ICYMI: How Do You Tweet Through War?
Here's what happened on social media this week, February 25
Welcome! If you’re new here this is a recap of major social media headlines and how creators, influencers and global players use social for communication and marketing purposes.
🇺🇦 We all watched the chaos of war slowly unfold on our feeds this week (to paraphrase this tweet). This newsletter doesn’t usually get political but, even from a purely social perspective, the crisis in Ukraine was impossible to ignore:
Celebrities weighed in with calls for peace, selfies from Kyiv (Sean Penn and Dancing with the Stars’ Maksim Chmerkovskiy were both working there at the time) and bizarre poems, like this offering from Annalynne McCord. Gal Gadot wisely decided to sit this one out;
The official Ukraine Twitter account posted memes, trolled Russia and tried to get Russia’s official Twitter account booted off the platform. The account’s been criticized for shitposting but there isn’t really a playbook for tweeting through war.
A charity crowd-funded tanks and missiles on Patreon meant for Ukraine’s army;
Multiple reminders were posted to pause marketing campaigns as the war in Ukraine broke out. Let’s be honest, your brand message is probably the last thing people want to pay attention to right now. Applebee’s, for one, would very much like to be excluded from this narrative after its ad ran during a CNN spot on the outbreak of war.
Here are some legitimate resources for following what’s going on in Ukraine.
💻 ROADMAP
⏳ Instagram removed the ability for mobile users to set a daily time limit reminder of less than 30 minutes. Instead, they’re now, nudging people to choose 3 hours as the time limit before they get a reminder to log off, which seems… not healthy.
🔥 TikTok released a new trends guide with the topics that stood out in 2021 and the emerging categories (in Personal Care, News & Entertainment, Financial Services, Food & Beverage and Gaming) and hashtags taking off in 2022. They’re also putting an emphasis on this as the first full year for TikTok Shopping, their suite of e-commerce tools to turn videos into “shoppable entertainment.”
⏲ TikTok will continue to push for longer videos that can help them sell more ads, even though the company knows you don’t want them according to this Wired article. “The increase in traffic itself brings more profit, but longer videos themselves can be more lucrative… For instance, it allows TikTok to work with institutional partners, including commercial institutional partners, to produce content with product placement.” Not only that, the longer videos would help them compete with YouTube.
🔵 Twitter’s testing a Collab feature — much like the one Instagram rolled out recently — which would allow two accounts to collaborate on one post.
📊 LinkedIn shared the ways it’s working to improve the creator experience, which will include better analytics on individual posts plus overall performance, across content and audience.
🔴 As if you needed a reminder how important live streaming will be in 2022, YouTube said it plans to highlight users who go live by adding a ring around the channel avatar, similar to the interface on TikTok and Instagram. Clicking on the avatar will take you directly to the live stream.
👆🏻 CLICK THRU
🏈 If you loved Coinbase’s Super Bowl ad featuring a hovering QR code, there are at least 3 versions of how it came together: the CEO’s original version, this agency version and the CEO’s revised explanation. TL;DR give praise where it’s due and don’t take credit for other people’s ideas.
📷 Why the photo dump trend is taking over Instagram, according to Later:
It’s a low effort way to create a vibe with up to 10 photos and videos, versus producing one perfect image or Reel.
It’s a relatable way to connect through authentic content versus the expectation of “picture perfect” filters and hyper-edited content.
Each slide can be surfaced in people’s feeds multiple times, which can make it an engagement gold mine.
🟩 Wordle may have gotten a little harder (ulcer?!) but it’s not the New York Times’ fault. The explanation could be our confirmation bias in thinking the New York Times would screw it up. In fact, each word for each day up to October 2027 was written into the script at launch. Maybe we’re just not as smart as we think we are. (It’s me. I’m talking about me. Maybe I’m not as smart as I thought I was?!)
📲 Influencer-turned-investor Charli D’Amelio and her family are taking an equity stake in Lightricks, the company that developed Facetune and Video Leap, joining as strategic advisors. In this, she’s following in the footsteps of celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, Kevin Jonas, Jessica Alba and Will Smith who’ve all made the lucrative jump from entertainer to tech investor.
🛍 Revolve is opening its first store/social club in Los Angeles. The fashion brand that’s famous for its influencer trips and events is basically duplicating its VIP experience as a brick and mortar business for civilians who want to live that blue check lifestyle, complete with selfie walls and a members-only club.
📖 ALSO ON MY READING LIST…
I’m a creator. You’re a creator. We’re all creators! -Vox
MrBeast joins LinkedIn -TubeFilter
How Do You Say ‘Kardashian’ in Italian? -New York Times
10 metaverse jobs that will exist by 2030 -The Next Web
Can Reels save Facebook? - Protocol
