Spotify’s Having the Best Week Ever

Twitter and Instagram, Not So Much

Dec 01, 2023

Welcome to ICYMI, the newsletter for creators, social media marketers, and anyone whose business depends on making sense of platform updates and social trends.

⏰ 1-SECOND SUMMARY

Spotify gets it: people just want to express themselves
TikTok claims that users are spending half their time on the app watching content that’s longer than a minute
Some advertisers are pulling Reels ads due to disturbing recommendations around kids Instagram accounts
Elon Musk’s F-bomb rant shreds what’s left of Twitter’s advertising credibility
The White House hosted its first ever holiday party for creators

💻 ROADMAP

📲 Meta Updates

Instagram users can now save any Reel created by a public account to their mobile device. Videos will include a watermark with the creator’s Instagram handle. FYI: you can also turn off the ability for people to download your Reels in Settings → Sharing and Remixes → Downloading your Reels.
Meta plans to launch Threads in Europe in December, according to the Wall Street Journal
Threads keyword search has expanded to all markets where the app is available, according to Adam Mosseri.

📲 YouTube Updates

YouTube debuted 37 mini-games called Playables. Premium users get access to the online games that can be directly played on either the mobile or desktop app.

Bard, Google’s AI chatbot, can now watch and analyze YouTube videos for you.
YouTube Music is offering an end of the year Recap through the YouTube Music app or YouTube mobile app. Instructions to find your personalized playlist and custom album art are here.
Related: Get your Apple Music Replay here.

📲 TikTok Updates

TikTok launched “Creative Cards,” an interactive set of cards with 123 content ideas for promoting businesses on the platform.

TikTok executives have told creators that if they post longer videos, they can make more money and gain 5x followers, according to The Information. TikTok also told creators that users are allegedly spending half their time on the app watching content that’s longer than a minute.

📲 Twitter Updates

Elon Musk announced he’ll reintroduce preview headlines in URL posts, reversing a decision he made in August to remove headlines from links to news articles.

👆🏻 CLICK THRU

🤩 Spotify Understands: People Just Want to Post About Themselves

*UPDATE: Spotify announced plans to lay off 17% of their staff just days after they released Wrapped. While the year-in-review project is still best-in-class marketing, the company clearly wasn’t having the best week ever.

Spotify Wrapped dropped on Wednesday — flooding our timelines with everyone’s favorite streamed artists, songs and podcasts of the year.

We learned that Taylor Swift was the most-streamed artist globally; Hot Mess with Alix Earle was named the most anticipated global podcast launch by a U.S. creator; and Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy was the second most popular global podcast — which seems like good news for the newly launched Unwell Network, which is home to them both.

This year, the company also released Me in 2023 personalities — 12 characters to describe your listening habits — and Sound Town, which matches you to a city based on your listening habits and artist affinity.

But rather than explain Spotify Wrapped to you, I want to encourage brand managers and/or creators to share any data they have that allows their audiences to talk about themselves.

Because what companies other than Spotify seem to keep getting wrong about this is: it’s not about the songs streamed, money made or even about the data itself, it’s about how this year end recap allows people to define their identities online.

The New York Times once did a major study on why people share online. And it turns one of the main reasons we post to social media is to define ourselves to others. Sixty-eight percent of us share to give people a better sense of who we are and what we care about.

“I try to share only information that will reinforce the image I’d like to present; thoughtful, reasoned, kind, interested and passionate about certain things”

Spotify had an inkling of this, launching Wrapped as an email recap and playlist back in 2013. But it was allegedly one of their interns who turned this into the yearly viral social hit it is today. Jewel Ham says she submitted the interactive Wrapped experience as an intern project in 2019 (a claim the company disputes).

Either way, combining personalized insights with shareable social graphics has been a winning combo, allowing Spotify customers to creatively express themselves thanks to their streaming habits. Oddly, no other company has been able to create a comparable experience for their customers.

Which brand would you like to see deliver an end of the year version of Wrapped?

🚩 Instagram’s Algorithm Delivers Toxic Video Mix to Adults Who Follow Children

Adults who follow young gymnasts, cheerleaders and other teen and preteen influencers on Instagram were recommended Reels for adult sexual content and sexualized child content, according to a Wall Street Journal report that came out this week.

The Canadian Centre for Child Protection ran similar tests on its own, said the Journal, with similar results.

Meta — and advertisers who showed up alongside some of the disturbing content — were alerted to the issue earlier this year with some of the brands canceling ads over the Journal’s reporting.

There’s no quippy takeaway here. Meta says the results were a “manufactured experience” and they’ve launched new brand-safety tools and improved automated systems for detecting suspicious users. But clearly the issue is not yet resolved and should be top of mind for the platform, brands, creators and parents until it is.

🛒 Deep discounts at TikTok Shop

It’s too early to tell if TikTok Shop will be this year’s ecommerce success story. But we do know that ByteDance is prepared to lose $500 million hijacking your FYP with freckle pens, Halara pants and lip plumpers.

There’s also a sense that TikTok is following the Shein playbook, “forgoing big brands in favor of small merchants that sell cheap goods,” writes The Information’s Margaux MacColl.

But she also asks an interesting question: will consumers eventually get tired of a marketplace flooded with low quality products — especially once the discounts end and returns aren’t guaranteed?

📣 QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Don’t advertise. If somebody’s gonna try to blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go f**k yourself. Go. F**k. Yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is. Hey Bob… if you’re in the audience.”

-Elon Musk speaking at at The New York Times’ Dealbook Summit. The billionaire says “Earth” will be on his side if Twitter fails, blaming advertisers like Disney’s Bob Iger for boycotting the platform.

📖 WORTH READING

The White House hosted its first ever holiday party for digital creators Wednesday. Chronic illness advocate and Creator Economy speaker Gigi Robinson recapped the event in all its candy cane glory on Instagram -@ItsGigiRobinson
Here are all the creators who made Forbes 30 Under 30 list -Forbes
What happens when AI plans your entire social strategy? -Hootsuite
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is laying off hundreds of employees in its gaming division in an attempt to focus on its core businesses -CNN

A new generation of shows are going straight to social media, bypassing streaming services. Audiences and advertisers seem to love it -Wall Street Journal (free article)
We may be on the cusp of a customer-service-as-content-strategy-trend. First with Stanley. Then North Face. Which brand will be next to go above and beyond for their customers?