Insta Trends: Mention and Hubspot analyzed over 100 million public Instagram posts from a million users to establish key trends and shifts in Instagram user engagement. Key findings: 1) the most engaging tagged Instagram accounts are beauty and cosmetics; 2) the sweet spot for caption lengths to get the most engagement are 500–1,000 and 1,000–2,000 characters; 3) carousel posts overtook both single image and video posts as the most engaging type of post; 4) 53.6% of Instagram followers have less than 1,000 followers; 5) the most geo-tagged city in the world is LA for the second year in a row, but the most engaged city is Beverly Hills. Download the full report here.
Watch out LinkedIn, Here Comes TikTok: TikTok is testing a tool to help people find jobs on TikTok and connect with companies looking to find candidates. The platform is a separate web page accessible via the TikTok app where brands can post jobs, primarily entry-level listings, and users can post a TikTok video resume to the site rather than a traditional resume. The idea is for users to give an elevator pitch or work experience summary via the video in a unique way.
Make Your Own Pokemon Go (or Something Better!): As augmented reality capabilities continue to expand on the hardware side, the software side is getting smarter and easier. This week the creators of Pokemon Go, Niantic Games, released a private beta of their new ‘Lightship’ AR SDK, encompassing features like world-localization, multi-user AR and real-time meshing. Watch this video of the multiplayer capabilities for a look at what may be coming in this space. Look for a new walking AR game from Niantic and Nintendo called Pikmin coming later this year (sign up to be notified here).iamthirtyafA post shared by @iamthirtyaf
‘Ask app not to Track’ is Working: It looks like Facebook was justified in its concern about the new Apple iOS update. Apple’s new privacy tracking opt-out is proving even more popular than expected, with about 85% of users worldwide have opted out of ad-tracking when prompted, and that number leaps to around 94% for U.S. users. However, it’s important to note that it takes 3-5 weeks for about 60% to 75% of users to adopt a major iOS update, and the study %s here are based on a representative sample. However, it’s clear that opt-in is a more effective driver than opt-out. This is definitely something to keep an eye on in the coming weeks and months.
Stumbled, Channeling the Memory of StumbleUpon: Almost 20 years ago, a discovery engine for the internet launched called StumbleUpon, and it was a hugely popular way to find unique content on the growing world wide web. Like many digital tools of its age, StumbleUpon was acquired, monetized, and shut down after its userbase moved on. But the need for casually surfing websites and being surprised at random finds is still there. And that brings us to a new site called Stumbled… “a collection of anything interesting, weird or astonishing; websites of exceptional quality, sites to kill time or learn something new.” Try it out here, and use the top banner as you go to rate sites and visit new ones.
Creators Finding Their Power and Agency Through Platform Monetization: Every major social platform now has either a creator fund, subscription or ad revenue share, tipping, and/or a creator marketplace to support creators and power content bespoke to each respective social network. This shift to a Creator Economy is one of the biggest disruptions coming to media, digital, and social in the coming year. Facebook, Twitter, and Substack have now launched monetized email platforms with funds to draw nationally known writers. Clubhouse, Spotify, and Fireside have announced audio and podcast-style creator funding. Here’s a chart to keep it all straight. This week YouTube announced a $100M fund to empower creators to make content for YouTube Shorts, their TikTok clone. And the odds that your favorite journalist has probably stood up their own newsletter at this point, or soon will.
Key quote: “But if the creator economy has done nothing else, it has given a long-embattled writing class a new breed of leverage. The individual writer is now an economic force to be reckoned with — “news talent,” in other words — and with this new autonomy comes new options.”
Business Reads of the Week: 1) Before You Answer, Consider the Opposite Possibility; 2) TikTok to marketers: Make TikToks, not ads; 3) Meet the woman who will decide what emoji we get to use; 4) Musical.ly: The influence (and aftermath) of an app that only a teen could love; 5) Influencers are creating million-dollar incomes selling their expertise via online courses.
Quick hits:
- Instagram added pronoun options to user profiles.
- Clubhouse comes to Android after more than a year of iOS exclusivity.
- TikTok added a green screen duet feature and is testing Discover-style topics.
- eBay will soon let users sell NFTs.
- Facebook tests a warning prompt to stop users sharing articles they haven’t read.
- Beyonce and Megan Thee Stallion choreographer JaQuel Knight launched a company to copyright dance moves, which includes TikTok dances.
- Weekend Stream Recommendation of the Week: The Mitchells vs The Machines on Netflix.
- YouTube Explainer of the Week: WTF is an NFT?
- Twitter Account of the Week: @randomduets features randomly generated duets that don’t exist…but totally should. This bot picks two random artists then gives them a random song to cover.
- TikTok Account of the Week: @overheard, featuring things that have been overheard set to TikTok.
- TikTok of the Week: Every conference call ever.
See you on the internet!
Greg
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GREG SWAN 