Every 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 NFTs launching across Instagram, Logan Paul’s 99 Originals NFT Project and Cameo cutting 25% of its employees!
Don’t forget you can follow us on Linkedin, Instagram and Twitter for real-time announcements of all our new blog content!
Contents
Logan Paul’s 99 Originals NFT Project
Jack In The Box Virtual Drive-Thru
Elon Musk Plans To Increase Twitter User Base
NFT Features Launch Across Instagram
Facebook’s Removal Of Location Tracking Tools
Twitter Limits Reach Of Duplicated Tweets
YouTube Is Launching Gifted Memberships
YouTube Expands Creative Options Within Shorts
TikTok Expands Partnership With Integral Ad Science
Logan Paul’s 99 Originals NFT Project
Logan Paul is launching a new NFT project which will see the creator launch 99 polaroids that capture 99 moments from his life, bringing very personal NFTs to his fans.
Logan will be selling each image individually through auctions, meaning there won’t be a set price for each NFT. The collection first went live on May 9th on Originals.com, with every subsequent day offering another NFT from the collection on the main page of the website. Auctions will run for 24 hours with bids being eligible through Ethereum wallets.
The creator revealed that 100% of proceeds from the sale of the first NFT drop will go to the war relief effort in Ukraine. Logan Paul has been a creator early to jump on the NFT boom, even launching his own marketplace!
Jack In The Box Virtual Drive-Thru
The fast-food brand Jack In The Box has launched a virtual drive-thru across the brand’s Twitch channel that delivers deals and giveaways to viewers.
The live-stream experience will run for a week, with viewers being greeted by an animated mascot who approaches a virtual window to take orders. These orders will be in the form of QR codes that can be scanned for various savings. The idea here is for the brand to attract Twitch viewers to order some food from Jack In The Box before going off to watch their favourite streamers.
While viewers of the virtual drive-thru wait for their QR code links to other Twitch streams pop up in the chat box, prompting viewers to navigate away to other content after picking up the free tacos issued through the QR code.
The activation is a partnership with Zoned Gaming, helping to highlight streaming talent with a branded experience, which has been the strategy of Jack In The Box with previous activities supporting up-and-coming streamers.
Ludwig Launches New Company
Ludwig is a popular streamer that recently moved to YouTube Gaming, marking one of the largest creator losses for Twitch, considering Ludwig was the most-subscribed streamer on the platform, eclipsing Ninja.
However, now Ludwig has hit the news again with the launch of a new company. The creator recently dropped the Truffle browser, which facilitates the building of community across YouTube. Truffle is essentially an extension that fans can install, allowing them to collect virtual channel points by engaging with creator live streams. Fans can then spend channel points on custom username icons, emojis and specific actions during live stream events.
Ludwig has since gone beyond this initial extension to launch a company to develop more streamer tools, such as the newly dropped Battle Pass – created in partnership with fellow streamer Stanz. Ludwig has stated that Truffle aims to solve streamer problems by working with other creators. In the long term, Ludwig hopes to build out a developer platform that works with third parties to offer more products for streamers.
Cameo Cuts Staff By 25%
Only last week Cameo and Snapchat announced a partnership that saw advertisers have the ability to commission celebrities to create ad assets through Cameo’s network of over 45,000 high profile personalities.
However, now Cameo is cutting 25% of its staff due to a loss of momentum following the COVID boom. Cameo had huge traction during the pandemic that saw traffic significantly increase from 2020 to 2021, facilitating the sale of over 1.3 million individual Cameos, generating over $100 million in gross revenue.
The platform became very popular among celebrities who could not work throughout the pandemic. We’ve seen TV stars, singers and actors all flock to the platform offering video calls and shoutouts to fans.
The CEO of Cameo has stated the move to cut 87 employees was to optimise financial resources and provide more space and time to newer business segments like Cameo for Business, Represent and web3 ventures.
Elon Musk Plans To Increase Twitter User Base
Elon Musk reported last week that he had secured around $7 billion in funding for his $44 billion Twitter takeover. This new funding meant the introduction of financial partners who will become minor shareholders in Twitter’s new future under Musk’s ownership.
Now in a recent pitch deck obtained by The New York Times, the new investors were presented with an overview of plans for Twitter’s future. According to the deck, Musk plans to increase Twitter’s user base from 229 million daily actives to 600 million by 2025. Furthermore, Musk aims to increase Twitter revenue by 5X by 2028. Advertising income which currently accounts for 90% of Twitter’s intake will reduce to 45% with the billionaire wanting to reduce the platform’s reliance on ads. Finally, Musk also revealed plans to cut around 1,000 staffers at Twitter over the next year, then add around 2,700 by 2025.
Catch up on the full story behind the Twitter takeover in our ‘Future of Twitter Under the Ownership of Elon Musk‘ blog!
NFT Features Launch Across Instagram
Instagram chief Adam Mosseri announced the launch of new NFT features across the platform for select creators in the US. Upon launch, there will be integrations for Ethereum and Polygon, with support for Flow and Solana in development. NFT owners will also have the ability to connect Rainbow, Trust Wallet and MetaMask accounts to prove NFT ownership.
As part of the new NFT options, creators have the ability to display NFTs on the main IG feed, as well as within Stories and direct messages. An NFT tab is also in the works, indicated by a tick within a hexagon which will house verified NFTs owned by the creator.
NFT offerings have been in development since June of last year, with this first iteration in testing serving as just the tip of the iceberg of what Meta wants to achieve with NFTs across its respective platforms. Mark Zuckerberg has expressed interest in NFTs playing a large role within the metaverse, taking digital ownership beyond just displaying pictures across social platforms.
Instagram is also testing how NFTs can be integrated past display features such as facilitating NFT sales. However, it is interesting to note that The Wall Street Journal has reported a 92% decline in NFT sales since September and an 88% decline in active wallets since November. Does this pose the question: are NFTs losing momentum?
Facebook’s Removal Of Location Tracking Tools
It appears Facebook is stripping back a range of “Location Services” including “Nearby Friends”, “Weather Alerts” and “Location History”. Meta has stated that the services will no longer be available after May 31st, with all previous data relating to these functions being deleted on August 1st.
Meta has highlighted that the removal of such services is due to low usage, which is strange considering Meta benefits from having as much data on users as possible. This suggests the update could be more about the evolving data regulations than usage issues.
Furthermore, the removal of such services could be down to the reduction of notifications shown to all Facebook users on iOS when faced with the decision to switch off data tracking. At present, the list of data tracking on Facebook can be off-putting, so any reduction of this list could persuade platform users to opt into tracking.
Is Twitter Becoming TikTok?
Twitter appears to be expanding a test of a TikTok-Esque display format in the Explore Tab. As spotted by Matt Navarra, it appears Twitter is looking to compete with TikTok with a “For You” page to show top content matches for individual users based on popularity and interests.
In addition to a “For You” page, Twitter is rolling out a test of two options on the Trending page. These two options include “Personalised’ and “Top Trends”, allowing users to better filter relevant and engaging content on the platform.
What is interesting about the “For You” page is the full screen, vertical scrolling experience, reminiscent of what is found across TikTok. There appears to be a focus on video tweets in this section, showing a push for a more immersive presentation of content on the platform.
Twitter has been rolling out a number of tests as of late to enhance content discovery and platform engagement, which is timely considering the Musk takeover and criticisms from the billionaire over the user experience.
Twitter Limits Reach Of Duplicated Tweets
Twitter has launched new rules around duplicated tweets to limit the reach of “copypasta” content which is internet slang for multiple individuals duplicating content from an original source and sharing it across social platforms.
Across Twitter, “copypasta” content can be a block of text, image or combination that has been copied and pasted in order to artificially amplify content, suppress information, manipulate Twitter Trends, Top Search results and so on.
If Twitter now detects replicated tweets then the platform will enforce a range of penalties that include excluding Tweets in Top Search Results and Trends, not recommending Tweets in timelines of users who don’t follow the author, downranking Tweets in replies, and excluding Tweets/accounts in email or in-product recommendations.
Twitter has noted that these violations won’t lead to account removal but the overall aim is to deter spammy behaviour on the platform. This will certainly serve as an early step in tackling Twitter’s bot issue that was highlighted by Elon Musk before his takeover bid.
YouTube Is Launching Gifted Memberships
Gifted memberships are being released as a beta, and will be available from 18th May. Memberships are YouTube’s depiction of Twitch’s subscriptions, which enables viewers to show financial support and get access to exclusive features like custom emojis.
The membership gifting will be available to a small group of creators to start and will be expanded over the next several months. Any creators interested in trying the new feature must first fill out a Google Form, though you’ll need to already be eligible to enable memberships in the first place – which is also subject to requirements!
As the beta rolls out, gifting will only be available for viewers using a desktop browser window — buying gift memberships on mobile is something YouTube plans to have in place for the full rollout.
YouTube Expands Creative Options Within Shorts
YouTube is looking to maximise usage of Shorts by developing creative tools to enhance the user experience and creativity of content that populates the format.
YouTube is expanding a Green Screen option which will enable creators to use eligible YouTube videos or Shorts as the background for clips. To utilise the feature, users select “Create” then “Green Screen” in the menu options of a video playing. Alternatively, users can press the three-dot menu in the Shorts player and select “Green Screen”.
YouTube originally added a Green Screen tool last year which only enabled creators to upload content from their camera roll to utilise as a background. This new update allows users to utilise existing YouTube content that also includes a creator attribution link in the Shorts display.
TikTok Expands Partnership With Integral Ad Science
TikTok is expanding its partnership with Integral Ad Science, an ad data verification and auditing service that will enhance the measurement of results of TikTok ads for brands, agencies and advertisers.
Integral Ad Science made the following statement following the announcement of the partnership expansion:
“IAS will now provide advertisers with trusted, third-party measurement powered by the Open Measurement Software Development Kit (OM SDK), giving marketers ultimate transparency and confidence around campaign performance. Governed by the IAB, with IAS being a founding member, the OM SDK is designed to facilitate transparent third-party viewability and verification measurement for ads served to mobile apps and open web environments.”
TikTok announced a partnership with IAS last September, along with a partnership with Zefr, ensuring more assurance on ad-placement performance. However, the third-party verification is an important step to ensure advertisers are getting value from campaigns across TikTok – providing more confidence in the platform and at the endpoint allowing TikTok to increase ad spending on the platform to drive increased revenue throughout 2022.
And that’s all for this week, but don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter for real-time announcements of all our new blog content!
