ICYMI: Instagram Subscription Pros + Cons
Here's what happened on social media this week, January 21
💻 ROADMAP
Creators will soon be able charge a subscription to be part of their VIP circle on Instagram, complete with exclusive Stories and live streams and subscriber badges. Once it’s rolled out beyond the initial test group, influencers will be able to charge anywhere from $0.99 to $99.99 for monthly subscription access.
Not to be outdone, TikTok suddenly confirmed that it too was testing paid subscriptions but hasn’t provided any details yet.
The move to subscriptions creates a stable revenue source and more legitimate framework for the influencers who were previously charging for access to their Close Friends content. It also creates opportunity for the people who weren’t previously comfortable selling VIP access themselves.
But the feature also increases the demand for output since creators will presumably continue to create regular content along with the exclusive subscriber stuff. Right now, this seems most beneficial for someone who already has an audience and isn’t worried about growth. So, if the burden of creating even more content is freaking you out, take a beat. It might make more sense to continue growing your community before you look at subscriptions as the way to monetize your Instagram (or TikTok) account.
Meanwhile, Instagram announced it was rolling out a TikTok-style Remix feature to any public video whether from the feed or Reels. Videos posted prior to the launch will not be affected unless you change your preferences to allow Remixing.
To Remix an Instagram video:
👆🏻 Tap the three dot menu on the top right of the video
🎥 Select Remix this Reel or Remix this Video
📲 Record your response or add from your gallery or camera roll
✅ Your Remix will be visible anywhere you share Reels
📊 YouTube announced it’s working on a new feature called Media Kits to help creators land more branded content campaigns. Media Kit is a feature that will soon be available to creators in the YouTube Partner Program. It’s meant to help creators pitch themselves to brands by creating an instantly sharable account summary which automatically pulls together a creator’s banner, bio, key stats, demographics and notable videos to gives advertisers deeper insights into the account and its audience.
👆🏻 CLICK THRU
Twitter’s new ‘manifest success’ campaign has everything to love: sifting through social archives for great user generated content, rags to riches success stories, 140 characters tweets…
Look, Twitter’s got 330M monthly active users so it’s not exactly like the platform is an underdog but they’re not always first in line for splashy headlines.
But they just launched a star-studded campaign with Megan Thee Stallion, Simu Liu, Issa Rae, Niall Horan and Demi Lovato who all tweeted their dreams of success before they made it big. Twitter is now using those early tweets on billboards around New York City.
This isn’t exactly a replicable formula — unless maybe you’re the Beverly Hills high school yearbook photographer — but it’s a feel-good victory for Twitter and fun to read.
🥐 Did Emily in Paris producers learn anything about social media during the break between the first and second season? Nope! Did I enjoy hate-watching the whole thing? Yep! But don’t just take my word for it, Later came out with a run-down of everything the show gets wrong about social media starting with random selfies, one-word captions and apostrophes in hashtags that magically go viral.
🪑 West Elm’s notifications have been blowing up this week for all the wrong reasons. Long story short: A bunch of women in New York City realized they’d all been dating the same guy they nicknamed West Elm Caleb and shared their dating horror stories on TikTok. The videos blew up and now West Elm’s social profiles are being spammed and there are over 17K search results on Google News for “West Elm Caleb.” Reactions range from, he deserved the backlash to he’s a victim of public shaming. To borrow from another TikTok trend, not my circus, not my monkeys.
🚫 GIFs have joined the cry laughing emoji on the uncool list, according to Vice. There’s no actual evidence to support this, just a generational vibe. But the author points to a couple of factors for the GIF backlash, including cross-generational adoption during lockdown. “Early adopters have always grumbled when new (read: old) people start to encroach on their digital space.”
On top of that, “the ever-growing popularity of video-sharing on TikTok means younger generations are more used to personalized content creation, and GIFs can seem comparatively lazy.”
I’m not OK with any of this but lack the words to express my frustration at communication trends that go in and out of favor. If only there was some emotional shorthand symbol I could use to express this feeling 😂