Social Trends & Tools, Mar 5

ICYMI, here's what happened on social media this week

[Photo by Luke Chesser 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.

🐞 Instagram Rolls Out a New Feature + a Bug

It’s been a big week for Instagram, only not in the way they predicted. On Sunday, Adam Mosseri tweeted out a teaser for a Monday morning Instagram announcement. This sparked all kinds of speculation: creator monetization, chronological feed, swipe ups for under 10K...

The actual announcement — four people can go Live together — seemed underwhelming. Group video chats are hardly ground breaking after a year of Zoom calls. But it’s a fun feature for IG users and it’s always a good idea to jump on updates since Instagram tends to prioritize users who try new features.

Then on Tuesday, Instagram accidentally triggered a lot more buzz by hiding Likes. It’s part of a test that started in Canada last year to hide likes on Feed posts and unintentionally targeted a bunch of U.S. accounts this week. There were shouty Clubhouse rooms and social experts everywhere trying to dissect the move until Instagram admitted it was a bug and restored likes on the affected American accounts.

"Although my likes were never removed, I felt a slight sense of happiness," influencer Khadijah Lacey-Taylor told Insider.

Following Instagram’s big oops, an informal poll of my audience revealed 71% of people would prefer if Likes disappeared. And the media reported similar results. But it seems as if the platform isn’t quite ready to flip the switch.

🏦 Are influencers and government a good mix?

Minneapolis scrapped plans to hire social media influencers to share city-approved messages during the trial over George Floyd’s death after facing backlash from residents, community groups and on social media.

The city council had originally approved a plan to pay six influencers $2,000 each to target Black, Native American, Somali, Hmong and Latinx communities.

Their proposed intention was to "increase access to information to communities that do not typically follow mainstream news sources or City communications channels and/or who do not consume information in English."

Increasing trust and communication within the community is important but pushing out city-sanctioned press releases through influencers isn’t going to magically make anything better. A lot more thought needs to go into making this a viable option.

👆 Click Thru

📲 Clubhouse’s reputation for live events is growing. A week-long Clubhouse for Texas fundraiser raised $140K last week. There’s a new consulting company to help with producing events in the audio space. And news organizations like Insider have scheduled out full days of programming on the platform.

Note: Clubhouse isn’t the only solution to digital events. There are security issues and they still exclude Android users. But it’s a good idea to figure out which platform would make the most sense for your audience.

💻 Tweetdeck is hands down Twitter’s best product for social media managers but there are signs it could soon become a paid feature, which is bad news if you will have to add a line item in your budget.

🍝 Barilla created a Spotify playlist that matches the cooking time for its pasta. If they’re smart, they’ll send @stephenrigatoni a few cases for spotlighting this on TikTok.

🏠 Zillow’s having a moment. There was the SNL skit and then recently this amazing Twitter thread about a property listing with ties to the Underground Railroad. Erica Buddington is a must follow on Twitter.

👻 New York real estate produced a far creepier journey. This TikTok series, which rolled out in typical 4-part installments, was wild. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

🚑 TikTok’s bringing in outside help in Europe to form a Safety Advisory Council with a focus on child safety, young people’s mental health, extremism and hate speech.

💪🏽 ICYMI actor Will Smith has his own digital media production company. This is a great recap of how Westbrook Media pivoted during the pandemic to produce Will From Home for Snapchat among many other projects.

🎡 The creator community is leaving L.A. At least that’s what this Verge article claims. TL;DR: YouTubers don’t want to pay to live in L.A. when everyone’s stuck at home.

🎨 Rubik’s Cube art? This guy is mesmerizing. You have to watch to get it.

🔨 Resource

📌 If you’re looking to level up your Pinterest presence, this is a great place to start.