Social Trends & Tools, Mar 19
ICYMI, here's what happened on social media this week
[Photo by Jochem Raat on Unsplash]
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💻 Roadmap
🎥 YouTube Shorts is here. Shorts has been described the platform’s answer to TikTok short-form video but sounds like it still needs some work. There’s no collaborative features available in Shorts at launch — so users won’t be able to reply to other videos or duet together. But on the plus side, users that find and subscribe to content in Shorts will also be signing up for creators’ long-form videos.
It’s hard to predict how much an impact this will have. YouTube says it hopes Shorts will enable a new generation of creators to find it easier to create on its platform. But it’s also possible we’ll see people reposting popular TikToks, which Instagram struggles with. Stay tuned.
📺 There goes your productivity: TikTok is coming to TV. At least if you live in the UK, France, and Germany. The TikTok TV app is made for Google and Android TVs and specifically created for a home-viewing experience.
⚔️ Good news: Instagram will no longer let adults message teens who don’t follow them. WTF news: Facebook is also working on a version of Instagram for kids under 13 with parental controls built in. Given that Instagram was literally named the worst social media network for teens mental health and wellbeing, it’s hard to see how Facebook is going to win the perception war on this one.
🎉 Trending
🥑 Two years ago, The New York Times established the Cooking Community Facebook Group, which grew to almost 80K members. And this week they just walked away. It’s a shame given how loyal, engaged and funny the group was — seriously, check this out. But ultimately the NYT decided the group wasn’t worth it, in part because it didn’t funnel enough people to their paid subscription site, so they bailed.
Listen up brands: You can’t talk about the value of community if you don’t actually value the community that you’ve created. And if the group was only ever meant to be a funnel to paid subscriptions then it was probably doomed from the start. It’s like inviting people over and then hoping they’ll pay for the overpriced drinks you’re selling out of your kitchen fridge.
RIP to the group that was once described as the happy corner of the internet.
📲 A marketing software company came down hard on a social media strategist who joked about their service. This is such a weird, sad story about a $3 billion company that threatened legal action over a tweet, suggested this woman’s infertility was the cause of the problem and then finally apologized for their behavior after the story started gaining traction online… How Sprinklr executives thought any of this would end in their favor is baffling.
🍓 Insta people, please stop calling this “nature’s cereal.” Nature has already labeled these as “fruit” and “water.”
🦥 Timeline cleansers, like this playful sloth, are what we all need these days.
👆 Click Thru
✊🏼 Influencers are unionizing. It’s not a new story but always worth a read when Teen Vogue offers its perspective on an issue.
💅🏻 Speaking of Teen Vogue, the magazine’s new editor in chief is stepping down before her first day on the job after anti-Asian "racist and homophobic" tweets resurfaced from 2011.
💰 Some Instagram creators are launching pay-to-follow private accounts as a way to monetize their audiences without needing to run sponsored content.
🎤 Clubhouse launched the Clubhouse Creator First accelerator program, promising creators either brand deals or $5K per month during the program. The deadline to apply is March 31, 2021.
🧐 Marketers have coined a new term: “Genuinfluencers.” These influencers “are less interested in promoting products, and more interested in spreading ideas and truth.” It’s a silly premise that an influencer who promotes their beliefs is somehow a more genuine creator but this is an interesting read for how influencers are helping to promote vaccinations.
🔨 Resources
💔 In light of this week’s tragedy in Atlanta, Instagram’s Eva Chen put together a #StopAsianHate Guide that has resources for support, donations or education. There are also more resources here and here.
