Social Trends & Tools, May 21
ICYMI, here's what happened on social media this week
Thanks for reading! This is a curated list of trending social content and key platform updates to help you catch up and make sense of what’s coming.
💻 Roadmap
📲 Instagram is hosting its first-ever Creator Week, June 8th through 10th.
It’s a three-day professional development series to help creators grow their following and make more money and the virtual event is invite only. About 5,000 creators from the U.S. are expected to attend panels such as How to Start a Podcast; How to Get Discovered on Instagram and Fund My Merch Line.
For everyone else whose invite got stuck in the mail, Instagram will make a portion of the content from the sessions publicly available on the @Creators Instagram account.
(Maybe that’s when they’ll announce you can create posts from desktop?!)
🛍 Facebook is launching“Live Shopping Fridays” with fashion and beauty brands such as Abercrombie and Sephora to encourage live stream shopping. It kicks off on May 22nd through July 16th.
🛒 Amazon, which has offered its own live stream shopping experience since 2019, is now leaning into viral shopping lists. They just introduced their "Internet Famous: The Latest To Go Viral" trending product page, aka their #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt section to easily find items that are popping on TikTok’s For You Page.
👻 Snapchat held its Snap Partner Summit Thursday so there are more Snap related headlines to share this week but the biggest is that Snapchat’s Spotlight incentive program is ending June 1st after paying out more than $130 million to over 5,400 creators.
So what’s next? CNN’s Kerry Flynn has some ideas. This includes other creator-friendly efforts on Snapchat’s behalf:
Gifting: which will let users purchase tokens to buy digital “gifts” for verified creators (Related: The Information just published a useful chart on tipping options across social media platforms.)
Story Studio: a new app which offers editing tools, visual effects and a library of music and audio clips
Creator Marketplace: which helps creators connect with brands for potential sponsorship deals
Other Snap headlines:
👻 Snapchat's camera will be able to 'scan' outfits to help you shop. A feature called “Screenshop” will recommend clothing items when you “scan” an outfit.
👻 Snapchat introduced its next generation of AR Spectacles that they promise will bring augmented reality to life. (Does anyone else remember lining up for the first Spectacles drop back in the day?!)
✅ Twitter announced it’s new verification criteria. To qualify for verification, you need to fit the criteria of one of their six categories. And no, there’s no definition included of what constitutes an “influential individual” which will inevitably lead to confusion because who isn’t an influential individual in some capacity these days?
Government
Companies, brands and organizations
News organizations and journalists
Entertainment
Sports and gaming
Activists, organizers, and other influential individuals
📌 Pinterest rebranded their Story Pins to Idea Pins and gave creators new audio & editing tools to make creating Idea Pins easier and more creative.
Click Thru 👆
👵🏼 If you want to troll anyone born between 1980 to 1985, just call them a “Geriatric Millennial.” People are losing their shit over the term.
“Creators are America’s small business owners... It’s important for [them] to understand business ethics and professionalism”
-American Influencer Council’s Qianna Smith Bruneteau on a new mentorship program the trade organization is offering
🛍 Charli and Dixie D’Amelio, TikTok’s most famous teen sisters, now have a clothing line. Social Tourist just dropped at Hollister.
📺 There’s a new influencer documentary coming your way from the creators of Framing Britney Spears. It’s called “The New York Times Presents: Who Gets to be an Influencer” and will premiere on June 4 on FX and the next day on FX on Hulu.
🌍 Here’s a cool infographic of the World’s Top 50 Influencers across social media platforms.
🎵 Depending on your favorite platform, some of the contenders for your song of the summer might be: Butter by BTS, Build a Better Bitch by Bella Poarch or anything off Olivia Rodrigo’s new album Sour. Then again, the Linda Lindas might just take it.
