ICYMI: Kylie + Kim would like a word
Here's what happened on social media this week, July 29
💻 ROADMAP
🗓 Instagram, a Train-Wreck Timeline:
Last Saturday, meme creators gathered outside of Meta's offices on Broadway in New York City to protest the company's moderation policies.
Around the same time, photographer Tati Bruening launched a petition to Make Instagram Instagram Again. “Stop trying to be TikTok I just want to see cute pictures of my friends,” she begged the platform.
On Monday, Kylie Jenner shared a screenshot of the petition. That effort was noticed by business journalist Ashley Carman, who pointed out Kylie had previously wiped out $1.3 billion of Snap’s market value with a tweet. People scoffed. A few hours later, Kim Kardashian shared a screenshot of the petition. The two have a combined 687 million followers. That’s when shit got (sort of) real.
Overnight Monday, Adam Mosseri recorded a heartfelt video responding to the “concerns” being expressed. (He claims he had already recorded the video before two of Instagram’s most famous users rallied their fans and was just waiting to release it.)
In the video, he said the app would move forward with fine-tuning their “not yet good” full-screen feed and its emphasis on short-form video and recommended posts from randoms. His argument basically amounted to a tween defense of, “but TikTok does it…” All this, despite the celebrity, creator and general user backlash. “We don’t wanna make videos Adam lol,” tweeted Chrissy Teigen.
On Tuesday, the Mosseri memes dropped and every news outlet found a way to touch this story (It’s a tech story! It’s an entertainment story! It’s a business story!)
On Wednesday, Meta’s no good, very bad week continued as they reported their first-ever revenue decline in Q2 earnings. At the same time, Mark Zuckerberg announced the amount of AI recommended content would double by the end of next year. (As a temporary solution, here is how you turn OFF recommended posts for 30 days.) I am seeing some marketers and creators celebrate this as a good thing: “My content is going to get in front of more people!” On the flip side, the people who actually opted in and followed you may see less of your content. As Kaya Yurieff pointed out last week, TikTok’s creators suffer from the recommended content setup because it makes it harder for them to connect with their fans and build a loyal audience, and therefore a sustainable career.
On Thursday, Mosseri suddenly walked back some of the changes, at least temporarily. He announced the full feed experience was being phased out and Instagram would also reduce the number of recommended posts in the app as it worked to improve its algorithms. This doesn’t mean Instagram is going back to the Instagram you knew and loved. They still want to prioritize video and recommendations. This pause is simply meant to buy them some time to work on a better way to release the things you hate.
“For the new feed designs, people are frustrated and the usage data isn’t great,” he told Casey Newton of The Platformer. “So there I think that we need to take a big step back, regroup, and figure out how we want to move forward.”
On Friday, the original Instagram petition post had reached 2.2 million likes and the petition had gathered 235K signatures.
Update: Friday afternoon, Mosseri hosted his weekly Instagram Stories Q&A and revealed the following:
1 - Video will continue to be prioritized
2 - The immersive full feed experience has be turned off. For now
3 - Recommendations have been scaled back. For now
4 - They are prioritizing smaller creators
5 - Stories and DMs are for friends, Feed is for creators
At this point, it’s a race against time: Meta is so convinced of its genius, Zuckerberg and Mosseri think they can overhaul the app to convince us all that a TikTok-ified Instagram is actually what we want to see. But they need to do it before users and advertisers bail for TikTok (or another viable competitor). And the roll-out and adoption of Instagram 3.0 also needs to happen before we all leave for the metaverse or whatever version of the web is coming next, where even TikTok isn’t cool.
Or as wisely noted by Matt Perault, director of the Center on Technology Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Taylor Lorenz’s analysis piece: “It might be totally necessary that they pivot, but that doesn’t mean that they’ll succeed in this new world.”
👆🏻 CLICK THRU
Pinterest Expands With Creator-Hosted Shows
Pinterest signed a content deal with the creator company Jellysmack for five shows to be hosted by popular DIY creators —covering recipes, home decor, beauty tutorials and fashion tips — that will be available exclusively on their platform.
When an influencer couple breaks up, what happens to their brand deals?
Breaking up is especially hard to do when there are brand deals involved. There are a variety of solutions, details Phoebe Bain, from influencers’ postponing their breakup to marketers swapping out creator couples.
Snap AR Has Billboard Covered for Its Lollapalooza-Themed Issue
Scanning Billboard’s Lollapalooza-themed cover with the Snapchat camera will cause the Lollapalooza Hot Dog and Speaker Robot icons to emerge in 3D and unfold a map of the festival with the locations of the stages.
📣 QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"There are people out there who are saying 'These are the three steps to make five figures overnight. You don't even need experience. It's so easy... It's easy to shoot a video, but it's not easy to provide value to your client to actually create sales. It takes skill sets. It takes industry knowledge. It takes time."
UCG creator Kelly Rocklein, dismissing the notion that UGC (content created by consumers for brands) is an easy way to earn money in Insider’s piece, TikTok has caused a surge in demand for 'UGC' ads and creators are cashing in
🧮 DATA OF THE WEEK
Around one-quarter of people in the US ages 13 to 34 are fans of the metaverse. But for every person who gives it a thumbs-up, there are about two in that age group who dislike or have never heard of the concept.
Via Insider Intelligence’s survey on attitudes toward the metaverse
👩🏽🤝👨🏻 PEOPLE
TikTok gave Addison Rae's family Hollywood fame. Now it's exposing their secrets. -NBC News
MrBeast has a lot of job openings (h/t Colin & Samir) -MrBeast
A congressman body-shamed a teen activist on Twitter, so she flipped the script and raised over $1 million for abortion funds -Olivia Julianana Twitter and TikTok
📖 ALSO ON MY READING LIST…
Influencers are prioritizing community on chat apps, like Geneva, Discord and Telegram, over traditional social networks -The Washington Post
Meme creators protest Instagram’s content moderation policies at NYC rally -BuzzFeed
Inside TikTok's Attempts to ‘Downplay the China Association’ -Gizmodo
KREW shares the lessons they’ve learned about launching merch -DailyDot
Experiment: Instagram SEO vs Hashtags -Hootsuite
The Power of Sound -TikTok
The nontoxic social media app that tells you your toxic traits -Vox
Instagram’s Dual Camera Feature Copies BeReal But Misses the Point -TechCrunch
YouTube’s new tool lets creators turn their own videos into Shorts -TechCrunch
