We’ve pulled together the latest news from the social space in our weekly Industry Round Up. Explore the top headlines below and get up to speed with the latest news!
Contents
The Problem With Meta’s Crypto Project
Will Meta be Forced To Sell Off Giphy?
TikTok’s Content Monetisation Tools
Spotify Debuts The ‘Netflix Hub’
Twitter Preparing for Broader Launch of Downvotes
Jack Dorsey Exiting Twitter
Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, is stepping down after co-founding the platform in 2006 with Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams. Twitter’s CTO, Parag Agrawal, will become the new CEO, who joined Twitter in 2010, after working with the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo!
In a recent statement, Dorsey stated that he decided to leave Twitter because he believed the company is “ready to move on from its founders.” Dorsey will reportedly still remain on Twitter’s board of directors for the time being, and has not elaborated as of yet as to exactly why he is leaving – but he has experienced a challenging year in the position due to internal struggles.
The Problem With Meta’s Crypto Project
Meta has been working on a cryptocurrency project which has been met with a series of roadblocks. Initially, the project named ‘Libra’ was announced as a native digital payment system within the Facebook ecosystem. Meta thought India would be a core market early on but was soon ruled out by Indian officials.
Since the first setback, Meta looked to rename the project to ‘Novi’ and finally tested the digital wallet in the US and Guatemala. However, in the latest developments, Meta has lost top executive David Marcus – previously from Paypal. This exit follows growing concerns over the use of cryptocurrencies, with markets such as China and India moving to ban their use, while the EU sees pressure to ban due to concerns over crypto mining.
Will Meta be Forced To Sell Off Giphy?
Meta is facing a regulatory battle with the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), following a ruling that the acquisition of Giphy increased the platform’s already significant market power in relation to social platforms, due to the ability to deny or limit other platforms’ usage of Giphy’s GIFs. Meta could require other platforms like TikTok and Twitter to provide user data to enable access to Giphy on respective platforms.
Another interesting fact from the acquisition was that Giphy had been developing its own ad tool prior to Meta’s acquisition, after Meta bought Giphy, this was then quickly shut down. Therefore the CMA ruled that due to competition concerns, Meta should sell Giphy to an approved buyer – a decision Meta will likely appeal.
This isn’t the first acquisition that has raised similar questions. Meta buying Instagram and Whatsapp were two huge moves that furthered the company’s market dominance in the social platform space.
YouTube Gaming & Ludwig
YouTube Gaming has officially announced that the platform has locked in one of the biggest streamers Ludwig, into an exclusivity deal. Ludwig made headlines earlier this year for breaking the all-time Twitch subs record but now will look to focus content output across YouTube.
This is yet another move by YouTube to secure high profile streamers to take more market share away from Twitch – a platform notorious for not being able to retain creators. Ludwig also posted a video explaining why he’s moving away from Twitch, noting that the platform didn’t show they valued the creator. This became apparent when YouTube presented a better deal of more money and fewer streaming hours, to which Twitch made no effort to counter.
MrBeast’s Squid Game Adaption
MrBeast is one of the top creators on YouTube and recently posted his highly anticipated Squid Game adaption. Jimmy Donaldson (aka MrBeast) spent $3.5 million building a set recreating games displayed in the Korean TV series. The YouTuber also invited 456 contestants with one having the chance to win $456,000.
The video reached over 114 million views in five days and has since caused controversy. One argument is that this video highlights how creators can essentially rip off an original idea that isn’t theirs, and benefit from financial gain and millions of views. However, fellow creator Jon Youshaei highlighted how the video shows the power of the creator economy, with the video receiving more views in less time than the Netflix show with fewer gatekeepers.
The video has since become the fastest non-music video to reach 100 million views in 4 days.
TikTok’s New Tagging Option
TikTok is testing an option that will enable users to tag other profiles in clips. This is yet another feature to help boost engagement on the platform. In the video creation flow, users will now not only be able to @mention in captions, but users can tag users without text mentions – offering a less cluttered approach to the process.
This new tagging option will allow another way to link other creators and profiles and also help brands boost community engagement by notifying loyal followers or partners of their latest uploads. This feature is currently in testing with no confirmation on full rollout at this point.
TikTok’s Content Monetisation Tools
TikTok is expanding monetisation tools on the platform with the addition of video tipping and virtual gift for regular uploads – which before was only available for select live-steam creators through the Creator Next program. This option gives creators the ability to generate more income from their TikTok content.
The Tips feature allows users to directly send money to creators, who receive 100% of the tip value, which is processed through Stripe. The Video Gifts option allows creators to collect Diamonds by going LIVE and posting videos, providing new ways for users to interact and engage with great content on the platform.
Spotify Debuts The ‘Netflix Hub’
Netflix and Spotify have come together to launch an all new Netflix Hub on Spotify, where fans can get the full audio-streaming experience from their favorite shows and movies. This comes off the back of the insight that trending content on Netflix has the ability to dominate social conversations, trends in music, playlists and podcasts.
Interestingly, Spotify released their internal findings, showing that within two weeks of Squid Game’s debut on Netflix, Spotify listeners had created more than 22,500 unique themed playlists to curate their own sounds to mimic the Squid Game experience for themselves.
A part of the initial launch, Spotify’s Netflix Hub has released an audio experience for Netflix’s new action-packed Western film, The Harder They Fall. The experience features artists like Kid Cudi, Koffee, and Ms. Lauryn Hill. In addition, the hub also features a “Character Match Playlist Quiz” to find out your perfect La Banda character (from Money Heist) and a soundtrack to match.
YouTube Search Insights
YouTube’s latest feature allows creators to better understand what their viewers are searching for. “Search Insights” is a proposed add-on to YouTube Studio that would provide creators with the opportunity to gain an insight into viewer search results over the last 30 days.
The tab operates by breaking insights into two streams: one that shows the popularity of certain keywords amongst the wider audience scope, and one that is tailored to a creator’s own viewers. The additional insights will allow creators to better tailor their content and plan out each upload in conjunction with the insights into viewer behaviors and interests.
Twitter Preparing for Broader Launch of Downvotes
Twitter’s reply downvotes option could be receiving a wider rollout very soon. The downvotes option was tested as a means to highlight valuable replies and not to operate as a dislike button.
Twitter’s aim with the feature is to determine what users find relevant and act as a solution to show users more content that they deem relevant. Downvotes will be private from what Twitter has announced and will ultimately create more engaging threads.
