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 cover KSI vs Swarmz; the YouTube boxing return, the internet’s most hated apps, sustainability in the metaverse, and much more!
Don’t forget you can follow us on Linkedin, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter for real-time announcements of all our new blog content!
Contents
The Internet’s Most Hated Apps
Sustainability In The Metaverse
KSI Fighting Two Opponents In One Night
YouTube Is Working On A New Product
Snapchat’s Data On Its Audience
How Instagram Selects Recommended Posts
The Internet’s Most Hated Apps
The Electronics Hub has recently started to look into the most hated apps on the internet – globally. The Electronics hub team have analyzed approximately three million Tweets in order to rank each app based on the sentiment from users.
From the report, the most criticized social media apps overall were Reddit, Snapchat, TikTok and Facebook. In the US, Reddit saw the most negative sentiment and from a global perspective, Reddit was the most hated in 17 countries.
Snapchat was the most hated app in 9 countries, but Roblox was the most criticised negatively in most countries, with a whopping 21. Tinder closely followed behind, being the most hated in 19 countries, including the UK.
Disney Plus also came under fire in 11 countries including Singapore, Bangladesh and Russia. To see the full report and breakdown of each country click here.
Sustainability In The Metaverse
Sustainability-focused brands looking to enter the Metaverse should consider the harmful effects on the climate of doing so, especially considering sustainability audiences are often the most critical online.
The reduced need for commuting and travelling due to the Metaverse providing people with a place to meet online for interviews and meetings, among other uses, would lead you to think it will have a beneficial impact on the environment. In retail, for instance, augmented-reality fitting rooms have helped reduce clothing returns and the waste associated with it by up to 36%.
However, the technology underpinning the metaverse is a large contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Ethereum, the blockchain underlying metaverse players such as Decentraland and Sandbox, utilises some estimated 45,000-gigawatt hours per year.
To make the metaverse feel as immersive as possible requires large data centre processing servers. These consume massive amounts of energy and increase carbon emissions. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, for instance, found that training a common large AI model can emit more than 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide.
Brands that are committed to minimising their environmental impact need to factor in the carbon footprint of any activity including their marketing efforts.
KSI Fights Two Opponents In One Night
KSI (1-0-0) is set to return to the boxing ring on August 27th. What was first meant to be a battle against YouTuber Alex Wassabi, has since turned into a two-opponent fight on the same night against rapper Swarmz and professional boxer Ivan Nikolov (3-16-2).
KSI’s original opponent, Alex Wassabi, pulled out last minute forcing KSI to find a new opponent. However, fans were disappointed by a match-up with Swarmz as he has never set foot in the ring before. KSI, being KSI, decided to up the stakes.
Fighting two opponents in one night is unknown in the creator boxing realm, but not unheard of in the broader sport of boxing. Heavyweight boxer, George Foreman, famously fought five men in a single night in 1975, something that Jake Paul was quick to point out on Twitter. As we’ve previously mentioned, KSI and Jake Paul are never far from altercation.
Furthermore, boxing promoter Eddie Hearn revealed in a recent interview that KSI vs Logan 2 did two million PPV buys, making it the 5th highest PPV in history. Should KSI overcome the two foes on August 27th, fans of the YouTuber can start to look forward to KSI vs Jake Paul, which is all but set for next year.
YouTube Is Working On A New Product
According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, YouTube is developing a “channel store” that could launch this year. This type of product has been rumoured for a number of years now, but this latest update could see YouTube launch a streaming video shop.
The store will probably take a similar shape to Amazon’s Prime Video Channels, allowing users to add services to the subscription at an additional cost – with such models becoming increasingly popular among streaming services.
Roku, Apple and Verizon are all tech companies working on or launching such products. However, for YouTube’s version to succeed, it must align with the major players, this was the strategy of APV, aligning with Starz, Discovery+ and more.
YouTube could entice such partnerships by a split revenue agreement generated by channel store sales, YouTube can then help streaming platforms gain access to its huge audience – a big advantage for streaming platforms struggling to obtain new subscribers.
Snapchat’s Data On Its Audience
Snapchat has released a new report to illustrate the unique reach the platform has among younger audiences. Snapchat partnered with GWI to conduct a study into how often Snapchat users open other apps, and which apps they rely on, on a frequent basis for social and engagement purposes.
The results showed that 51% of daily Snapchat users aged 16+ don’t use TikTok every day, while 67% don’t regularly use Twitter. The lack of crossover between Snapchat users and TikTok could illustrate how effective Snapchat’s Spotlight product is in providing users with their dose of short-form entertainment content.
Instagram appeared to be an app most frequented by Snapchat users, but over 50% of Snapchat users aren’t using YouTube or Facebook every day.
Furthermore, Snapchat users aren’t opening messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Messenger every day, proving Snapchat to be a priority platform to stay up to date and communicate with friends.
How Instagram Selects Recommended Posts
Instagram released an overview of how content is identified for ‘Suggested Posts’ in a user’s Home Feed from an account they do not follow.
Engineers at Instagram explained that the aim of Instagram’s recommendation system is curating a feed for a user that matches their interests as if the user themselves picked specific content. As long as users keep engaging with content of interest, the recommendation system can keep testing and learning what content is best to serve the user.
In other words, the ultimate goal is to replicate discovery with AI, to enhance engagement on the platform.
Instagram’s post recommendations fall into ‘Connected’ and Unconnected’ categories. The ‘Unconnected’ category are the posts that Instagram’s systems find and highlight based on interest, with the goal to feel like posts appearing are from profiles you’d probably follow.
Instagram is also attempting to weave in more video, especially Reels in Home feeds. However, the takeaway is that Instagram is recommending content similar to accounts people are following and engaging with.
In addition, the system is looking at the freshness of content and evaluates an immediate engagement graph, evaluating a user’s one-hop and two-hop connection. For example, if a user hasn’t liked a lot of content, which provides little information on what new content to recommend, then Instagram’s system will look at accounts followed by that user and analyses what these accounts are engaging with, to potentially seed content to the original user.
Snapchat+ New Updates
Snapchat launched a subscription product back in June, allowing users to pay $3.99 per month to access a range of additional elements within the in-app experience.
These included additional app icons, new data insights and the ability to pin a user in the app as your top friend. But now, Snapchat is adding more features to make the product more appealing.
The new features include priority story replies, allowing replies to be more visible to Snap Stars, as well as Post View Emoji, allowing users to pick a dedicated emoji that they want friends to see after they view Snaps. Snapchat is also adding to the service, new Bitmoji backgrounds and new app icons.
Snapchat has also reported that Snapchat+ has over a million paying subscribers that have signed up since June – which is a huge success in comparison to Twitter’s subscription model, which appears to not be making any significant impact on revenue, as outlined in the Q2 earnings report.
Meta’s Update For Reels
Meta has announced Reels updates across both Facebook and Instagram. First off, there is an expansion of the “Add Yours” sticker from Stories to Reels.
Facebook Reels is getting the functionality of auto-created Reels, allowing users to automatically create Reels from archived Stories, which links to a recent update from Meta that allows users to convert video assets into Reels in the Creator Studio.
Meta is expanding access to “Stars” creator donations to Facebook Reels, which is being launched to eligible creators, providing an avenue for creators to monetise on the platform.
Reels performance insights are also being added to the Creator Studio, covering Reach, Minutes Viewed and Average Watch Time, helping to optimise Reels strategies that will no doubt benefit creators and brands.
Finally, Meta is expanding the feature of crossposting Reels from Instagram to Facebook to all Instagram users, while expanding the Remix option to Facebook Reels.
Instagram Reels Scheduling
Following on from the announcement of native scheduling capabilities, all users can now schedule Reels in Meta’s creator studio app.
The development will enable all users to plan and schedule set times for their Reels to be shared within the creator studio. The development has been available to select users for the past few months, now all users can access the scheduling tools. The update is set to help creators and brands maximise their viewership and engagement.
Meta also recently announced a new Reels API, which will likely enable users to schedule Reels content via third-party management tools such as Hootsuite in the near future.
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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!
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