ICYMI: Instagram’s new fonts + collages messed up my keynote 🙃

Inside Australia’s State of Social conference

I’m Down Under this week and have jet lag-related insomnia to thank for helping me get this week’s newsletter out. Also thanks to all the Aussies who helped push ICYMI over the 25K subscriber mark this week!

⏰ 1-SECOND SUMMARY

• Instagram is testing a collage-making feature to be shared in chats — this is worth paying attention to!

• Instagram announced new fonts for Reels and Stories; plus the ability to add text and stickers to Carousels

• Creator-built filters on Instagram and Facebook will disappear by January 2025

• LinkedIn is the latest platform the White House has joined

• Gen Z keeps up with politics on TikTok

• Quokkas and Vegemite and budgy smugglers, oh my — what it’s like to attend an Australian social media marketing conference

• Take the 2024 Social Media Compensation Survey to benchmark social salaries

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💻 ROADMAP

📲 TikTok Updates

• TikTok is testing a new feature that allows you to create your own AI voice for text-to-speech in videos.

• Nicole Iacopetti, head of content strategy and policy, is leaving TikTok effective September 6, according to a note sent to some staff, says The Information. The departure is reportedly part of several long-time staff and senior leaders leaving the company.

📲 Meta Updates

• Instagram announced several new personalization options, including new fonts, text animations and effects for Reels and Stories; and the ability to add text and stickers to photo posts and Carousels.

• Meta is shutting down its Spark platform, which means AR filters created by brands and creators will disappear by January 14, 2025. Unsurprisingly, creators in the Meta Spark Partner program are pissed. One creator I spoke to said communication in the program had been “a mess” and they only found out when Meta made their public announcement. Meanwhile, there’s some speculation that a new platform is being announced at MetaConnect, a developer conference in September. Stay tuned. 

• Spotted: A new commenting feature that allows you to comment on friends' Instagram Stories. “Comments are visible to anyone who views the Story.” 

• Spotted: Collaborative Carousels on Instagram that let people add photos and videos to your post. Contributions need to be approved by you and photos and videos will include the contributor’s username.

👀 Spotted: Multiple Instagram users have gotten an in-app notification to create collages from their photos: “Customize collages made from your camera roll to share in your chats.”

The feature doesn’t actually seem to be working yet and there’s still no official statement from Meta on whether we’re all getting this. But it’s worth keeping a very close eye on and here’s why: Collages are a hot content format for Gen Z. 

How do we know this? Well, Pinterest was on top of this trend back in 2022 when they launched a spinoff app called Shuffles that allowed you to create collages with pins or photos from your camera roll.

They’ve since re-incorporated elements of Shuffles back into Pinterest with a new type of pin called Collages. As they scaled Collages on Pinterest, the company noticed that 72% of collage creators were members of Gen Z and Gen Z also saved Collages at three times the rate of other Pin types. 

Then just last week, Pinterest released a case study of a Nike “collage ad campaign” that saw 40% of shopping engagement driven by Gen Z. 

Given the organic and paid success of collage content on the pin platform, it was only a matter of time until Instagram “borrowed” the feature. Make no mistake, Gen Z is driving the product roadmap across Meta this year. And if collages resonate with Instagram’s Gen Z audience, we can expect to see more collage-related features surface on the platform.

📲 LinkedIn Updates

• The Biden-Harris administration shared the first-ever White House post on LinkedIn last Friday, adding the briefcase platform to their list of social channels. 

• LinkedIn has added the ability to edit your scheduled posts on the platform. 

📲 YouTube Updates

• YouTube is allowing more creators to create Courses, giving them the ability to offer free or paid learning programs on their channel. Previously, the feature was only available to a select number of creators. 

• YouTube announced that creators now have channel QR codes to share their channels on or offline.

📲 Twitter (X) Updates

• Twitter (X) could be banned in Brazil this week for failing to comply with government orders.

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Inside Australia’s State of Social Conference

I’m just wrapping up an epic trip to Perth, Australia where I attended the seventh annual State of Social conference, a two-day social and digital marketing event. 

The journey’s about 28 hours door to door — a FULL day without being online. So, there was some intense scrolling when I landed there to make sure my talk track was still on point.

You will not be surprised to learn that THREE Meta updates popped up about an hour before I went onstage. 

While not every update was a game-changer, sometimes little things can lead to big disruptions… which meant making a few last-minute tweaks to my presentation. (I had this GIF in mind while doing it.)   

👥 Who was there

I was one of 31 speakers, including The Washington Post’s Dave Jorgenson, Emojipedia’s Jeremy Burge, Ryanair’s former head of social Michael Corcoran, LEGO strategist James Whatley, The Guardian’s Josh Taylor, and so many more. 

Close to 1,000 people crowded into Optus Stadium on the Swan River for a mix of keynotes, workshops and breakout sessions. The audience included social strategists, community managers, marketers and comms people working in government, the public sector, utilities, non-profit and mining (the cornerstone of Perth's economy). 

🇦🇺 Only In Australia 

• One of the most meaningful traditions they have is starting events with an Indigenous Australian ceremony led by an Aboriginal elder called Welcome to Country. It paid respect to the traditional owners of the land where the event was taking place — in this case, the Whadjuk Noongar people, who’ve been on the land for 65K years.

• Of course, there were the references to Aussie people, places and things, like Vegemite, budgy smugglers, quokkas, ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) and the inventor of “avo smash” (avocado toast) Bill Granger. 

• There’s an inconsistent availability of new apps and features compared to the US, with occasional delays but also sometimes early access. For example, they don’t have Google AI Overview and Search Generative Experience yet but they do have the TikTok Notes app. Thanks Breeahn Carter for the demo!

• The country is grappling with its own unique regulatory issues: Both major political parties in Australia support a social media ban for children under 16; Meta may ban news on Facebook and Instagram in Australia to avoid having to share ad revenue with news publishers; and, as part of a new ‘right to disconnect’ law, it’s legal to ignore your boss and put your work phone on ‘do not disturb’ outside of office hours.

🌏 Familiar concerns were voiced: 

• Who’s more legit: legacy media or creators? 

• Kids need better education on how to properly use social media 

• Young men are being radicalized on social by sexist and misogynistic content (Josh Taylor’s mobile phone experiment is worth reading) 

• How do you convince your boss to let you try new things, especially when you work in a more traditional industry?  

✨ Highlights:

The presentations that resonated most with the work I do (and my session on embracing a Social-First approach) revolved around social listening, community management, and world building, such as:

• Dave Jorgenson’s “The TikTok Honeymoon Is Over (and That’s a Good Thing)”

• Dr. Georgie Carroll’s “Lessons from Fandom to Power Social Community Cultivation”

• Georgia Tappy’s “How To Speak to Gen-Z Through Organic Social Media”

Don’t just talk at Gen Z, prioritize listening to the cues they’re sending you on social, said Tappy: “Start with community first. Begin by listening to them, by asking them questions… They will tell you, in one form or another, what they like.”

One of the case studies she presented was Sorted Food, a legacy food channel on YouTube. When one of the featured faces left the team, they tested a back-of-house chef that audiences loved and requested to see more of. And so Kush “Kushy Bear” Bhasin got incorporated into the show, “echoing back what the community had asked them,” said Tappy. “Flash forward to today, and Kush is now in every other video.”

Jorgenson talked about building out “the Washington Post TikTok cinematic universe,” thinking intentionally about introducing other regulars — like Carmella Boykin and Joseph Ferguson.

“If you're watching a TV show and, on the second season, they introduce a new character, then you have to really have to find a reason to start liking that character. Otherwise, the audience turns away. So you have to build this universe, but really gradually and treat it like a community building effort, where you have to start rooting for us and be part of our team.”

For the record, he does think the TikTok honeymoon is over as Reels, Shorts and Snapchat have caught up. “Shorts have been really good for us. We really thought our content was just for TikTok but it turns out we had a whole other audience on Shorts that was excited about those videos too.”

Finally, don’t confuse “brandom” with fandom. This was one of the most unique and interesting concepts I heard this week. Fandom is organic and active participation in a community. It’s created, organized and led by fans. Brandom comes from the top down — like brand-led fan clubs, merch, giveaways, official WhatsApp channels and Discord servers — and is usually tied to a desire for economic consumption.

“You as a brand are never going to own your fandom, and you are never, ever going to create your fandom,” said Dr. Carroll, who consults with brands and sports teams on how best to apply the fundamentals of fan engagement. “You might build a brandom, but the fandom is always going to come from the fans.”

A million thank you’s to SOS founder Meg Coffey for inviting me!

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👆🏻 CLICK THRU

A Take On The Journalists Vs Content Creators Debate 

The 200 creators invited to the DNC sparked an Internet-wide debate on who gets to report news. Taylor Lorenz unpacked the drama in her latest newsletter, pointing to the barrage of think pieces and social posts that have been demeaning the work creators do. Can a creator be a journalist? Can a journalist be a creator? Who gets to decide these things? “Journalism is not a club with exclusive membership; it’s a practice, a commitment to truth, and a service to the public,” writes Lorenz. “Content creators are fulfilling that role in ways that many in traditional media either can’t or won’t.” 

👀 IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

• Instagram was the most downloaded app in the world in July -Appfigures

• GenZ Instagram users in India actively engage with content that solicits an action from them, like 'Add Yours' templates -Social Ketchup

• Why TikTok’s ‘Cucumber Guy’ is attracting beauty and hair care sponsors -AdAge

• Who’s going to win the “Demure” trademark battle -Brittany Ratelle

• Readers prefer to click on a clear, simple headline — like this one -Nieman Lab 

• Mark Zuckerberg’s letter about Facebook censorship is not what it seems -Vox

• About half of TikTok users under 30 say they use it to keep up with politics and news -Pew Research Center

• Four social media platforms have a bigger Gen Z audience than linear TV -eMarketer

• The 25 most influential creators of 2024; based on based on engagement rate, growth, peer interaction, follower count and gut feeling -Rolling Stone

Note: Link In Bio’s Rachel Karten just launched her 2024 Social Media Compensation Survey that aims to create a benchmark of what compensation you can expect for each role in social media. Take the survey! The more responses she gets, the better the data we all get.