Is the “Instagram Aesthetic” on the decline? The Atlantic reports influencers are mixing up their approach as followers become desensitized to picture-perfect, top-down, light rings and brunch pics all up in our feeds.
Like all social networks, a changing aesthetic on Instagram is to be expected and will be gradual as new approaches take hold and spread.
Vine’s co-founder has created a “new Vine’ called Byte, and it’s currently in beta testing. Sign up for their email to get notified when you can register your account.
If you tweeted today, you’re probably among the most active 10% of Twitter users who are responsible for 80% of tweets overall.
New Pew Research gives us a look into how Americans use Twitter in 2019, including that the vast majority of Twitter users are “lurkers” and superusers are more likely to be women and more likely to tweet about politics.
If you have a Google Home, starting this week you can try saying “Hey Google, talk like a Legend” (or choose John Legend’s voice in your Google Home app) to turn your A.I. voice assistant into John Legend.
Google’s fake John Legend voice is good, but it wasn’t able to fool fake-detecting software.
Snapchat has rolled out an amazing new feature called Landmarkers, which allows you to remix the world around you with augmented reality filters in real time at places like the Eiffel Tower, the Flatiron Building and the US Capitol.
Anyone can make one of these new “filters” using free software. See examples here.
And here’s a key quote from Owen Williams’ piece, Snapchat Is the Next Evolution in Photography: “My initial reaction to the feature’s demo was one of confusion: Why would Snapchat build this? But that confusion quickly morphed into a realization that I was watching the beginning of the next wave of photography: the intersection between what’s real and what’s invented.”
“Hey Google, order me a ________.” Has your digital team started thinking about how voice search will impact your SEO and eCommerce strategy in the coming year?
According to Gartner, early adopter brands that redesign their websites to support visual and voice search will increase digital commerce revenue by 30% by 2021.
Nielsen Music reported that Record Store Day (April 13) was the third-largest sales week for vinyl albums since 1991, with more than 827,000 vinyl records were sold during the past week.
And if you love vinyl, check out musician Greg Wooten’s new art book, Marred for Life, which showcases defaced cleverly modified record covers he has found in bargain bins, including blacked-out eyeballs and social commentary.
The result is subversive, artistic and super fun to page through. See examples here.
Word of the Week: Ratioed. You may have seem the phrase “I’ve been ratioed” on Twitter lately.
Basically, if the Replies:RT ratio is greater than 2:1, you done messed up.
According to Merriam Webster, “Ratioed is only used when the replies are overwhelmingly critical of the original tweet; replies that are positive responses, or replies that are long, derivative threads don’t count as ratioing.”
Podcasts of the Week: I’ve been loving The Dream, an exposé of multi-level marketing companies (sometimes called pyramid schemes). Over 11 episodes, the show’s producers details MLM’s deep ties to the post-war American housewife, the promise of fast cash versus the psychology of “sunk costs,” and these companies’ deep political ties — from the Better Business Bureau to the Secretary of Education to the President of the United States.
Another podcast I’m loving is Running from Cops, which digs into the reality show Cops’ role in culture—specifically, how it has served up a distorted reality of law enforcement. BAD BOYS BAD BOYS WHATCHA GONNA DO.
Music of the Week: Here’s an endless live stream of AI-generated Death Metal from DADABOTS, a “band” that imitates the sounds of black metal, death metal, and many other genres using artificial intelligence tools. It’s live right now.
🤘 Listen here and blare this for your coworkers. 🤘
GREG SWAN 