ICYMI: TikTok and Instagram target Close Friends

Bestie, the platforms want to join the friend group

[Creators at Cannes: Tinx, Jackie Aina and Alix Earle]

Hi 👋🏼 Next week is VidCon — the leading creator conference with a ton of extra-curricular events.

Should I publish a single newsletter next Friday morning or should I split the coverage between Friday and Sunday morning?

Please vote below and let me know how much of a recap you actually want to see?! 

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⏰ 1-SECOND SUMMARY

• Instagram launched Close Friends Live

• TikTok launched Whee, a new app that connects “close friends”

• Instagram is testing a Creators Insights dashboard for marketers

• Instagram Notes expansion is taking over the app

• Threads API launched this week

• TikTok launched generative AI influencers for brand campaigns

• YouTube is testing community-based fact checking

• LTK announced a free Instagram DM management service for its creators

• AI dominated the conversation at Cannes

• Welcome to #HopeCore. Does this mean we’re in a positive vibes era?

• NBCUniversal is sending 27 creators to the Olympic games

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💻 ROADMAP

📲 Meta Updates

• Instagram announced Close Friends on Live. The new feature will allow you to broadcast live with up to three other people who are on your Close Friends list. It’s part of a tech trend to build features that connect friends as Gen Z retreat to private spaces.

• Instagram announced more Notes updates, including:

  • Videos for Notes: Previously this was only in selfie mode but now you can also take pics and videos of your surroundings.

  • Birthdays for Notes: There's a confetti explosion when you wish your friend a happy birthday in Notes.

  Notes over-index with Gen Z — the generation currently at the heart of Instagram’s product roadmap. And just like crew socks, Instagram is going all in on Gen Z’s preferences. Since Notes launched in 2022, we’ve seen:

• Notes

• Profile Page Notes

• Feed + Reels Notes (being tested)

• Location Tag Notes (being tested)

• Audio Snippet Notes (being tested)

• Notes Prompts

• Notes Likes

• Notes @ Mentions

• Notes Video (selfie + surroundings)

• Notes Reply

• Notes Music

• Notes Birthday

• Instagram announced you can now add music to Carousels with video. Previously, you could only add music to carousels with photos.

• Creators are saying they can now add collaborators to Reels after posting. It’s not an official update since the feature doesn’t seem to have rolled out widely, but here’s a screen recording showing you the step-by-step. 

• Creators have spotted a new public-facing Creator Insights dashboard on Instagram. It’s a one-stop-shop destination marketers can check for creator follower count, accounts reached and accounts engaged, a DMs for partnerships tab and a “similar creators” tab. It could be a game changer for sourcing influencers if this ever rolls out more widely.

• Threads API launched this week, which means you should now be able to use third-party applications to publish posts, reply to others, see insights and more. 

📲 TikTok Updates

• TikTok announced Symphony Digital Avatars — generative AI avatars of real people. The avatars come in Stock mode, which uses paid actors, and Custom mode, which can be built to represent a spokesperson or creator partner. 

  While IRL creators get to determine their rates, licensing and who can use their avatar, this seems to have the potential to be abused. Best case scenario, brands use the product responsibly and creators get fairly compensated for digitizing themselves. If you’re a TikTok creator, as always, read your contract!

• TikTok is testing another new app in select countries. Whee is an Instagram-like photo-sharing app for close friends. “Capture and share real-life photos that only your friends can see, allowing you to be your most authentic self,” reads the Google Play description.

• TikTok launched an in-app Taylor Swift experience, allowing users to collect digital friendship beads to build a friendship bracelet.

• TikTok was spotted testing web links in organic videos.

📲 YouTube Updates

• YouTube is testing a new feature in the US that lets the community add contextual notes to videos. It’s basically crowd-sourced fact-checking — adding “relevant, timely, and easy-to-understand context” to videos, similar to Twitter’s Community Notes feature.

• YouTube announced several updates in its weekly Creator Insider video: it’s removed time limits so streamers can now edit videos longer than 6 hours and creators are now able to moderate published comments at scale.

📲 Pinterest Updates

• Pinterest announced Ad Labs, an advertiser program to test prototypes of new creative and ad tools. A couple of the highlights mentioned were generative AI backgrounds and collages for advertisers (trust, Gen Z loves collages!).

📲 LTK Updates

• LTK launched LTK DMs, a free feature that automates shopping details on Instagram posts. Fans and followers who comment “Shop” on an LTK creator’s Instagram post will automatically trigger an LTK DM that sends them a link to that creator’s LTK account with product recommendations.

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👆🏻 CLICK THRU

🇫🇷 🍹 Cannes Report: AI hogs the headlines

PWB’s (people with budgets) were in Cannes this week for the Cannes Lions ad festival. This year also included a Creator Track, which meant coverage from Alix Earle, Jake Shane, Jackie Aina and more. But just as important were the AI headlines from the festival:

• Tinx hates AI — and she’s not afraid to say it!

• TikTok launched AI avatars — will it replace real creators?!

• This ‘WoMen’s Football’ deepfake ad won an award  — and will make you cry!

• Amazon rolled out improved capabilities for optimizing AI-generated creative for ad placements

• Pinterest was at Cannes to promote its Pinterest Ad Labs!

Digital creators and Gen AI at a festival that honors Mad-Men era advertising is … ironic? But who’s going to question the logic when we all want to be invited to drink rosé in the south of France.

⚽️🏅 NBC Universal is sending 27 creators to the Olympic games

NBC announced it would host a “Paris Creator Collective” for its coverage of the Olympic Games Paris 2024. NBC will bring 27 lucky creators to Paris to provide coverage of the games in partnership with Meta, Overtime, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube. Let’s be honest, we were all going to watch endless Olympic clips through social anyway — this just means more gold-level content from the games.  

❤️‍🩹 Are we in an era of positive vibes?

Over the past year, I’ve noticed several creators popping off for their positive vibes: Tony P, Mykal Threets, Today I Am Grateful and Grant Magdanz (recently profiled in Casey Lewis’ newsletter). It turns out there’s an actual name for this: #HopeCore. The trend encourages people to find joy and positivity in the world around them, according to this LinkedIn post. The movement is also being used to boost lonely Twitch streamers who get zero views and find them an audience, sort of like a follower flash mob.  

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📊 DATA DROP

“Influencer marketing spending in the U.S. is expected to rise 16% to about $8.14 billion in 2024 compared to last year and nearly the same amount next year. By contrast, TV ad spending is projected to increase just 0.7% to $58.99 billion this year, while next year it’s expected to drop 13%”

-EMarketer analysis that’s part of The Information feature on how advertisers are moving bigger portions of their ad budgets to social media influencers and away from traditional TV

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👀 IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

• 30 DM templates to prep your team for any type of message -Sprout Social

• Social-Media influencers aren’t getting rich — they’re barely getting by -Wall Street Journal

• Grim realities of young influencers on Instagram: followers include large numbers of men who take sexual interest in children -Wall Street Journal

• The US Surgeon General called for health warning labels on social media but here’s why it probably won’t work -Bloomberg

• ‘We’re all just fumbling around’: Welcome to sponsored content creators on Substack (with quotes from me) -Modern Retail

• In-house creative is gaining: 30% of senior marketers recently moved work in-house, and 31% expect to do so in the next year -Canva + MMA Global

• Brands need to rethink their SEO strategies to meet audiences where they spend time and engage most -Search Engine Land

• Among Gen Z, Reddit becomes the third most trusted source for information research -Reddit

• Reaching Gen Alpha, Gen Z and Millennials: Key differences marketers need to know -AdAge

• Millennials are more likely to use TikTok Shop -Morning Consult

• TikTok’s promoting it’s Longer Content Video Strategy in the Creator Academy -TikTok

• TikTok could face a government probe into its handling of user data -Yahoo Finance

Thanks for voting!