ICYMI: YouTube Drops New Creator App: YouTube Create 🔥

The editing tool is expected to go head to head with CapCut

Welcome to ICYMI. If you’re just joining us, this newsletter is a recap of key tech, marketing and influencer news to keep you ahead of the curve. I teach social and influencer marketing at UCLA Extension and this newsletter is an extension of the office-hour discussions I have with students to make sense of micro, macro and mega trends.

⏰ 1-SECOND SUMMARY

• YouTube announced a new mobile editing app and other AI creator tools for 2024

• Meta Verified will now be available for business accounts

• Instagram, TikTok or YouTube; this new report helps determine where should you focus your efforts*

• Scroll for the funniest or most cringey brand collab depending on your POV

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💻 ROADMAP

📲 YouTube Updates

YouTube just announced YouTube Create, a new mobile editing app for creators — which will presumably go head to head with ByteDance's CapCut. 

It’s sort of wild that YouTube’s been around almost 20 years and this is the first standalone mobile editing app creators get for long and short-form video. But if anyone’s got a chance of bumping CapCut from the top 20 downloads list, it’s going to be YouTube.

Android users in select countries will be able to start testing this week through the Google Play Store before it rolls out to all creators.

The YouTube Create app was just one of several AI-powered creator tools announced on Thursday during YouTube's #MadeOnYouTube event in New York, including:

1. a new generative AI powered tool that suggests video topics based on insights about what audiences are already watching

2. a music concierge service that takes a video description to give music suggestions

3. Aloud, an AI-powered dubbing tool to reach more global audiences

4. Dream Screen, an experimental new feature that lets you create AI generated video or image backgrounds for Shorts

The emphasis on AI was unavoidable but, even with the technology assist, I don’t think creators — their talent or their ideas — are in danger of being replaced. To borrow from YouTuber Paddy Galloway: “I think it [AI] will empower creators not replace them.”

📲 Meta Updates

Meta Verified is rolling out for business accounts. It’ll cost $21.99 for a Meta Verified business account on one platform (or $27.99 for mobile subscriptions according to the fine print) and $34.99 for verification on both Instagram and Facebook.

For that monthly fee, your business account will get:

• A verified badge

• Impersonation protection

• Account support

• Improved discovery. They had promised this feature to personal accounts but then removed it. Meta Verified business accounts will supposedly benefit from better placement in search results and will show up in people’s feeds as part of a new carousel called “Recommended Meta Verified Businesses.”

You can get on the waitlist here.

• Facebook announced that people could have multiple personal profiles to organize who you share with and what content you see based on your interests. You can have up to four additional personal profiles and are supposed to be able to easily switch between your profiles, with no login required.

• You can now switch between different Threads profiles on mobile.

📲 Twitter (X) Updates 

• Elon Musk has hinted that he might start charging users a small fee to use the platform in an effort to solve Twitter’s bot problem.  

📲 TikTok Updates

• TikTok announced it’s launching a new tool that will allow creators to label content that’s been significantly altered or modified by AI technology.

• TikTok is testing a search partnership with Google, which researcher Radu Oncescu says could boost traffic and ad revenue for both companies.

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🧮 DATA OF THE WEEK

If you’re wondering where to focus your efforts in Q4 — or setting up a strategy for 2024 — consider the benefits of the following platforms:

✅ Instagram: Reach (up 53% in the past six months)

✅ TikTok: Engagement (rates up from 4.6% to 4.8%)

✅ YouTube: Growth (brands are growing faster on YouTube than on Instagram)

Plus, spoiler alert, the importance of entertaining video continues to grow across all three platforms.  

These are just some of the findings in Dash Hudson’s latest free 2023 Cross-Channel Benchmark Report. The report analyzes social performance across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, and X over seven different industries and deep dives into the secrets of top-performing brands such Barbie, McDonald’s, and Rhode.

*sponsored

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👆🏻 CLICK THRU

This was the funniest thing I read online this week posted by Sway Group CEO (and guest speaker in my UCLA Extension Influencer Marketing class) Danielle Wiley:

“Bubly wanted to use creator/musician Arkane Skye’s “Boy Dinner” audio in their own TikTok content, so they arranged to send him some Bubly. Unfortunately, they chose Instacart to handle the delivery logistics, and if you’re a regular Instacart user you might guess what happened next — yes, the Bubly was substituted. By one of their main competitors: La Croix.”

After you finish laughing and/or cringeing, you can watch the video here.

Bubly handled the situation gracefully and with humor. (Who knows, maybe the whole thing is a marketing stunt?) But here are a few takeaways to avoid a similar situation:

1. Ship direct so you can control what gets delivered and the entire branding experience

2. If you’re going to use a delivery service, at least mark “no substitutions” on your grocery order

3. Pay creators for product placement so you can require that there be no competing brands in the video as part of the contract

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📖 WORTH READING

A round-up of the most interesting tech and trend headlines of the week 

• More than half of Gen Zers think they 'can easily make a career in influencing' -CNBC

• Instagram Power Users Are Fuming Over Its $12-a-Month Subscription -The Information (paywall)

• TikTok released its 2023 Holiday Playbook for advertisers -TikTok 

• Alex Cooper Went From Raunchy Podcaster to Gen Z’s Barbara Walters -Rolling Stone 

• Ninja announces he’s launching a fitness platform that gamifies healthy habits -Twitter  

• A conversation with Truff’s director of marketing Michelle Gabe -Marketing Brew

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❤️‍🔥 HIT FOLLOW

This is a new section I’m testing about creators who have popped off, made the news or are just excelling on social. These are amazing creators who need to be on your radar.

Let me know if you think this section is useful. I might spin this off into its own mini update if it helps bridge the gap between creators, marketers and media people. 

• Sabrina Bahsoon: London’s Tube Girl is TikTok’s current obsession, spawning all kinds of copycat commuting videos and partnering with MAC Cosmetics on a quick turnaround campaign

• Gym Tan (aka CarliforniaIsTooCasual): I cannot log online without seeing this 63-year-old Bay Area mom collaborating with Drunk Elephant, Jenni Kayne, Aritzia and more

• Kelsey (aka Kelscruss) the Gen Z TikToker has been featured in several newsletters recently for her habit of reading physical copies of the New York Times, Washington Post and Atlanta Journal Constitution in her TikTok videos 

PS. I attended Taylor Loren’s Extremly Online book launch party this week and got an extra copy of her book so I randomly picked one of ICYMI’s paid subscribers to win a copy. Congratulations to Ella Jayes!