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It’s official: Elon Musk is taking over Twitter

According to New York Times, Elon Musk has struck a deal today to buy Twitter for around $44 billion, thus turning the social media company private. Twitter agreed to be taken over at $54.20 a share, a 38 percent premium over the share price. There were rumors about Elon taking over the social network over the past few months, but with Twitter’s rejection to the billionaire’s prior offers, it was surprising that the two parties landed on the deal so soon. 

Before this deal, Elon Musk has been voicing a lot of opinions about the platform and announcing some executive goals if he was to take over the social network. Compiled from another New York Times article, potential changes may include 1) loosening content moderation and intervention to foster free speech, 2) making Twitter’s algorithm an open-source model for transparency, and to 3) tackle spam bots and authenticate all human users. These are all big ideas, but it is uncertain whether or how Elon would implement these changes in the future. 

While the takeover is significant, there are also intrinsic limitations of the platform’s current monetization model that the new team would have to solve. For years, the company has struggled to gain new users and to retain its existing user base. Its advertising business, which Twitter’s predominant revenue stream, has also been inconsistent. Twitter has not turned a profit for eight of the last 10 years, so these would also be pressing problems to tackle as the company moves on to a leadership. Elon Musk’s involvement in Twitter’s operations also remains in question, as he is co-managing other companies like Tesla, SpaceX, and Neuralink. I am looking forward to see how the takeover may affect the user numbers, company revenue, and platform offerings in the near future.

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Interactive add-ons for in-feed ads on TikTok

TikTok announced their rollout of interactive add-ons for in-feed ads. The update aims at offering a way for brands to create more engaging ads on the platform with the newly added popups, stickers and other visual elements. Interestingly, TikTok tiered these new features into a standard and premium provisions as displayed below.

According to TikTok, the add-ons include:

Pop-out Showcase, which is a product pop-up at the end of the video

Gesture, an interactive display card to prompt swipes and gamify the product interactions, and drive conversions

Super Like, animated reactions

Display Card, which would appear at the bottom of the user screen to provide context for the promotion in the video

Gift Code Sticker, to personalize reward experience for users

Voting and Countdown stickers, which are similar to the poll and countdown features on Instagram stories

This update from TikTok is for sure seen as an act of catching up with ad provisions like other well-matured social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Snap. I previously discussed TikTok’s disadvantages in inserting ads, specifically video ads because of the platform’s short video limit. However, with its recent launch of 10-minute videos and these new add-ons, these interactive stickers and seconds-long animated ads would be some of TikTok’s first efforts to achieve both an ad revenue while sticking with its short form and fast-paced content environment. TikTok also continues to appeal these new features to advertisers with data about its engaged users, where 57% of viewers are more likely to search for brand information when they are in contact with businesses on TikTok and that active sharers are significantly more like to visit physical stores and land on a purchase. 

Following, I would like to learn more about how these interactive ad pricing may be similar or different from that on Facebook Business Suite and Google Ads, and how well they are going to help brands drive web traffic, consumer engagement and sales in the coming months.

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New Details on Meta’s Growth Plan for Wearables and the Metaverse

Last week, The Verge released a report, based on information from Meta Insiders, on some key details of the company’s AR glasses roll-out. Some key developments include the Nazare project (AR glasses), a smartwatch debut, and more. 

As Meta faced public scrutiny on company ethics, increased competition from other players especially TikTok, and an overall decline in platform user growth, the company’s alternated focus on developing AR was perceived as a move to maintain its market relevance with the next social technology. Just last year, Meta’s division making metaverse hardware and related software has swelled to roughly 18,000 people, costing the company $10 billion.

As Social Media Today illustrates, the Nazare wearable is designed to work independently from a mobile phone, while a marquee feature will be the ability to communicate and interact with holograms of other people through the glasses. This would be a step up from our current 2D interactions in texting and video calling or even the avatar interactions we see in video games, and would provide users with a more immersive, compelling social experience. A cheaper version of the glasses, Hypernova, would also be developed to pair with a mobile device for simpler functions, including a heads-up display of messages and incoming notifications.

As much as these product developments are ambitious and revolutionary, the process does not come without limitations. The report also enumerates several obstacles Meta is facing, including difficulty in finding and developing chips for the glasses, the need to strengthen product battery life, and to tackle the inaccessible price points. Social media have once opened up information and knowledge access to the world, democratizing speech and formation of communities. But with the relatively high-end technology Meta is creating, what would the adoption look like if it is no longer widely accessible? Would it defeat the very purpose of creating these social technologies? These are some questions I have in mind as I read through the article, and would be pressing problems to be tackled by Meta in the near future.

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TikTok launches its own AR development platform Effect House

Just this morning, TikTok officially rolled out its augmented reality development platform Effect House to the public, which would allow creators to build AR effects for use on the app. The platform launch continues to demonstrate TikTok’s mission to let users unleash their creativity, build one-of-a-kind filters and videos, and to create a one-stop and seamless content creation experience for the community.

According to TechCrunch, the close beta version, which was released earlier last year, was adopted by over 450 creators who have gone on to publish their effects on TikTok, and have been used in 1.5 billion videos gaining over 600 billion views globally. The promising performance shows the potential success for Effect House and wide adoption by creators worldwide. 

The launch of Effect House will also put TikTok in closer competition with both Snap and Meta, who have already offered tools for developers to build their own filters. By making Effect House available to the public, there is additional appeal for new and existing creators to stay on the platform, prompt more video creations and continue to expand TikTok’s user base.

One competitive advantage I see from this platform launch is TikTok’s knowledge sharing approach. The company released online tutorials and guides to teach creators how to use and build these effects, which helps closing the technical gap and making filter development accessible to creators (not just developers). These resources may then draw more creators to the platform who would feel welcome to learn and grow along their content creation journey, thus cultivating a strong and loyal creator community for TikTok. This, in a long term, would be beneficial to TikTok’s business in terms of creator monetization and Marketplace developments. It would be interesting to see the company’s upcoming reports on the platform usage, and how Effect House could drive TikTok’s content volume even further this year.

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Twitter to engage more with users testing new ad formats and collaborative Tweets

It seems like Twitter is ready to take the big step forward to engage with and retain its community and creators. According to Social Media Today and The Verge, the company is testing new, interactive ad types to boost its promotional appeal to advertisers while also experimenting on collaborative tweets to foster the creator collaborations.

There are currently 3 interactive ad types under testing, including:

Interactive Text Ads, which offers a bolder typeface display with a maximum of 3 highlighted hyperlinks to lead users to landing pages of advertisers’ choice. The differentiated display would help these ads stand out from the feed and draw user attention, increasing consumer touchpoint and driving conversions for brands.

Product Explorer Ads would offer an interactive, 3D product display, leading users directly to the shopping page with its product visual appeal.

Collection Ads would be similar to Facebook’s carousel ad offerings, allowing brands to pick up to 5 thumbnail images to tell a fuller product or brand story.

These new ad types, especially the first two are interesting, since they are formats that other social media companies have not executed before. The color highlights in the Interactive Text Ads are also very on brand with Twitter with its Topics features and in-site color display offerings. The Product Explore Ads would allow users to look in detail product features, and may be especially beneficial to sports brands like Nike and Under Armor (since 3D view of sneakers has already been a trend within the community for some time). Overall, though, it shows Twitter’s intentions to go beyond B2B advertising and gain more direct engagement with consumers, which would be a strategic expansion or pivoting in the business’ advertising model.

Twitter’s strategic changes did not stop here. With its testing on collaborative tweets, which would allow mutual and public account creators to collaborate on tweets (similar to TikTok’s “Duet” feature), have shown its upcoming efforts to engage even more with users by boosting the creator community within the app. Imagine influencers being able to collaborate with brands on a promotional tweet, utilizing Spaces and collaborative mentions or retweets in addition to current creator tools like SuperFollows and tipping, it is evident here that Twitter is aiming at fostering the creator economy and targeting more on users as potential customers. While Twitter is still very much seen as a platform for immediate information circulation and news sources, it would be interesting to see how it pivots into a focus on creators and product marketing while facing competition from other tech players. 

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Snapchat Acquires Brain-Reading Tech 'NextMind' for the Next Stage of Digital Interaction

According to The Verge, Snap has continued to increase its investments in AR technology with its most recent acquisition of “NextMind”, a brain computer interface technology company that develops hardware to enable hands-free interactions with electronic devices.

To illustrate briefly, the NextMind headwear, when put on, would track the signals our brain used to transmit to control motor activity (e.g. to app an app or type in your device password), decode and translate them into a digital signal our devices can understand and “do the job itself” without the user having to type or act on it. The idea is to make digital experiences more hands-free and controllable, which may make AR social and gaming experiences more handy.

While such potential may seem as a revolutionary change in how we can use technology in the future, it is also unsettling because tech companies who distribute these hardwares would essentially have direct access to our brain signals, hence our thoughts. If social listening and the current data privacy landscape in the social media space are already considered invasive by the public, how would we respond to companies first-hand access to our brain signals? Where should the line be drawn between ethical data collection and the compromise of user privacy then?

Clearly, Snap is not the only tech player to be interested in brain-computer interfaces. Elon Musk’s Neuralink project and Meta’s huge investments in AR labs and soft/hardware development are signs that tech companies are pushing this new dimension of digital experience to the public. With growing awareness of data privacy and social media ethics among the public, then, it would be interesting to see how well the market responds to these new technologies.

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NFTs will be on Instagram soon

According to TechCrunch, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, recently announced his company plans to introduce NFTs into Instagram.

“We are working on bringing NFTs to Instagram in the near term,” Zuckerberg said in a conversation with Shark Tank’s Daymond John. “I’m not ready to announce exactly what that’s going to be today, but, over the next several months, the ability to bring some of your NFTs in, and hopefully over time be able to mint things within that environment.”

While how NFTs could be integrated into the platform was not explicitly shared, The Verge, among other media outlets, have reported and proposed several directions Instagram may go for, including the ability to use NFT as a profile and mint NFTs on the platform, as well as potentially creating a marketplace for NFT trading.

The current NFT market now mainly encompasses anything digital from drawings, GIFs, songs, to items in video games, so it makes sense that the social media environment may be the next hub for NFTs to flourish. Integrating the concept of NFT into social media is no news, as Twitter’s former CEO Jack Dorsey has sold his first ever tweet as an NFT back in summer, 2021. Aside from Meta’s current moves, Twitter has also launched NFT profile pictures early this year, so it would be interesting to see how the two big companies compete in the NFT space. Outside of the social media realm, Meta would also have to consider how they could differentiate itself from larger NFT trading sites like OpenSea, which has hit $5B in total trading volume in January alone. Instagram has its advantage for its huge volume of user-generated content, and The Verge also opened up the possibilities to sell a popular Instagram post, or exclusive access to platform content as a way to start a marketplace there. With the idea of selling content as a widely accepted monetization model (evident from the creator economy), Instagram may leverage that familiarity and pull in a larger NFT user base into the market.

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Twitter to tap into the podcasting space?

Just a few days ago, Social Media Today published an article about Twitter’s recent efforts testing the podcast tab on the platform. App researchers Alessando Paluzzi and Jane Manchun Wong shared their in-app screenshots, presumably an internal test under execution by the company.

As Twitter increases their creator push, it is not a huge surprise that they are trying to tap into the podcasting space given the growing audio market and their previous success with Spaces (which has now become a regular feature). Twitter is making relevant efforts to complement this experiment with its acquisition of Breaker last year and the recent rollout of recorded Spaces, which allows playbacks to engage asynchronous listeners.

This is an interesting move especially as Twitter affords immediate circulation of information. By leveraging its platform features, highly engaged conversations reacting to podcasts or instantaneous interactions with podcast hosts could be drawn, hence driving traffic and virality to creators and their content. The affordance for interactions during a podcast experience is new, and is a huge advantage over platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts who currently offer a more passive, laidback audio experience. The question here would be, how would they be building their monetization model around this? Would it still be mainly generating revenue through ads, and/ or a mix of creator tipping?

While the news is exciting, it also comes with competition in the industry. As The Verge shares, Facebook launched a podcast feature for select creators while Reddit just enabled recording for its audio-only Talks last year. Newer social media like Discord as well has audio chat rooms for audio-only interactions. With that, we would have to see how Twitter could differentiate its offering from others.

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YouTube to Provide Shorts Fund Bonus and Insights for Creators - A Deeper Dive Into Creator Funding Models Between YouTube and TikTok

According to Social Media Today, YouTube has recently added new shorts analytics insights for artist channels complementary to its creator shorts funds for the expansion of its short-form content push.

YouTube would be providing insights into the popular songs being used in Shorts over the previous 28 day period, while would be showing musicians specifically their top songs within Shorts along with their total view counts. With the rollout of these new platforms insights, it points to the YouTube’s potential to push for an additional revenue stream within Shorts. To put its current success into perspective, YouTube just hit five trillion all time Shorts views, and have over fifteen billion views each day globally.

While TikTok is considered a leader in short-form videos in terms of its affordances to draw a big pool of creators, drive viral content and prompt in-app purchases, creator monetization remains a challenge for the company. With that, would YouTube have the potential to surpass TikTok in the short-form content anytime soon? Below, I have analyzed some of YouTube’s advantages in comparison with TikTok:

Ad revenue helps YouTube remain the highest-grossing video platform because it affords both short and long-form videos. 55% of YouTube’s ad revenue go to creators, which means the platform paid creators more than $15 billion throughout 2021. On the other hand, short videos in TikTok are too short to insert mid-stream ads, which makes direct revenue attribution more difficult.

Both TikTok ($200 million) and YouTube ($100 million) are allocating a static pool of creator funds dedicated to shorts. While YouTube is supplemented by other funding tools like Adsense, channel memberships and Super Chat, the creator fund is the only way TikTok is paying their creators, and already TikTok creators are calling for a bigger slice of the revenue pie

While TikTok is exploring brand partnerships and e-commerce, YouTube clips reign in advantage by being linked to Google searches, and better SEO leads to higher clicks and conversion rates, hence purchase points.

YouTube is actively testing commerce links in Shorts to further simplify the purchase journey for viewers, which could put TikTok in bigger competition as they figure out their monetization model.

It seems like YouTube’s well-established revenue model and diversified funding tools would be a strong appeal to creators, so it would be critical for TikTok to roll out expanded funding streams to retain its top creators. With that said, platforms, including TikTok, have been making swift and notable moves to retain their relevance. TikTok just expanded their maximum video length up to 10 minutes (presumably a move to allow more room to generate ad revenue), and Meta is pushing Reels across all its platforms. It would interesting how the short-form video landscape would unfold among the competition of these industry leaders.

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The Impact of TikTok Clips in the Purchase Journey

According to Social Media Today, TikTok recently published a new report that introduces the platform’s role in the purchase journey. The key findings indicate that TikTok provides an essential platform for brands and advertisers to grow audiences, turn them into engaged customers, engage with user-generated content, and generate a productive loop of amplifying the community and bringing in more business. To put things into context, here are some key statistics pulled from their report:

Users spend 14% more when TikTok is a part of the purchase journey

36% of TikTok users discovered something on TikTok and immediately went to buy it, which is 1.5X more likely than the competitive average

TikTok users are more likely to follow, create a post and tag a brand as well as making a tutorial/ product review than on other platforms

TikTok users also show a high engagement rate with in-app ads, which is great news for brands especially as the social media environment has become more and more saturated with ads. Quoting from TikTok For Business, “It is no longer choosing between selling or entertaining. It’s selling by being entertained”. This points to the increasingly blurred lines between social media as a form of entertainment and site/ intermediary of commerce. With that, TIkTok is positively impacting every stage of the purchase journey from product discovery to consideration and purchase. Not only are users more likely purchase goods advertised on the platform, they also end up with an overall more positive post-purchase experience, which in turn drives them to make reviews and tutorials mentioning brands, hence brand engagement at large.

With that, TikTok’s appeal of the inherently interactive video form should be leveraged by brands and creators to establish a distinct image and develop relationships with users. There are already successful examples using mascots and personalities like Duolingo or mission driven ones like Dove. With a boom in the creator economy and platform support tools like the Creator Marketplace, it is foreseen that TikTok will continue to shape a mutually beneficial environment for brands, creators, and users, and it would be interesting to see how they may open up new monetization models for social media companies.

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Instagram Launches Story Likes - Where Do We Go From Here?

Starting Feb 14th, Instagram has added a new way for users to engage with Stories with Stories likes, where users could “like” stories without having to send creators a DM (as compared to the older “react” function). While stories likes would not be public, the new feature allows creators access to another metrics to gauge their engagement across long-form posts and reels as well as bit-sized, time-limited story content.

While Instagram has not indicated whether the new function would be a ranking factor at this stage (aka. Whether stories with better engagement would appear at the top of the stories feed), it would benefit creators in providing an extra feedback mechanism and cleaning up their DMs, according to The Verge. It is also an interesting add to the platform given Instagram has tested hiding like counts on the post feed for years before making the decision to leave them on by default, while giving users the option to hide them on their posts.  

Social Media Today as well provided an interesting angle on how adding likes to Stories may move it more into line with TikTok-style short form clips, in which creators would be encouraged to create more quality video content on Stories to drive user engagement.

This new rollout has provided important insights on how platforms are attempting to maximize attention spending and data generation in every aspect of their service and social infrastructure to acquire more valuable user data. And with increasing concerns about the mental health impacts social networking sites may have on users, it would be interesting to see how companies are going to strike a balance between their platform development and the user experience at large.

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Welcome!

This is my blog for MCC-UE 1020 Business of Media this Spring semester. I will be covering articles and industry info about social media, which is my chosen sector. I will be using The Verge, Social Media Today, and Mashable as my 3 main news sources for this blog.