ICYMI: Teens ❤️ Snapchat + Emma Chamberlain Edition
Here's what happened on social media this week, October 8
(via Chamberlain Coffee Instagram)
💻 Roadmap
📲 Instagram announced it would put all its video tools in one place. Except Reels. This means IGTV and Feed videos will now be rolled into one format — Instagram Video. There will also be new editing tools as part of the company’s effort “to make it even simpler to create and discover videos on Instagram.” But there’s still no official confirmation if the consolidation will include live stream videos. Or any mention of why Reels is still a separate video product except that we know they’re still trying to make it happen.
Snap creator payments are back with Snapchat Challenges, an opportunity for users to win cash prizes ($1K to $25K) for creating top-performing Spotlight Snaps using specific Lenses, Sounds, or #Topics.
😵 On Monday, Facebook and its entire family of apps went down. The jokes on Twitter and TikTok were gold. But that wasn’t the only result:
Sites like Down Detector, which report when your favorite platforms are having problems, proved just how useful they are.
Facebook not working will be a case study for social media managers in how to maximize brand Twitter, speculated Fast Company. Ever since Oreo’s Dunk In the Dark moment, brands have aimed to create social content that would both capitalize and entertain during a collective experience and this was their chance
The company’s outage likely cost the company between $60 to $100 million during the 6 hours they were down. The impact to small businesses, who use the platform to communicate with clients, schedule appointments, and take payments, is still being calculated.
While this was a minor inconvenience in the US, WhatsApp going down was a much bigger deal in the rest of the world. The messaging app is similar to a public utility service in a lot of places where the messaging service has become essential to commerce, health care and the basic functioning of government, reports NBC News.
Facebook’s problems made space for other platforms to shine. Snapchat usage spiked 23% on Monday and Telegram claimed it gained 70 million new users during the outage.
Finally, it was a good reminder not to focus all your efforts on just one platform or even just one method of communicating with your audience. If social goes down, we all need a backup plan.
👆🏻 Click Thru
💰 YouTube's creative ecosystem contributed more than $20 billion to the U.S. GDP and supported 394,000 full-time jobs in the U.S. last year, according to a new Oxford Economics study. The term “creative ecosystem” is sort of vague but I interpret that to mean the creators, artists, and media companies who have profited from payments through the YouTube Partner Program. The numbers are interesting and the transparency is appreciated as content creators debate where to spend their time and energy.
📹 YouTube says it’s going to stop making its year-end ‘Rewind’ videos because the platform has gotten too big to recap in a minutes-long compilation.
🚫 Facebook’s whistleblower, Frances Haugen, spoke to Congress and 60 Minutes this week. While none of the information was new exactly, here were a couple of key takeaways:
"The company intentionally hides vital information from the public, from the U.S. government, and from governments around the world."
Facebook struggles to tackle problems because they are chronically understaffed.
🎯 Teens ❤️ Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram (in that order) according to a new Taking Stock with Teens survey from Piper Sandler. Some other interesting highlights:
Emma Chamberlain has replaced David Dobrik as top Social Media Personality
Crocs was the No. 6 preferred footwear brand this Fall (?!) — up from No. 9 last year
Of their preferred apparel brands, 39% are “athletic” — the levels of which we haven’t seen since Spring 2017
Over half of the teens surveyed say Amazon is their favorite website to shop on
☕️ Speaking of multi-hyphenate creator Emma Chamberlain (YouTuber, podcaster and coffee company owner), she gave a remarkably gracious answer in this interview with V Magazine when asked about people who criticized her presence at the Met Gala or questioned her partnership with Louis Vuitton.
“I understand that kind of discomfort comes from people who have been into fashion since they were younger, [where] maybe it was before this was all a thing and seeing digital influencers come in feels wrong. At the same time, the world of fashion and fame has to evolve in order for it to grow, so this is a natural part of that and it only makes sense.”
I’ve always had this vague awareness of Emma as the poster child for relatable influencers but now I might actually love her for this answer that allows for people’s biases but also subtly hints that their animosity is holding them back.
💵 81 Twitch streamers have been paid more than $1 million by the company since August 2019 according to documents leaked on 4chan this week. The leaked earnings have since become a meme, which means NFTs can’t be far behind.
