying that, you know, oh, there's gonna come a time. I think he's let go of the goggles thing, but Metaverse, or maybe that's just further out, but there's absolutely a time where he really would love to have everybody wearing a pair of the meta RayBan smart glasses. And yeah, audio is a big part of that. So that's a really good point. They've even done demos at some of their conferences, METAS conferences where, you know, let's say you're sitting in a busy restaurant and then all of a sudden you, you each got the pair of glasses, you can sit and have a conversation with each other through the glasses or like real time language translation, you know? Yeah. This is a big deal. Um, imagine, uh, like Applaud is another company that a lot of people I know are wearing these little PLA devices, but yeah, imagine if you had an AI thing that was listening to you all day and could journal all the key moments of your day, so you have a history of it, right? That'd be very valuable. Or imagine something that, um, when you're in a meeting, you know how we go into these meetings and there's all these AI note takers that are there. Well, imagine if we didn't have them constrained to a meeting tech platform, what if they were in wherever we were? You know? Um, it's kind of like the equivalent of those cameras that people have that, you know, police officers have on 'em all the time when they work, right? It's just a way of documenting your day and it could lead to incredible things. And, um, but at the same time, it's obviously a slippery slope frontier for sure. Yeah. Well, and now you've got my mind going Mari, because now I'm thinking, you know, you've got your meta glasses on, you say, Hey, record me a story and then I'm gonna tell 'em what I'm doing, and then it's gonna go use meta AI to add video to it and then automatically post it to your Facebook stories. Sam is gonna clean up the audio, get the background noise out of the way. I mean, I guess it all kind of seems

to tie together in that way. Coming back to what you said about content creation And then multiple languages, which is available now, I think, in reels of both Facebook and Instagram. 'cause now you're getting infinitely more views because people in other countries are able to hear and understand you. Yeah. And for people that haven't seen this, it copies, it mimics your voice and it changes the way that your lips move when it works really well. Sure does. So, Hey, who knew that Mari with her Scottish, Canadian American accent, accent could speak fluent Portuguese, Spanish, and Hindi? I was blown away. My whole family is into, uh, Duolingo. They all do it every single day. And I was like, Hey, I learned Japanese today. Look, you know, keep it nice and simple. Well, this has been an amazing discussion. Uh, Mari thank you so much for being part of this. If people wanna explore working with you, where do you want to send them? Where's the best place to find you? Well, uh, Mari Smith pretty much anywhere. Facebook, Instagram, slide in the dms or marismith. com. Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over@socialmediaexaminer. com slash 7 0 4. If you're new this show, be sure to follow us. If you've been a long time listener for a while, we would love a review on any platform you're listening on. And do check out my other show, the AI explored podcast. This brings us to the end of the Social Media Marketing podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. I was joined today by Jerry Potter. We'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day. And may your marketing keep evolving.