ICYMI: Instagram's Algorithm Edition
Here's what happened on social media this week, June 11
Welcome and thanks for reading my curated list of trending social content and key platform updates!
💻 Roadmap
📱 Instagram hosted its first Creator Week which led to a bunch of important updates for creators, brands and anyone curious about who sees their content. The big headlines were around its mythic (and misunderstood) algorithm and more opportunities for creators to earn money on the app.
The Algorithm: Instagram explained how their algorithm works, starting with the fact that there isn’t just one algorithm but actually a variety of algorithms, classifiers, and processes that impact what people see in their Feed, Stories, Reels and Explore. If you’ve ever been curious, this is a pretty good break down. Not surprisingly, Instagram says your chances at content visibility improve if you use all of their features.
Affiliate Sales: Instagram is launching a native affiliate program in the coming months. Affiliate will make it possible for creators to get compensated for sharing product recommendations.
They’re testing the option with a small group of US-based businesses' first, including Benefit, Kopari, MAC, Pat McGrath Labs and Sephora, before doing a wider rollout.Creator Shops: Creators with their own product lines can now link their Shop to their personal profile in addition to their business profile.
Creators new to Shops will also be able to set up a Shop within the app by linking to one of Instagram’s four merchandise partners: Bravado/UMG, Fanjoy, Represent, and Spring. This will roll out to all eligible creators in the US by end of the year.Earn from Badges: Starting this week, creators on Instagram are eligible to earn an extra payout when they meet certain milestones while using Badges in Live, such as going Live with another account.
⌚️ Facebook plans to launch its first smartwatch next summer with a heart monitor and two cameras for taking pictures and videos that can be shared across Facebook’s suite of apps, including Instagram.
🎥 YouTube Shorts — its version of TikTok — is expanding to the UK, Canada and Latin America throughout June. Shorts is already live in the US and India.
🔵 The requirements to be part of Twitter’s paid Super Follow program (similar to Patreon) include:
Have at least 10,000 followers
Have posted at least 25 Tweets in the past 30 days
Be at least 18 years old
📌 Pinterest took a cue from sneaker drops and announced The Goods, limited-edition products with a 2-week shelf life from brands like Olive & June, Outdoor Voices and Brooklinen.
👆 Click Thru
🔈 Sound is inherent to the TikTok experience. According to research, people experience sound on TikTok as “fun” — a 66% increase compared to other platforms with the audio turned off. On other platforms, people tend to experience sound as more distracting and even “annoying.”
🔍 Biden officially revoked last year’s executive order to ban TikTok and WhatsApp but has launched a probe to investigate apps with ties to foreign adversaries.
🌎 What happens when a former marketing executive becomes president of El Salvador: Bitcoin as legal tender, communication via TikTok and criticisms labeling him the first “millennial dictator.”
🤯 Good at Twitter. Bad at life. That sort of describes this wild tale about journalist, celebrity confidante and Twitter power user Yashar Ali.
🧊 Everything you wanted to know about the “Sheesh” meme and then some.
🥺 If content demands are stressing you out, this New York Times piece on creator burnout might resonate. So, what happens if you just leave social media? It sounds pretty chill.
👻 Yet another article pointing out how Snapchat is still very relevant to Gen Z — and possibly building out a futuristic metaverse — while the rest of us sleep on the platform.
🍉 This writer tried the watermelon mustard trend so you wouldn’t have to.
🔨 Resources
📗 Dave Jorgensen (aka the Washington Post TikTok guy) just published his book, Make a TikTok Every Day. For all you aspiring TikTokers, it’s got 365 prompts for making TikToks, along with advice, inspiration and tips.
📈 There are a handful of new apps that keep popping into my timeline. Nothing that seems to threaten TikTok yet but worth having on your radar:
BeReal: The app gives you a two minute window to capture a photo at a random time every day. The camera is front- and selfie-facing so you capture what’s going on around you (flashbacks to 2013’s Frontback app)
Poparazzi: Your profile on the photo sharing app is created by friends when they take and upload photos of you and vice versa — but to use the app, you have to give it full access to your Contacts list, which is a dealbreaker for me.
Dispo: The photo app based on the novelty of a disposable camera which develops your photos overnight just raised $20 million in funding.
🎧 Here’s how to stay on top of the Top 100 TikTok sounds with a weekly recap from Trendpop Hot 100. It lets you toggle between weeks, shares engagement stats around the sound and also links to TikTok clips using the sound.
