Instagram Scheduling: This week Facebook added Instagram scheduling to its Creator Studio. Finally. However, “Instagram Stories” cannot be scheduled. Not yet!
The Housing Crisis is Driving a New Boom in Influencer Content: New Statesman has a compelling article about the paradox of millennial home ownership compared to how much home renovation content is being created and consumed. Key Quote: “Through reno-porn, influencers are able to show off their good fortune, their beautifully decorated homes, and impressive incomes. And while nearly all of these influencers take the time to acknowledge their extreme privilege, it doesn’t negate the fact that their reno-porn is monetizing the attention of a young audience for many of whom this will never become a reality. This masochistic trend has spooky parallels to 15 years ago. At the height of the financial crisis – when people across the world were having their homes repossessed and forced back into renting after years of home ownership – shows like Homes Under The Hammer and Changing Rooms were exploding in popularity.”
Why You Think Your Devices Are Listening to You: This week Shelly Palmer details the urban legend that our phones are listening to us. He details the truth about enriched data sets, predictive models and machine learning — all of which “results in advertisers having the uncanny ability to understand your behaviors well enough to put the right message in front of you at the right time in the right place.” It’s just good advertising. Worth a read.
Number Neighbor Game: “Number Neighbor,” also known as Text Door Neighbor, dates back to 2008 and involves texting the numbers adjacent to your cell number and striking up a conversation. This week the meme has been reinvigorated, with people texting their number neighbors and posting screenshots of the resulting conversation. The results can be hilarious, serendipitous, tragic and sometimes too good to be true. Do you dare to text your number neighbor?
Self-Driving Delivery Ground Drones Coming to California Neighborhoods: This week Amazon announced the introduction of Scout, a six-wheeled robot the size of a small cooler, that will begin delivering packages to customers in Irvine, California weekdays during daylight. Ground drones are going to be a thing. And yes, a worker will accompany the robots at first.
Instagram of the Week: @TheMonsterProject is an account where kids draw monsters and then artists from around the world recreate them in their own styles. Like this one from Berlin and this one from Uruguay.
Podcast of the Week: On this week’s episode of The Digiday Podcast, Brian Morrissey interviews The Atlantic’s Taylor Lorenz to discuss TikTok – including why it’s so important to marketers and some of the challenges. If you aren’t already, be sure to follow Lorenz’s curated TikTok account on Instagram: @GradeATikToks
GREG SWAN 