The Audio Revolution Is Here
ICYMI, here's what happened on social media this week
[Photo by Ash Edmonds 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. This week is very much focused on social audio.
🎤 The Audio Landscape
In the past week, I moderated a chat on Clubhouse, dropped into a talk on Twitter’s Spaces and was invited to a panel on Fishbowl. Tech forecasts predicted audio would be big in 2021 but it’s only Feb. 12th and the future is already here.
Why you should get on now: Audio social platforms may not be mainstream yet but people and brands are already experimenting with the medium, such as Zendaya who hopped into a Clubhouse room to promote her new Netflix movie Malcolm & Marie last Friday. As always, it’s a good idea to get to know how something works before you actually need to.
Where to start:
Clubhouse is invite-only but almost everyone seems to have an extra invite to hand out these days (I’ve got 3 if you hit me up soon enough). Engadget even wrote this Everything You Need to Know guide to get started. “The idea is similar to the chat rooms of the early internet. But instead of instant messaging, it’s real-time audio.”
There are currently 2 million people on the app developing a culture and community around social audio that will likely spill over to other platforms.
Twitter Spaces is still in beta mode so only a handful of people can actually host an audio space (reviews are favorable). But almost anyone can listen in on a Space by clicking through the “Fleets” bubbles at the top of their Twitter mobile feed. To see Spaces in action, follow actor @itskyleharris, creator @samsheffer and Twitter’s product lead @kayvz who all host Spaces regularly.
Fishbowl is a chat app for professionals. It’s new to me and there’s relatively little about it online so I’m not going to pretend any expertise there but the experience I had of connecting and communicating with a room full of people around branding yourself on LinkedIn was almost identical to Clubhouse. People just happened to be wearing suits.
Facebook executives have reportedly ordered employees to create a similar audio experience according to the New York Times.
“We’ve been connecting people through audio and video technologies for many years and are always exploring new ways to improve that experience for people,” Emilie Haskell, a Facebook spokeswoman, said.
Mark Zuckberg dropped in last week with several other executives, whether it was to scope out the competition or because he’s considering buying the company is tbd.
Meanwhile, Mark Cuban is co-founding a podcast app called Fireside, where hosts can talk to fans live and monetize their conversations.
All of this on top of Spotify’s podcast network, Audible, and Apple’s mysterious podcast plans — “So, Is Apple Building a Netflix for Podcasts?” — suggests that audio is back in a big way.
👆 Click Thru
These are the other headlines that were on my radar this week:
😹 A lawyer logged into court proceedings with a cat filter on and couldn't turn it off.
🥑 The ultimate nacho hack made its messy debut. But as my friend John Colucci pointed out, these viral food vids are meant to make you melt down, not teach you how to cook.
😎 Influencer may be able to unionize under SAG-AFTRA, the same union that covers film and television actors, singers, radio personalities, models and more. A new agreement categorized “influencer-generated branded content” as a form of advertising, and members who do that type of work will be able to qualify for health and pension benefits.
🏡 Black creators have launched influencer houses in Atlanta and Los Angeles to boost their visibility and claim the respect and ad dollars their work deserves.
😡 An influencer training academy has been accused of plagiarism and it’s damaging the industry says BuzzFeed’s Tanya Chen.
💸 YouTube Shorts don’t yet get ads or generate subscription revenue.
🚫 Instagram and Facebook’s automated intelligence systems have repeatedly denied ads placed by small businesses that make stylish clothing for people with disabilities.
🔗 Rmx by Buffer is a great tool I found to create aesthetic tweets you can share to Instagram’s Feed and Stories.
📱 Snaptik is a tool Taylor Loren spotted that removes TikTok’s watermark so you can share videos cross platform without any identifying marks.
🥕 TikTok food videos have new offsite links enabled through a tool called Whisk. This is a huge deal in allowing TikTok creators to send traffic to their websites and blogs. It’ll be really interesting to watch if Instagram copies this latest move and finally allows links in posts.
