ICYMI: Adam Mosseri’s future of social predictions
And LTK's Amber Venz Box on exec-led podcasts
Welcome! This newsletter is a resource for social trends, influencer headlines and platform updates. I’ve started tracking VidCon 2024 parties and events — you can access the latest list for free in the ICYMI Events Database (the conference even has its own tab!). I’ll continue to update as the invites and party tips come in.
⏰ 1-SECOND SUMMARY
YouTube’s thumbnail A/B tests are finally coming to more creators
You can now share Instagram posts on Threads as full sized posts
BeReal was acquired by a French mobile app & gaming company for $536 million
LinkedIn’s newsletter updates improve comment visibility and subscriber notifications
TikTok is testing image search capabilities for TikTok Shop
Five takeaways from Colin & Samir’s conversation with Adam Mosseri
Should your CEO host a podcast? Read what LTK cofounder and new podcast host, Amber Venz Box, has to say
Creators and celebrities are losing their TikTok verification and everybody wants to know why?!
💻 ROADMAP
📲 YouTube Updates
YouTube announced an update on YouTube thumbnail A/B testing, formally known as “Test and Compare.” The feature will be available to creators who have Advanced Features enabled in the coming weeks.
Related: More A/B thumbnail tips from Rene Ritchie
YouTube announced it’s giving a small group of creators the ability to design and publish their own unique effects directly to Shorts. All creators can use these user-generated effects in their own Shorts content by tapping the Effects button and exploring from there.
YouTube is testing a feature that uses AI to organize large comment sections on English-language Shorts into easily digestible themes. Viewers will see the option to sort comments by “Topics.”
YouTube used AI to analyze the platform’s most successful ads. The findings: “open with a strong hook, lean into pop culture references and trends, use popular or catchy music tracks, and engage audiences with humor.”
📲 TikTok Updates
TikTok confirmed it’s testing the ability for users to take or upload a photo to find similar products in TikTok Shop — similar to Google image search or Pinterest Lens.
TikTok released a new brand whitepaper titled "Return on Creative," that unlocks the value of being creative on that platform.
TikTok launched a branded interview series, Off the Record, featuring musicians like Charli XCX, Shakira, and Meghan Trainor talking about the background of their new songs.
Spotted in the wild: TikTok is testing a new AI effects filter to alter photos based on aesthetics like “biomechanical cyberpunk,” “fantasy art” and “comic book style.”
📲 Meta Updates
Instagram is working on a digital pet feature for Stories called “Pals.” It looks like Tamagotchi, fueled by Story engagement: “Collect hearts over time to see it grow up.”
You can now share Instagram posts — Reels, photos or carousels — on Threads as full-sized posts versus just a thumbnail and link. Example seen here.
Instagram is working on folder management for your inbox — but only encompasses renaming and reordering your Primary and General folders. Note to any Meta product folks reading: give us full customization to sort, save and search messages like an email inbox!
📲 BeReal Updates
BeReal just made bank — it was acquired by Voodoo (a French mobile app & gaming company) for €500M ($536 million).
📲 LinkedIn Updates
LinkedIn rolled out expanded newsletter features, including:
Comments will now show up to the right of articles
Cover images can be designed through Microsoft Designer
Email and in-app notifications sent to subscribers
Staging links to see an article's URL before it’s published
LinkedIn is testing an AI assistant for Premium members that allows them to learn more about a particular company or topic.
📲 X (Twitter) Updates
X announced it was officially hiding Like counts to “protect your privacy.” Seems sus as the kids say.
📲 Twitch Updates
Twitch’s monthly Patch Notes stream rolled out new updates, including a new clip creation flow that’s meant to make it easier for streamers to share to social media. Plus, new Power-Ups special effects viewers can use to support their favorite channels.
👆🏻 CLICK THRU
🙊🙈🙉 “An honest conversation with the head of Instagram”
5 takeaways from Colin and Samir’s interview with Instagram’s Adam Mosseri
DMs enable and encourage content that’s meant to be shared between friends — sparking more conversation, more discovery and more consumption. If you’re trying to evaluate how your content is doing on Instagram, look at the sends, says Mosseri. He’s asked the IG team to rework the Insights dashboard to clarify what matters most because looking at “sends per reach” should be a priority. (Sends per reach is the measurement of how many times your content was shared by people who saw it.)
“Creators drive on average more engagement than a publisher. People want to see the world through the eyes of another individual that they relate to or they look up to more than they want to consume content from a publisher that they feel is hyper processed and produced.” No surprise here but it’s nice to hear it reinforced from the head of Instagram.
Instagram is running tests for performance-based incentives (aka bonuses) in Japan, Korea and the US. But before it rolls out more widely, Mosseri says the program needs to be run without “burning cash,” has to be developed to provide transparency around the program’s eligibility and be a “credible” amount of money for creators. Translation: It’s going to be a while … or never.
Instagram is not going to prioritize long-form content “in a meaningful way” because it would erode Instagram’s core reason to exist: connecting people over creativity (aka, sending and sharing short-form videos through DMs and Stories).
Finding a new crop of creators “who have an affinity for and a loyalty to” Instagram depends on the new creators finding success on the platform and maintaining that success. Instagram plans to do “more and more to benefit them.”
🔮✨ Adam Mosseri’s predictions on the future of social:
We’re shifting from feed-based formats to messaging-based formats
Video is not fully saturated and mobile video will continue to grow and eat into TV’s market share
We’ll probably see some major shift in how people share with each other in the next five years, either through a new format or new channel
Wearables will radically improve over the next three to seven years, possibly resulting in some sort of mashup between the Quest and Meta RayBans
🎙️Steal This Strategy: CEO Podcast
Should your CEO launch a podcast? We’ve seen thought leadership content expand beyond company blogs and LinkedIn posts to newsletters and other platforms, so it’s worth having on your radar. But what’s involved in producing a branded podcast and is it worth it?
I asked LTK’s co-founder and president, Amber Venz Box, for her opinion. The original creator economy entrepreneur just launched her own podcast, More to Say with Amber Venz Box, hosting conversations with business and creator economy insiders, like Summer Fridays Marianna Hewitt, Bloomberg’s Sarah Frier and Tech Crunch’s Amanda Silberling.
Amber, who was in LA for an LTK Active event and podcast taping, did not hold back.
[Ultra runner Paul Johnson and LTK’s Amber Venz Box]
ICYMI: I'm really interested in the mental calculations that went into deciding to expand beyond social media. Why a podcast?
Amber Venz Box: In the last year, we had been invited on several podcasts and the conversations were really rich. I credit this team doing the research. When you look at consumers today, podcasting has become culturally normative, but especially for younger generations.
I think something that interested me was there's not often that you get an hour of someone's time on a weekly basis. Obviously, you have to earn it. You think about, ‘OK, I can send someone an email and try and help them to understand a strategy but they're not going to read that much of it. I can try and set up a call, I can only do so many of those. I can text them. I can have them go to a webinar.’
This industry is moving so quickly that I can't talk enough with our community, both our brands and our creators, to keep up with the things they need to know.
Yes, we are first and foremost a technology platform that's keeping them ahead and preparing them for what's next so that their business can grow. But I also need them to understand the strategy of the “why.” And I felt like a podcast, if it was high enough quality and value, could potentially be earning me an hour of this industry's time. And so that excited me.
Logistically a podcast is very different from an Instagram post. So what have you learned from the experience?
AVB: Well, it's a much larger lift than it looks. There are many more people involved. It was interesting, I was listening yesterday to a true crime podcast. At the end of it, they started naming, ‘We want to thank this person and this assistant producer.’ They named 20 people and I was like, ‘Gosh, so many people.’ And then I started looking around the room yesterday when we were recording podcasts. I was like, ‘Oh God, we have that many people, too.’ It just takes a lot to create it, edit it, and then, obviously, promote it.
For my podcast specifically. I think you do best when you have a real relationship with someone. I want to cast for value. I can ask great questions, but certain people can take it, seize the moment and have a great answer. There are certain personalities that do well on that. There are agencies that do this type of stuff. Ours is all relationship based. So we're asking people that we have an existing relationship with.
That was my next question. How do you pick your guests?
AVB: I write my dream list. What is it that I want them to share? What expertise do they have that's interesting for people? With Nastia [Liukin], obviously the Olympics are coming up. We'll time her release to that and that becomes very culturally relevant.
What’s the thought process in making this more personality driven than corporate?
AVB: This kind of kicked off when I moved out of the city to Far West Texas. And there was a lot of growth processing everything. I actually launched an Instagram Broadcast Channel called “More to Say” because I was posting outfits and that's what I do and that's what I like to do but I have so much more to say than that.
The broadcast channel allowed me to share more of my personal opinions … and this podcast too, gave me the leeway of, ‘I'm not speaking on behalf of LTK when I say I've noticed this about small communities.’
I just don't think that you could have an hour of someone's time weekly if it's an ad for your organization.
As a founder, how do you step away from running a business to do this every week?
AVB: So, about quarterly, I take a look at my calendar. It's color coded with how and where I'm spending my time and then we reflect and see, ‘OK, where does it require more balance?’ And then triple click into that. ‘Are there meetings that you needed last quarter that you no longer need this quarter or that need to be run in a different way or have a different group of people in the room?’ And so I try to be thoughtful about that.
With the podcast? It's a real willingness to test… How much time does it actually take? How many people are actually listening? Does this make sense for all the resources that I'm using to do it?
I still think of it as a test but I will say, I really love it. I really love the format and I feel like I'm personally getting a lot out of it.
As far as tips for other people. I mean, I'm still a baby podcaster at this point, so there are other people that they can definitely learn from. I just think with any type of media you're creating… we learned from all the other platforms, it has to be memorable, shareable, valuable. All of those same qualities still apply here.
Would you recommend it for other executives or do you think it takes a particular skill set to do a podcast?
AVB: I think part of why it works is because I feel very comfortable in that space. I go in knowing what I want to get out of them. I don't have to prep for my hot takes.
I would also say you have to have a big enough leadership team to be able to take the time to do it. So I feel like I'm at a scale where no one's missing me from the time that I'm taking to do it.
And I end up sharing transcripts out to certain groups in our organization: ‘I just got off the phone with such and such. Here's a screenshot from the podcast. I need the entire team to read this transcript. This is “Bible” for the next two weeks.’ So, there are efficiencies there. But it's a huge lift. It's a huge expense. And I probably wouldn't let any of my executives do it.
*lightly edited for length and clarity
👀 IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Instagram 'Add yours' templates are the new chainmail -NBC News
Bethenny Frankel, Joe Jonas and others were surprised to lose their TikTok verified checkmark with no explanation in sight -Yahoo
TikTok Shop is the ninth-biggest online beauty and wellness retailer in the US -The Verge
Who Americans turn to for news on TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram -Pew Research
The 2024 Tribeca Festival announced a new festival vertical dedicated to Creators -Tribeca Festival
Jake Paul is challenging legacy drugstore brands with the launch of a men’s personal care line called. But I can’t with the name -Hollywood Reporter
Costco members are 2.3 times more likely to make influencer-driven purchases at Costco over stores like Target or Walmart -Izea Insights Special Report
Influencer Contracts 101: What you need to know -Later
A new creator job board just launched with listings for video editors, thumbnail designers, and everyone in-between -Roster
Why are we so obsessed with morning routines? -Vox