Each week the Insights Team at The Goat Agency pull together the latest news from the social space in a weekly social media industry news round-up. This week we look at Eminem and Snoop Dogg performing with their NFTs, KSI and Deji return to boxing with explosive knockouts, and VTubers are taking over Twitch!
Don’t forget you can follow us on Linkedin, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter for real-time announcements of all our new blog content!
Article Highlights
Eminem And Snoop Dogg Perform With Their NFTs
KSI And Deji Return To Boxing With Explosive Knockouts
Snapchat’s Dual Camera Development
Meta’s Digital Wallet Option For NFTs
Instagram’s Teen Safety Updates
Instagram’s Content Recommendation Tools
YouTube’s New Promotion Option
Twitter Expands Circles For All Users
Eminem And Snoop Dogg Perform With Their NFTs
Eminem and Snoop Dogg performed at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards, utilising their NFT avatars inside Yuga Lab’s metaverse platform, Otherside.
The partnership was organised by Bored Ape Yacht Club (owned by Yuga Labs), bringing viewers into the metaverse. The two artists performed ‘From the D2 the LBC”, which marks their first collaborative project since 2000, during the Marshall Mathers LP.
The video for the song also featured the two artist’s Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, which received a nomination for the Best Hip Hop VMA. In the video, there are cuts back and forth of Snoop and Eminem in the studio with NFT avatars in a number of animated sequences.
Moves such as this keep NFTs front of mind, highlighting bluechip projects that get more people engaged with purchasing digital collectibles, fuelling a future in the metaverse.
KSI And Deji Return To Boxing With Explosive Knockouts
KSI returned to the ring to put on a performance at the O2 arena in London, which sold out!
KSI fought two opponents in one night, rapper Swarmz and pro boxer Luis Pineda, both resulting into stoppages, ensuring KSI remained an undefeated boxer.
Upon his final victory, KSI called out a number of future opponents including Tommy Fury and Andrew Tate, meaning this isn’t the end to KSI as a boxer.
However, it wasn’t just KSI that made the event memorable. Deji, KSI’s brother, beat his opponent by knockout. Deji was set against fellow YouTuber Fousey, and despite losing his last couple of fights, was victorious – much to the delight to KSI and fans at the event.
VTubers Take Over Twitch
For a week, Twitch is celebrating VTubers between August 29th and September 2, bringing together more than 100 virtual creators for workshops and tournaments.
The takeover will commence on the homepage of the platform, spotlighting VTuber creators, whilst also being featured in recommended channels throughout the week.
Two VTubers, TiffanyWitcher and OlivaMore, will teach viewers about becoming VTubers, whilst joining a panel that will be part of the Creator Camp.
One highlight of the event will be 30 VTubers coming together to play a joint game of Fall Guys, celebrating the community and raising awareness for this category.
Snapchat’s Dual Camera Development
Snapchat is launching a new dual camera option, allowing users to create content using their front and back cameras.
This follows news of Instagram launching similar functionality to replicate BeReal. However, Snapchat’s plans go beyond selfies, looking to encourage more creative trends.
Snapchat is providing users with a choice of several dual camera outputs including vertical, horizontal, picture-in-picture and cut-out formats.
Snap previewed this feature at the partner Summit, which leans into Snap’s Director Mode, which looks to provide advanced editing within the app to accelerate creative capabilities for users.
Snapchat is looking ahead at innovative digital creative which makes sense with the platform being ahead with AR integrations. However, Snapchat is still taking elements from other apps like TikTok and BeReal, in order to keep up with the increasingly crowded social media app market.
Meta’s New Digital Wallet Option For NFTs
Meta is expanding its NFT sharing tools to Facebook, after launching across Instagram.
Users can now connect digital wallets to either app and share NFTs on both platforms, as part of Meta’s next stage of NFT engagement. Meta first launched NFT display options on Instagram in May, then tested the option for some users on Facebook in June.
NFT sales appear to be down 92% versus a peak in 2021, as the market has been plagued with scams, rug pulls, investors losing out and issues with reselling, whilst the crypto market crash has slowed the momentum of web3 elements.
However, Meta feel NFTs have an important role to play in future metaverse plans, so is clearly pushing forward in this respect, despite a market downturn.
Instagram’s Teen Safety Updates
Instagram is developing teen safety in app, with all accounts under the age of 16 now being placed on the most restrictive content exposure option. Users can manually change if they wish, but often users aren’t aware of this control to change it.
Last December, Instagram committed to building a safer app for younger users, Instagram has since launched a number of tools to protect teens, including the Sensitive Content Control, which limits sensitive content in Explore, Hashtag Pages, Reels, Feed Recommendations and Suggested Accounts.
Furthermore, Instagram will prompt users who are teens to choose the ‘Less’ setting, whilst launching a ‘settings check-up’ that reminds users to update their safety and privacy settings.
This feeds into Instagram’s transparency commitment, allowing users, partucaily teens to understand all controls accessible to them to limit negative experiences in the app.
Instagram’s Content Recommendation Tools
Instagram has announced new features, helping users have more say in what content is served to them in the app.
First off, Instagram is testing the ability to mark multiple posts in Explore as ‘Not interested’, helping to indicate to the algorithm content preferences.
Instagram is soon to test the ability for users to tell Instagram they don’t want to see suggested posts with specific words, phrases or emojis in captions or tags.
The aim of these features is to better tell Instagram in a direct way what users want and don’t want, which feeds into Meta’s larger plans of increasing the volume of AI recommended posts across platforms.
YouTube’s New Promotion Option
YouTube is testing a Promotions tab inside YouTube Studio, bypassing Google Ads – allowing creators to turn videos into advertisements.
The option aims to make the purchasing of ads easier for creators, helping them to grow their channel. This will mean we could soon see more creators in pre-roll ads across the platform.
The new tool also helps creators who sell a product or service, further fuelling the creator economy.
The new tab is being tested among a limited number of creators on desktop, with the new tab visible to those in the test group in the Content section of YouTube Studio.
Twitter Expands Circles For All Users
Twitter is launching Circles to all, allowing users to tweet to a closed group of connections, which first launched back in May.
According to Twitter:
“Before you post on Twitter, you’ll now see an option to share your Tweet with your circle or full follower list. Circles can contain up to 150 people, and you can adjust who is in and who isn’t at anytime, without notifying anyone of changes”.
Members of a Circle will be alerted of a Tweet with a green indicator attached to Circle Tweets.
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And that’s all for this week, but don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter for real-time announcements of all our new blog content!
Don’t forget to catch up with our latest vlog, where we dive into the metaverse!
