Social Trends & Tools, Apr 16
ICYMI, here's what happened on social media this week
[Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash]
This is a weekly roundup of trending social content and key platform updates to help you catch up and make sense of what’s coming.
💻 Roadmap
❤️ Instagram is, once again, testing a feature that would let users decide if they want to hide the like count on their posts or posts from people they follow.
The test is likely to be U.S. based since Instagram removed likes in Canada and other countries back in 2019 in a move they said was meant to remove the pressure of creating and posting content based strictly on earning more likes.
You might also remember a prior test which accidentally wiped out likes in March. This new, choose-your-own-adventure version seems like a better way to ease app users into the experience.
A very unofficial poll of my Instagram audience shows that more than half of my network is ready to hide their like count.
💼 LinkedIn is trying to give people a better way to address career gaps. They’re updating the self-employed field and adding new job titles, including “stay-at-home mom,” “stay-at-home dad” and “stay-at-home parent” to allow full-time parents and caretakers to more accurately display their roles.
It’s an admirable initiative, especially with 2.5M women leaving the workforce during the pandemic. But I've been on a lot of hiring panels and it's going to take a lot more recruiter education to make resume gaps acceptable in the U.S.
🎥 With great popularity comes great responsibility is how YouTube is explaining it’s Creator Responsibility Initiative which has penalized disgraced YouTubers such as David Dobrik and Shane Dawson.
Meanwhile, Pinterest’s Creator Code was released last week but it’s worth pointing out that the platform is trying to maintain it’s reputation as the ‘last positive corner of the internet’ by requiring creators to accept their guidelines before they can post Story pins.
🎤 Add another option to the social audio list: Reddit may be secretly exploring moderated voice chats — similar to Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces or Facebook upcoming initiatives — according to Mashable.
🎉 Trending
🍿 Popcorn salad might be a regional specialty but the Internet is not buying it. Molly Yeh’s Food Network clip went viral for all the wrong reasons this week after she mixed popcorn with carrots, celery, snap peas and a coleslaw-like dressing. Her entire legacy — or at least the top Google search term related to her name — is now tied to this funky popcorn slaw.
🎟 Fans waiting to buy Disneyland tickets on Thursday got #DisneylandReopening and #MoreThanAnHour trending on Twitter as they joked about prepping for delays at the park as it reopens April 30, 2021.
👆 ClickThru
🏛 Instagram and influencers are part of the new White House digital media strategy detailed in this insightful piece as the Biden administration aims to “go where Americans receive their news and information, no matter the platform, and try to deliver a message that will resonate with the audience.”
✈️ TIL about Passenger Shaming thanks to this WaPo article about the notorious Instagram account of bad travel behavior run by a former flight attendant.
🧁 Punk rock bake sales with an activist bent are the subject of this Eater piece about the pop-up bakeries around LA being run through Instagram.
🔥 E! Online has a solid recap of badly behaving Influencers Gone Wild, including all of last week’s Rachel Hollis drama.
🔨 Resources
TikTok UK has partnered with Adobe to help TikTok creators learn and develop their video editing and production skills. Their first #LevelUpWithAdobe program is limited to a small group of creators but they’ll share the top editing and video production tricks via a series of special live sessions led by the creators and Adobe experts.
This culinary tour through food creator history — Julia Child! Madhur Jaffrey! Tabitha Brown! — is some excellent content marketing for a brand that hasn’t even launched yet. Food Supply says they’re “on a mission to empower culinary creators, established and emerging, with the tools to build their brand and shape the discourse of food media.” I’m intrigued.
An Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup called Pietra is helping creators launch their own products. The startup gives creators access to infrastructure such as sourcing, warehousing, fulfillment, and e-commerce tools to run an e-commerce business.
