ICYMI: Twitter Might Go Broke Before Creators Get Paid
Here's what happened on social media this week, November 11
Welcome, friends. This has been a rough week in tech: 3,700 laid off at Twitter and 11,000 let go at Meta, among other companies. It’s a loss for the people let go and for the creators and communities who will be impacted by inevitable changes. Any implied criticism in this newsletter is solely directed at the billionaire owners and not at the hard-working people who, until recently, kept the lights on and things running smoothly.
💻 ROADMAP
📲 Instagram Updates:
Creator and Business accounts can now schedule Reels up to 75 days in advance in Instagram’s Advanced Settings. Finally! This feels sort of like when two characters on your favorite show finally hook up. You knew it was going to happen but the show’s writers kept you guessing for as long as they possibly could.
U.S.-based creators can now set up a portfolio (aka media kit) after joining Instagram’s Creator Marketplace to position themselves for brand partnerships.
Adam Mosseri announced that Instagram.com, the desktop experience, has been redesigned to take advantage of large-screen monitors.
📲 YouTube Updates:
Taking a page from Instagram, Twitch, and TikTok, eligible YouTube creators can now invite a guest to livestream with them, showing up as a split screen on mobile devices.
YouTube launched Live Q&A tools to create and manage Q&A sessions during streams.
📲 Pinterest Updates:
If you couldn’t score an early access invite to Pinterest’s collage app Shuffles, it’s now available for everyone.
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👆🏻 CLICK THRU
🙈 TikTok's early ad-revenue payments have underwhelmed some creators: 'I'm 6 cents richer today'
Seven TikTok creators who are part of the app’s Pulse Program shared their payment information with Insider. And the payouts are… not great.
Despite posting videos that racked up tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions of views during the pay period between September 30 and October 30, gaming creator Betts Waller made a whopping 6 cents.
Fellow creator Jack Sanders, who earned all of 4 cents, optimistically suggested the payments could increase in the future: "It could be just because the program is a little bit newer, maybe they're testing the waters."
Even if revenue increases drastically, it’s still a long way from YouTube’s Partner Program payouts.
🙉 TikTok Pays Artists ‘Almost Nothing’ in Music Royalties – And the Industry is Losing Patience
Taking a less generous stance toward TikTok are music industry reps: “The numbers are horrifying,” one manager told Billboard. Another indie-label head revealed that royalties for 1 million views on TikTok reportedly paid about $8.
🙊 Elon Musk tries to lure YouTube stars on to Twitter
In contrast to TikTok, Elon Musk is promising Twitter creators “monetization for all forms of content” and saying he’ll “beat” YouTube’s ad revenue share of 55 percent.
This is 15 minutes after he asked tweeps, “How does YouTube monetization work & what could Twitter do better?”
It all sounds good until you realize the platform doesn’t currently allow for long-form video uploads and half the company was fired last week, which means it may take longer than expected to enable long-form video.
In the meantime, Musk is scaring away advertisers who contribute about 90% of its $5 billion in annual revenue (advertisers would presumably be the ones funding creator video payments until subscriptions bring in enough revenue) and he’s banning or scaring off a good portion of creators and celebrities on the platform and there’s the potential that the platform goes bankrupt.
At this point, it’s impossible to predict which way this thing goes.
🔵 Twitter Headlines:
Should creators believe Elon Musk’s big promises? -TubeFilter
For $8, Twitter Blue users create a wave of checkmarked imposter accounts -ArsTechnica
Inside the Twitter meltdown -Platformer
Black Twitter influencers, other thought leaders debate leaving Twitter. But for what? -LA Times
Twitter users jump to Mastodon - but what is it? -BBC
💰 Q4 is typically full of big paydays for creators, but this year they're having mixed results
Insider spoke with six creators and five industry insiders about trends in 2022 Q4 spending, typically the busiest season for influencers. Feedback was mixed but at least three sources said the Q4 rush is slower than in years past, showing that the fourth quarter no longer means a reliable income boost for all influencers.
🔨 RESOURCES
There’s a new app that helps you find anything you’ve seen, said or heard. It’s called Rewind.ai and is described as the search engine for your life. This isn’t an endorsement since I’m on the waitlist for early access but if this can help me find random posts, articles and DMs hours after I’ve scrolled past them, it could be a game changer.
📣 QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“I don’t know if livestreaming has really done its due diligence across any platform because we’ve tested it with several different retailers and it’s great for buzz but it’s not great for sales… The whole space is still in its infancy. We’re all just trying to figure it out.”
-Amie Owen, UM’s head of shopper in the US, speaking to Marketing Brew in the article: TikTok wants to be a marketplace
👩🏽🤝👨🏻 PEOPLE
Two influencers say they were denied entry to a club because of their size. Now, they’re empowering others to speak out -NBCNews
David Dobrik is opening a pizza place called Doughbrik’s -Tubefilter
Benny Drama moves from Instagram to Amazon with a scripted comedy called ‘Overcompensating’ -Tuberfilter
📖 ALSO ON MY RADAR…
TikTok Secretly Scores Influencers on Metrics Like 'Cooperation' and 'Diligence' -Gizmodo
Ex-Meta and Twitter employees are destigmatizing their layoffs on TikTok: ‘It’s time to find a new dream’ -Fortune
Instagram debuts new age-verification tools in UK and EU -Yahoo News
Pinterest’s Creator Fund focused on Food and Beverage creators is now open for underrepresented creators to apply: Apply here.
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🔑 ASK A CREATOR
[My Best Friend’s Kitchen via QVC+]
I caught up with Gaby Dalkin after she announced the launch of her QVC+ series, My Best Friend’s Kitchen. As I said last week, I’m really curious to see how they mash up influencer marketing, e-commerce and entertainment television into a new format and she graciously answered some of my questions.
ICYMI: Is it a series or is it live?
Gaby: Yes - it's a series! Not their first one but I believe it's the first one in this format! It was an idea we had that we shopped around and QVC just understood our mission!! They knew exactly what we were aiming to do and let us go for it! It's also one of their lead shows to really kick off QVC+
ICYMI: Is it shoppable video?
Gaby: In its current form for season 1, no. But stay tuned :)
ICYMI: What made you choose HSN/QVC?
Gaby: They gave us the most creative freedom to make the most on-brand show for me/my audience. That was something that was really important to keep close as we've been building What's Gaby Cooking for 10+ years. There have been many instances and learnings in the past 10 years that made me want to really have creative control if we were to branch out into TV.
ICYMI: How are you thinking about shoppable video?
Gaby: This is a great question. It's wild to think that so many companies are trying to crack this form of monetization and QVC/HSN has been doing it for years very successfully! In this space, our team and QVC are focusing on creating incredible quality content first and foremost and then figuring out the best way to make it shoppable down the road which they obviously know how to do very well. So first things first... we're making a show that (we think) everyone will really enjoy watching!!