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 the imminent rollout of TikTok Shop in the US, Elon Musk reinstates his original Twitter bid and Snapchat announces a content deal with Spanish football league, LaLiga.
Don’t forget you can follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter for real-time announcements of all our new blog content!
Contents:
TikTok Shop To Expand Live Shopping In The US Ahead Of Christmas
Dream’s Face Reveal Hits 20 Million Views In 16 Hours
Elon Musk Reissues Original Twitter Bid To Avoid Court Battle
Snapchat Announce Content Deal With LaLiga
Instagram Shares Insight On How To Use Instagram Reels For Marketing
Meta Invest In AI-Generated Art Tool
TikTok Shop To Expand Live Shopping In The US Ahead Of Christmas
For those looking to get ahead on their Christmas shopping, you might want to keep an eye on the live commerce expansion set to sweep the US.
According to the Financial Times, TikTok is looking to roll out TikTok Shop in the United States in preparation for the holiday season. The report claims that TikTok will look to partner with a brand to provide a “turnkey solution” for its US e-commerce push.
TalkShopLive is reported to be the brand in question. The live shopping outlet is a startup that snagged $6 million in VC funding in 2021. This partnership would see TikTok harness the power of TalkShopLive’s technology, enabling video-sharing app to present US users with selling opportunities. To offer further incentives, TikTok could cover the 10% commission TalkShopLive takes from all sales on its platform.
Despite its boom in Asia, TikTok Shop has tried and failed to crack western markets. With the app now outsourcing its commerce development, TikTok will look to take a second stab at breaking into the US during the busiest period of the year from a commerce perspective.
If all goes to plan, we could see TikTok Shop up and running in the US no later than November.
If you want to learn more about live commerce ahead of the holiday season rollout, consider downloading our live commerce guide.
Dream’s Face Reveal Hits 20 Million Views In 16 Hours
Maintaining smiley anonymity has finally proved too much for Minecraft YouTuber Dream. The 23-year-old decided to reveal his identity, and over the course of a 16-hour period, his face reveal video racked up 20 million views.
Dream, who just hit 30 million subscribers on YouTube, started his channel in 2014 and rose to notoriety in 2020 following the launch of his Dream SMP server in Minecraft alongside releasing content with GeorgeNotFound and Sapnap, amongst others.
During that time, Dream had kept his identity hidden behind a round white mask donning a black smiley face.
In a video titled “hi, I’m Dream,” the YouTuber revealed his identity to many long-awaiting fans.
“My name is Clay, otherwise known as Dream online. You may have heard of me. May have not, maybe you clicked on this video out of pure curiosity, and you don’t care who I am. But now you’ve seen my face, so now you know who I am.”
Dream explained that he chose to reveal his face so that he can explore more possibilities as a creators, saying:
“I want to start just doing things, get out, meet creators, say hi to my friends finally. Just get out in the world. Be an actual creator. Be a person.”
Elon Musk Reissues Original Twitter Bid To Avoid Court Battle
After months of deliberating, it looks like Elon Musk is going to acquire Twitter after all.
Following more complaints about how Twitter is riddled with bots, Musk has reportedly sent a letter to Twitter management proposing an avoidance of the looming court battle over his attempt to retract from the takeover deal. The letter is an encouragement that Twitter will accept his original offer, an agreed price of $54.20 per share.
Musk has reportedly offered to end all litigation by reverting to his original plan.
It is widely regarded that this decision is based upon uncertainty within Musk’s legal team, in that they are not entirely confident that it is a winnable battle. Twitter’s team has held firm over the clauses of the deal, which they say includes ‘airtight commitments’ that will lock Musk into his original offer either way.
Not to mention, the court trial is also likely to reveal discord around Twitter’s management and processes, which would then fall upon Musk’s responsibility should he lose the case.
It appears that Elon and his cohorts have decided that biting the bullet is the best case scenario at this point, putting an end to the Elon Musk Twitter saga once and for all – hopefully.
Snapchat Announce Content Deal With LaLiga
Snapchat is continuing its venture into sports coverage, as the app looks to expand its reach. The new deal with Spanish Football League LaLiga will see Snap host exclusive content, weekly highlights, historic archives, the best goals and more. The deal will also feature LaLiga branded lenses, stickers and Bitmoji additions, amongst other creative options.
As per Snap:
“Snapchatters will be able to enjoy the best moments of the game through a dedicated Discover Show called LaLiga Show Time, as well as Stories and Spotlight content posted by the LaLiga Snap Star account.”
Snapchat has seen success with sports coverage in the past, with NFL football generating large interest within the app. Snap’s internal research team discovered that 87 million Snapchatters watch sports content every month, while NFL fans also engaged with Snap’s AR options over 2.1 billion times during Super Bowl LVI.
Recent reports suggest that Snap is now looking to focus on attracting older users to the platform. Just 16% on Snap’s current user base is over the age of 35. Amidst rising revenue pressures, the app has been forced to rethink its approach.
Snap is hoping that sports content will play an integral role in attracting older audiences. If Snap can become a more complementary app for sports fans, this could be key for the platform’s future developments.
Instagram Shares Insight On How To Use Instagram Reels For Marketing
Instagram has issued a new series of updated how-to guides, including a 23-page overview of how brands can use Instagram Reels for promotion and community building. The guide includes a variety of tips and notes on effective Reels usage.
Instagram kicks off its guide with pointers on why brands should consider Reels, and the strength of the format. Instagram describes Reels as the future of video storytelling on the platform, adding that is makes up 20% of the total time spent on the platform today.
The guide also highlights helpful tips on Reels creation, including ‘safe zones’, which means where your content will and won’t be impacted by on-screen display overlays.
This step-by-step guide is fluent with statistics to cement Reels as a format for marketers. For example, 80% of Reels are viewed with sound pays homage to the power of audio strategy intertwined with video storytelling.
Instagram also goes into detail on Reels ads, and how to make the most of the format for paid promotions.
The guide packs a lot of information, that would typically involve hours of searching, into one place, offering marketers lucrative information on how to better their Reels usage.
The full guide is available to download here.
Meta Invest In AI-Generated Art Tool
AI-generated art has become one of the internet’s most popular trends in recent months, with tools like DALL-E enabling a new wave of creativity.
These tools source images from across the web, samples said images and mergers them together to create new artworks, based on how the system determines your text prompts.
With the announcement of Make-A-Video, Meta declared it’s investment into generative AI, a state-of-the-art AI system that generates high-quality videos from text prompts.
The process will enable users to create variations of video clips, or add motion to a static images which could pave the way for a whole new fabric of video creation.
As per Meta’s research notes:
“As a way to reduce the risk of harmful content being generated, we examine, applied, and iterated on filters to reduce the potential for harmful content to surface in videos.”
We can imagine that public figures will also be removed from the database along with restrictions on potentially offensive terms as the text prompt.
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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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