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 take a look at the Meta’s looming mass layoffs, TikTok’s surging popularity with teens and Twitter’s new plans for verification status.
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Contents
Meta Layoffs Loom Over Thousands of Staff
Logan Paul Wants to Fight Andrew Tate and So Does His Brother
New Survey Underlines TikTok’s Popularity With Teens; Highlights Meta Decline
YouTube Launches New Shorts Viewing Option For Connected TVs
Twitter Previews New Grey Checkmark as $8 Verification Plan Then Changes Its Mind
Instagram Launches In-App Post Scheduling Tools for All Professional Accounts
Pinterest’s Wider Launch of Visual Collage App Shuffles
Meta Layoffs Loom Over Thousands of Staff
Last week Twitter culled half of its workforce, could Meta do the same? The parent company of Facebook and Instagram is reportedly looking to cut a large portion of its employees, as part of its cost rationalisation efforts.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
“Meta is planning to begin large-scale layoffs this week, according to people familiar with the matter […] The layoffs are expected to affect many thousands of employees and an announcement is planned to come as soon as Wednesday, according to the people.”
Meta is a much more established operator than Twitter, with over 87,000 people in total operating across varied arms of the company. Cutting thousands of roles might seem like a drastic operation on the surface, but the impact will likely have a minimal effect on the business as a whole.
Meta has projected that it will lose close to $10 billion this year alone, as a result of Apple’s data privacy shift, which has caused users to cut Meta off from tracking their activity.
Staff aren’t the only metric at risk. Meta has already halted its social audio push, retracted its ‘Bulletin’ newsletter initiative and canceled its multi-million dollar deals with new publishers – among other budgeting measures.
Logan Paul Wants to Fight Andrew Tate and So Does His Brother
In the latest episode of internet beefs, Logan Paul has declared his interest in fighting controversial figure, Andrew Tate. The YouTuber-turned-boxer-turned-WWE star has gone as far as to say the event “is going to happen.”
Paul can be credited as one of the pioneers of the influencer and Youtube boxing movement, dating back to 2018 when he fought his now business partner, KSI.
A punch-up with Tate would likely see Paul enter a new discipline, mixed martial arts. Tate – a former pro kickboxer – would prefer the octagonal dimensions of The Octagon, as opposed to the squared circle.
There are plenty of people across the internet who would enjoy watching these two men scuffle amongst each other. However, until they step into the ring, there’s always a chance that this will end up alongside other proposed fights that never materialise, as is such with combat sports.
While this fight may never come to exist, the influencer boxing space is thriving. To learn more about that, check out our breakdown on all things YouTube boxing.
Interestingly, reports from social media now suggest that it’s Logan’s brother, Jake, that will be fighting the controversial Tate. The two have been pictured facing off against each other in a boxing gym, amongst claims that a deal is currently underway for the fight to take place.
New Survey Underlines TikTok’s Popularity With Teens; Highlights Meta Decline
TikTok is popular amongst teens, who ever would have guessed?
According to a recent survey from Piper Sandler, which collected responses from over 14,500 US teens, TikTok is their preferred social app, overshadowing Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Snapchat remains popular amongst teenage users, though it has suffered a slight decrease in favourability.
This has been common knowledge for a while, Meta itself conducted its own reports highlighting its decrease in teen audiences.
While Meta continues to improve its offerings, it’s unclear how the tech company is going to lure more youngsters back to its platform. Reels, which has become a popular format on Instagram and Facebook, is also not quite as good as the short-form entertainment available on TikTok, and is way off in terms of retaining user attention.
Meta requires the eyes and ears of young audiences for its borders metaverse push. Put simply, if teens don’t think the metaverse is cool, then no one else will. These are the same young users that spend their time in metaverse-like zones on Roblox and Fortnite. Meta needs the youngsters, but as the data suggests, youngsters don’t need Meta.
YouTube Launches New Shorts Viewing Option For Connected TVs
Connected TV or CTV viewing has been the fastest-growing usage element, while Shorts has been its fastest growing content format.
YouTube is now combining the two, with a new Shorts experience for home TVs, which will show Shorts content in a full-screen, interactive format on the larger display.
YouTube says that various user tests have been conducted to source the best presentation for Shorts on the larger screen, with the focus on building an experience that harnesses the essence of Shorts in a new way.
“It was important that the Shorts experience on TV felt consistent with what the community sees on mobile and also natural on the bigger screen,” stated YouTube.
The option of viewing Shorts content on TVs enables more people to tune in at once, an advantage YouTube intends to capitalise on. More people watching in the same setting could help better engage even more users via YouTube’s TV alternative features.
CTV viewing is an important trend for marketers to keep an eye on, because it enables TV-like ads without the high rise of traditional TV campaigns, and with digital platform targeting options that enable search refinement.
Twitter Previews New Gray Checkmark as $8 Verification Then Changes Its Mind
Over the course of the past few days, Twitter has gone from an imminent launch of a new gray ‘official’ badge to no badges at all.
So, the plan was to launch Twitter’s new $8 per month verification process, which would enable people to buy the prestigious checkmark for their account. Twitter had recognized that there was a need for an official marker for certain accounts, as a means to combat potential fraudulent activity.
Instead of revising its formulated $8 checkmark option, it confusingly came up with another solution, adding in an indicator for selected accounts that recognises the account as an ‘official’ identity.
But now, Twitter has changed its mind again, stating that it will not be putting an ‘official’ label on accounts, but that it is aggressively going after any fraudulent activity on the platform.
What an odd turn of events! And as of Friday, it got even more crazy, as Twitter performed a u-turn and removed the ability to subscribe to Twitter Blue – likely thanks to an increasing number of accounts impersonating brands / people by paying for the verification mark. It feels highly likely that this story won’t end here.
Instagram Launches In-App Post Scheduling Tools for All Professional Accounts
Over the last few weeks, Instagram has been testing its new in-app post scheduling tools, giving all professional accounts access to the feature.
The new scheduling option will enable users to schedule photos, carousels and Reels all within the app, up to 75 days in advance.
From an operational standpoint, all this achieves is a simpler and more time efficient way to upload content. Users have been able to schedule posts via Creator Studio since 2020. Capacity to schedule Reels, however, could help users maximise their content performance.
Based on Instagram’s messaging, only Professional accounts will have access to this feature at this time, though anyone can transition to a Professional Account in the app through the setting tab.
Pinterest’s Wider Launch of Collage App ‘Shuffles’
‘Shuffles’ initially launched back in August. The visual collage app is Pinterest’s venture into artistic collages using Pinterest-originated images.
Shuffles enables users to layer various photos of objects over each other, which can be animated and set to music. Users can share their creations across other social apps, with the product images linked back to Pinterest to enhance discovery activity.
Users have the option to select images source straight from Pinterest, or capture their own with Pinterest’s system then scanning the platform for similar objects.
Although the app was only made available to selected users in the first instance, it immediately sparked a trend among younger audiences.
“The app grew in popularity with Gen Z users, who used the creative expression tool to make “aesthetic” collages, sometimes set to music and posted to TikTok, or shared privately with friends or the Shuffles community. This resulted in Shuffles surging to become the No. 1 Lifestyle app on the US App Store in August.” As per TechCrunch.
The app has declined in popularity since it first launched, but the initial surge points to an opportunity, one that could help further promote Pinterest use if broader interest is there.
Shuffles is available to download in the respective app stores currently.
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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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