Social Trends & Tools, Feb. 19
ICYMI, here's what happened on social media this week
[Photo by Drew Beamer 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.
💰 TikTok & Instagram’s New Affiliate Options
The creator economy keeps evolving. TikTok just unveiled its Creator Shop: Seller University as an education portal for app users to do business on the platform. Creators will have the option to incorporate e-commerce and affiliate sales into their livestreams and videos as part of TikTok’s partnership with Shopify.
“It just gives creators one more revenue option and also validates this idea of a creator as a business and business owner” - me to Modern Retail (thanks Michael Waters!)
This coincides with a screenshot leak that Instagram is also working on setting up its own affiliate program for creators.
We’re at the stage where you give somebody a phone and access to the web and you’ve got a new model for scalable entrepreneurship. Most of the platforms have rolled out some type of creator fund in addition to ad revenue, and now e-commerce and affiliate options. We’re also seeing a full stack of SAAS tools, a union and a trade organization emerging to support this industry.
This means more opportunities for creators to turn their side hustles into actual careers. And for app users, it means get used to seeing your feed and favorite accounts turn into 24-7 marketplaces with options to buy, subscribe or tip.
👩🏻 Side Parts & Skinny Jeans
The other big theme this past week was the generational divide. This has been brewing in various iterations for years — OK, boomer — but the latest twist was the savage mocking of emojis, side parts and skinny jeans.
When told this emoji was no longer cool, millennials lost their shit at being told to replace 😂 with 💀.
Millennials also clapped back at Gen Z over their hair and wardrobe choices. And tbh, even Gen Z was confused about which side of the divide they fell on.
⏩ Link In Bio Resources
Linktree’s got some serious aesthetic competition with new-ish offerings from Unfold’s Bio Sites and Canva’s Bio Link Website.
Explainer: Because of the limit to one link in your profile, Instagram users have always used third-party sites such as Linktree, Linkin.bio and Like2buy to be able to direct people to multiple off-site links.
These new options from Unfold and Canva are undoubtedly better for branding purposes. BUT if you have your own website and are working on your SEO strategy, you are better served sending traffic directly back to your own site (and making sure you’re doing a good of circulating people there) than supporting the SEO efforts of a third-party site!
👆 Click Thru
📷 Dispo is the invite-only app of the week. Founded by YouTuber David Dobrik, Dispo is a camera app that acts like a disposable camera and “develops” photos overnight for a super raw, unfiltered effect. Find me on there if you’re interested in seeing unedited photos of my plants.
🍝 The OG baked feta pasta video has over 10.1M views. So you can blame Gen Z if Trader Joe’s is out of feta.
❄️ Soap bubbles were briefly a thing before the winter storm wrecked Texas. (My heart goes out to everyone there.)
❤️ The #StopAsianHate campaign is important and deserves more traction on social to raise awareness for anti-Asian hate crimes.
🌟 Social media’s obsession with Claudia Conway has spilled over into Hollywood and it’s not healthy.
🚫 Facebook has blocked Australians from sharing or reading news content to avoid reimbursing news publishers. The ban also impacted government accounts, including those providing advice on the coronavirus pandemic and bushfire threats, charities and non-governmental organization accounts.
📲 Facebook launched a beta version of its Cameo lookalike celebrity app 'Super.'
Friends, if you’re around next Wednesday I’ll be talking about baking and charcuterie boards with Jenn de la Vega on her Twitch show Attack of the Pantry at 2pm PST. Join us!
