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Why BeReal, a Social-Media App With No Photo Filters, Is Attracting Gen Z

The WSJ dived into a new social media app, Be Real this week. The platform’s selling point is to encourage social sharing without filters in order to foster real, authentic connections. It has been particularly attracting Gen Z and has the potential to be replicated by Instagram soon. 

According to BeReal:

“BeReal is the simplest photo-sharing app to share once a day your real life in photo with friends. Every day at a different time, everyone captures a photo within 2 minutes. Capture and post in time to discover what your Friends are up to.”

Basically, the app sends a notification once a day and urges its users to take a picture (front and back camera) of what someone is doing within a 2-minute time frame. It allows friends to see what each other is doing and where they are. The time frame restricts any staging and too much thought into what someone posts online. It encourages spontaneity and real connection among friends.  The downloads of the app have been increasing by some 315% since the beginning of the year, according to Apptopia.

Social Media Today points out BeReal has been installed 7.41 million times to date and ranks 4th by downloads in the US, the UK and France for Q1 2022 to date, behind only Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest. 

The app is based in France and data shows that users skew heavily Gen Z in France, with over 80% of its iPhone user base aged 16-24 as of Feb 2022.  

Facebook is known to adopt features from Tiktok such as its Reels feature as well as features similar to snapchat. A similar notification feature to BeReal might pop up as Mark Zuckerbeg explained that the company would be focusing on young adults rather than “optimizing for the larger number of older people”. This came after recent quarter data showed its users base has slowed especially with younger people preferring other apps like Tiktok. 

The WSJ points out that, unlike the most dominant social media platforms, there are also no ads, and there are no visible follower tallies. It makes me curious about how the platform will monetize and how long it will stay.  The article points out that BeReal’s rise resembles other once-popular apps such as Yo and Frontback, which shut down 2 years later. It seems like these apps focus on one notable feature but fail to keep up with updates in order to get new users interested and old ones to engage. Clearly, churn is not limited to streaming services. 

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Elon Musk and Twitter Reach Deal for Sale

According to the NYTimes, Elon Musk and Twitter reached a deal for $44 billion on Monday April 25th. At $54.20 a share, the deal “is set to be the biggest leveraged buyout in at least two decades”. It is still subject to shareholder approval.  Musk was already one of Twitter’s largest shareholders after purchasing a 9.2% stake in the company earlier this month. It was reported that the world’s richest man will take over twitter with the intention “to transform the platform by taking it private.” Kara Swisher writes that the deal was at a fair enough price that no one else, say, Disney would want to match, “or in the case of Big Tech, could match for fear of bringing further antitrust scrutiny.”  The Times article begs the question that everyone is asking, how will Musk transform the platform? Musk has spoken about editable tweets,  possibly fewer spam bots  and promoting free speech. Musk mentioned a vague proposal about “timeouts” instead of bans. However, the overall strategy is unclear. 

Public scrutiny is likely to be intense. The Nytimes writes that “although Twitter is not the biggest social platform - with 217 million daily users, compared with billions for Facebook and Instagram — it has an influential role in shaping narratives around the world.” Critics include Angelo Carusone, the chief executive of the nonprofit Media Matters for America, who says Mr. Musk’s view of free speech was “muddled,” because it elevates all information equally, including potentially extreme views and disinformation.  Jeff Bezos questioned China’s possible influence at Twitter  because of Tesla’s sizable dependence on the country. 

Elon Musk owns Tesla, the rocket maker SpaceX, Boring Company, a tunnel-digging firm, and Neuralink, a brain-tech company. Many worry about Musk’s ability to run all these companies. The previous CEO, Jack Dorsey was ousted out of his position over concerns that he couldn't effectively run two companies. Elon Musk may bring Dorsey back to Twitter and could bring some stability to the scrutiny over the new CEO. 

Lastly, the Times article points out that Musk will not only have to build a better product, but also a better business model.  The subscription service has not been as successful as investors have wanted and advertisers might need less controversy on the site to keep business on the platform. The Times points out that “twitter has not turned a profit for eight of the last 10 years” and its advertising business, which is its main form of revenue, has been inconsistent. Musk replied to concerns at a conference shortly after his offer, ““I don’t care about the economics at all” and mentioned that free speech and nonfinancial features of twitter have “tremendous potential”.

One of the nonfinancial features of Twitter that attracts Musk is open-sourcing the platform’s algorithmic code to make it publicly available. Cybersecurity experts fear that this could make the platform more transparent but also more prone to attackers. Professor Eerke Boiten, of De Montfort University in the U.K., warned that “open sourcing Twitter’s algorithm could lead to malicious actors ‘gaming’ the algorithm, which could see people treated differently based on their personal characteristics” or there could be “external manipulation of target advertising” on Twitter.

Digital rights groups also make the argument that there could be ramifications that a lack of anonymity can have on certain groups of people and political dissidents could be in danger. 

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Metaverses grapple with Meta versus Apple

According to TechCrunch, Apple is clashing with Meta over the company’s taxation percentage in the metaverse. As previously discussed, Meta is building up its VR sandbox, Horizon Worlds and will start allowing goods to be sold. In this social VR world, Meta will take a 25% cut of goods sold. These goods will also be separately taxed by 30% from the Oculus Store. All together virtual goods sold on Horizon Worlds  will come with a 47.5% tax attached to them. Apple took a critical response to this and pointed out Meta’ hypocrisy:

 “Meta has repeatedly taken aim at Apple for charging developers a 30% commission for in-app purchases in the App Store — and have used small businesses and creators as a scapegoat at every turn,” Apple spokesman Fred Sainz stated in an email to MarketWatch. “Now — Meta seeks to charge those same creators significantly more than any other platform. [Meta’s] announcement lays bare Meta’s hypocrisy. It goes to show that while they seek to use Apple’s platform for free, they happily take from the creators and small businesses that use their own.”

Meta responded to this with commentary on how the company subsidizes its VR hardware, so therefore it should charge more on its software. Apple as well makes significant profit on both its hardware and software. Techcrunch points out that Meta did so because customers did not buy its hardware when it was sold at a premium so “the discounted headsets are a means of survival”.

Moreover, Matney also compares the 47.5% cut similar to what content creators on Roblox are used to paying, at 48.9%. Yet, the difference here is that the cut is going to one company rather than accounting for multiple platform stakeholders. However, with Meta’s recent press release advocating for the small business owner and championing content creators to attract more users to its emerging platform, this might be less convincing news. In another article, Techcrunch explains that Facebook is putting a hold on plans to emerge more into the podcasting space and is now “focused on pursuing other opportunities with podcast partners — like events in the metaverse and e-commerce” as well as “short-video projects likely due to increasing competition from popular short-form video app TikTok.”

Overall, I find this discussion with Apple similar to the conversation we had with Jayme last week over the Epic Games and Apple court case . Although Epic appealed, the court case stated that “Apple does not have an illegal monopoly over how developers can process payments for mobile games.” However, discussions in Europe are advocating against Apple’s monopoly over App store purchases and the 30% cut the tech giant takes. Lawmakers agreed in March 2022 on a new law that would force Apple to allow user access to third-party app stores and permit the sideloading of apps on iPhones and iPads in order to encourage competition and overall “fairness”.

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WhatsApp Announces 'Communities' to Enhance Group Chats in the App

According to Social Media Today, WhatsApp introduced a new feature for group chats called Communities. The functionality includes “file sharing, emoji reactions, and group audio calls.” In its announcement video, the feature is similar to facebook groups. Example communities in its video include tenant groups, soccer teams, community gardens and carpools. The advertising seems geared toward young people and millennials. In its press release, WhatsApp explained that these local clubs and communities need a “primary way of keeping people up to date….and private ways of communicating that are distinct from social media, email or broadcast only channels.” Whatsapp seems to be enforcing the Meta philosophy as a communication first platform by adding tools that “facilitate real time conversations” in these smaller, more niche chats. TechCrunch mentioned this feature is to capitalize on “users’ growing desire to join private communities outside of larger social platforms, like Facebook.”

The Community feature has a description and ability to create  sub groups like FB groups that will facilitate new forms of discovery and connection. TechCrunch mentions that FB groups are purposely made for connection between larger groups mostly consisting of strangers, while Whatsapp is focusing on more private, personal groups that are already connected in the real world.  The communities are formed with members that have a user’s phone number. To get into specifics of the new features, there are 32 person audio chat calls, as well as admin controls. This includes content moderation tools with the ability to delete messages or members, make announcements to everyone in the group, increased file sharing capabilities and message reactions.

 The importance of message reactions is to further engage the community members and help new users find like-minded people in their communities. However, the article warns that any broad-scale connective group that has an encryption feature might lead to harmful or hate groups. Whatsapp explains that users can now “secure end-to-end encrypted backup with either a password of their choice or a 64-digit encryption key. Neither WhatsApp nor your backup service provider will be able to read your backups or access the key required to unlock it.” This optional new layer of security does have implications for Whatsapps’ 2 billion users. Mark Zuckerberg announced that messaging has been getting more “intimate, private and secure.” This level of encryption could also present competition for messaging apps like Telegram, which has been in the news for users in Russian and Ukrainian during the current war. 

Overall, the new focus on connectivity for Whatsapp makes the app look more and more like a social networking platform in addition to its messaging capabilities. Although it is not surprising that a Meta owned property introduces a FB groups feature, it will be interesting to see WhatsApp move toward a social networking platform in an attempt to appeal to younger users. 

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Meta Launches New Creator Funding Programs to Fuel Development of the Metaverse

According to Social Media Today, Meta is taking steps to incentivize US creators to take part in the metaverse through creator funding options by expanding its Horizon Creators Fund. Meta explained in its press release that these “types of tools are steps toward our long-term vision for the metaverse where creators can earn a living and people can purchase digital goods, services, and experiences.” Based on their progress, the fund will be a “goal-orientated monthly program where creators are paid at the end of the month.” It is a VR space in the Metaverse that has been in the beta stages since October. It gives tools for creators to build their own immersive experiences that they can diversify their business and profit from.  Experiences include “building your own paintball game, social hangout space, a mind-bending escape room, a collection of party games or characters.” The 10 million dollars will provide any support and resources for developers and creators.

The press release highlights success within Horizon World so far with both game designers in the creation of VR experience and community leaders who have built social hangout spots. For example, Paige Dansigner is an artist that built 150 worlds including an Art Museum and Farms. She explained her motivation to build community structure in the metaverse as a result of the “complete breakdown of social structure this past year” in her city, Minneapolis. This strategy will advance experiences and engage more users to Horizon Worlds while also launching a program that will enable creators to make and sell items within the VR universe like “attachable accessories for a fashion world or offer paid access to a new part of the world.” Digital goods like NFTs are a big trend and will certainly be implemented in the metaverse. In the article, Hutchinson argues that digital goods based on utility will be key, with eCommerce brands already populating the metaverse with digital products that are customizable and have different uses. 

With 10,000 environments already built, the collaboration with the creator will allow trends to develop organically and help generate interest in new users. Clearly, Meta is pushing its rebrand to younger audiences. After announcing a decline in MAUs in February as a result of Tiktok, Meta is aiming to boost its appeal to younger audiences. CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained last October, “We’re retooling our teams to make serving young adults their north star, rather than optimizing for the larger number of older people.” Earlier this month, Meta announced a virtual experience at Coachella in collaboration with Rolling Stone Magazine. Attendees will be encouraged to explore “products and tools that support creators’ storytelling ambitions - including Reels, Meta Quest 2 VR headsets, and Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses.” The event activations are a shift in strategy to drive adoption of Meta’s hardware even if that means showing one potential customer at a time.

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Musk to join Twitter board, promises change

By Nivedita Balu and Greg Roumeliotis

As we discussed in class, there an array of new changes to social media platforms within the past few months. Just this week, Instagram and Tiktok have announced new adjustments to their respective platforms focusing on updating its auditory offerings and messaging services. However, the recent strategy around Twitter might be the most interesting change. Reuters reported that on April 4th, Twitter announced Elon Musk’s seat on the board of the platform after buying over $3 billion dollars worth of Twitter shares this week. The entrepreneur amassed over 9.2% stake in the social media company, making him the largest shareholder. Twitter shares subsequently went up by 4% after midday trading. It is unclear what Musk plans to do with the platform but Bloomberg reports that Musk has been outspoken about the principle of the issue of free speech on the platform after it banned former president Trump forever. Last month, Musk took a poll asking his 80M followers whether  the service “rigorously adheres” to the principle that “free speech is essential to a functioning democracy.” With a result of 70% answering no, Musk openly questioned whether a new platform was needed. With speculation surrounding the platform's next move, Reuters points out that Musk will be involved with strategic decisions surrounding the edit button and Twitter’s Bluesky project, which is a “company funded by Twitter to develop a new operating standard for social media”.  Yet, board members do not have a say in the platform’s moderation policies. The CEO of twitter followed up the announcement with excitement to work in collaboration with Musk, “a passionate believer and intense critic” of the platform.

In addition to Elon Musk’s new involvement, the platform recently announced a new status indicator marker within tweets. Now, users can further update their followers on what they are doing by inserting a small, customizable status update into tweets.

This new update seems to be another reach to make Twitter more live and interactive in order to boost tweet engagement. Social Media Today suggests that the range of updates and tests is a “push to increase usage over the next two years.” Last February, Twitter set a goal of  “reaching 315 million monetizable daily active users by the end of 2023” at its analyst presentation. Currently, Twitter is about 100M users less than that goal. It is worth pointing out that growth in users has slowed, with only “added 18 million mDAU in the entirety of 2021.” This goal is certainly ambitious. It seems the rollout of updates and interactive ads as well as the addition of Elon Musk to the board is Twitter’s push to boost active in-app engagement and promotional appeal in order to compete with other platforms’ recent moves. The Twitter ads have become a lot more interactive and bold, in line with other app’s ad offerings like Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Snapchat. 

Twitter mDAU from Q’21-Q4′21

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E.U. Takes Aim at Big Tech’s Power With Landmark Digital Act

By Adam Satariano According to the NYTimes, The Digital Markets Act was passed by the EU on Thursday, March 24th. It is the most “sweeping legislation to regulate tech since a European privacy law was passed in 2018.” This landmark legislation has potential to reshape the digital landscape from social media, to online advertising and messaging services. The law applies to “gate-keeper” platforms that have significant resources and billion dollar market values including: Alphabet, Amazon Apple, Microsoft, and Meta. In summary, the law is aimed at thwarting large tech platforms from using their interlocking platforms to box in users and collect their data, as well as encouraging new entrants in order to foster more competition. As we have discussed, consumers must grant consent to data collection from outside services. Google and Meta will no longer be able to collect third party data in order to serve targeted ads. This is significant hit to companies that make over 90% of revenue from its granular ad targeting.  Similarly, Amazon will be barred from using data to offer competing products. Apple will have to allow alternatives to its App Store on the iPhone and iPad and allow companies to use alternative payment methods outside of the App store which charges a “30 percent commission.” Meta will take another hit on its messaging platform, WhatsApp. The EU is requiring a way for rival services like Telegram to send and receive messages to users on Whatsapp. Big tech needs “a well defined set of obligations and prohibitions” in order to create a more competitive market as well as protecting the rights of its citizens. However, the article mentions the large expense that enforcing these rules require. It seems that the EU faces pressure to show results within a short time period and people question if they have the budget to properly enforce  regulation.  Moreover, there is pressure from US politicians who claim that these rules are bias toward American Tech companies.     Government regulation like this has yet to be seen in America. The EU has been strides ahead of America. The EU has passed the Digital Services Act, which clarifies how platforms should keep illegal content off their sites. They’ve passed a very stringent privacy bill about consumer data in 2018. Now, with the Digital market act, the EU is preventing self preferencing. Just a day later, the NYTimes announced  American and European Union leaders reached an “agreement in principle” to assure that it is legal to transfer personal data across the Atlantic. It will force Meta to police its platform more aggressively. The EU stated that it is conscious of its citizen’s data being exposed to US surveillance. This deal continues to reflect the EU’s unprecedented protections for data privacy for its citizens. This year, Meta said that it might shut down its services in Europe if the governments didn’t resolve their differences. The scare contributed to this growing idea of global internet fragmentation. However, the news provides relief for users as the new deal will promises  “invaluable certainty for American and European companies of all sizes, including Meta, who rely on transferring data quickly and safely.”   One can argue that Big Tech  not only operates with immunity in America, it gets a “booster seat” compared to other industries.  In a discussion with Senator Ro Khanna, Kara Swisher describes tech regulation in the US as “less than zero” because of Section 230, which significantly protects tech companies. Section 230 shields tech companies from a lot of liability and allows them to moderate their platforms in the way they see fit. It was passed in 1996 and is certainly outdated.  Swisher calls for at least a simple data privacy bill to pass in the US but Congress has yet to pass one. It seems rather ironic that there is significant regulation in Europe and Australia but not in the US where these tech companies started and operate out of. The passing of the Digital Markets Act may be promising to motivate the US from talking about legislation reform to actually enacting legislation. According to Anu Bradford, the Brussels Effect is a term coined  to describe the historical influence of EU law as eventual global standards because it is easier to apply rules to an entire organization than a specific geographic area. 

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Instagram Launches New Moderator Option for IG Live Streams

By Andrew Hutchinson

Platforms are constantly vying for a competitive edge. From Instagram reels to Twitter podcasts, apps are beginning to look alike as they adopt new features to attract digital creators.  

On March 11, 2022, Social Media Today reported that Instagram added a new feature that allows live streamers to appoint moderators. Instagram announced in a tweet that moderators would be able to report comments, remove viewers from the stream and turn off comments from a specific viewer. This comes six years after Instagram introduced the live streaming capability on its platform in 2016. According to the Verge,  moderation has become a much-needed staple on other live streaming platforms, like Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook, where commenters can often get away with ruthless comments because they pop up in real-time. With a new focus on live streaming, Instagram has been rolling out various features to attract creators to its platform. In November 2021, Instagram introduced badges, a feature that gives viewers a way to pay and support creators on Instagram Live. The ability to monetize on live and availability of chat moderators come when the live streaming medium has seen impressive growth. The success of live streaming is due to the pandemic which accelerated this turn to an alternative form of gaming, live events, concerts, and even shopping. Forbes reports the industry has experienced a 99% year-over-year growth of hours watched and a 45% growth between March and April 2020. Even more so, the people watching are younger demographics advertisers buy a premium price to reach. According to emarketer, 13% of US 13+ users regularly view live streaming content. 

However, Instagram's initiative to secure safer measures for streaming is both to attract creators and expand its e-commerce business. This press release from Instagram in 2021 encourages businesses to utilize the live shopping feature on its app as a way to deepen a relationship with consumers and drive sales. Instagram has been pushing live shopping as a way for businesses to sell products directly from the app while "interacting with viewers and engaging with potential customers in real-time." The live feature capitalizes on discovery as well as building brand awareness. Instagram promises businesses that live video "humanizes" a brand through its "rich storytelling format" to give customers an immersive way to discover and buy products. Shawn O'Meara's discussion on the benefits of Twitch often emphasized accessibility. Live streaming allows creators to connect to their audience authentically by talking back to them in real-time. The chat feature also fosters a community among users who open conversations with each other. Live shopping benefits as the format brings a sense of urgency to customers who are in the same place at the same time.

Moreover, its interactive chat feature creates an immersive experience for consumers to engage in and have their questions answered. Other platforms such as Facebook, Tiktok, Amazon, and Alibaba have ventured into live shopping via Livestream on their respective platforms. To refine and expand their offerings, platforms have looked to live streaming to refine and expand their offerings for marketers to execute impactful campaigns focused on community, authenticity, and awareness.

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Meta Shares its Latest Advances in Automated Object Identification, a Key Development in its AR Push

By Andrew Hutchinson On February 28, Meta outlined new advances in its AI software, SEER. Meta, claims a “better and fairer” computer vision that concentrates on highly accurate product identification across different cultures to serve its global audience. SEER was announced back in 2021 as a self-supervised computer vision model that can learn different patterns in data on its own. This idea, called machine learning, enables the technology to learn from any random data set on the internet without any labeling or manual entry. According to Social Media Today, SEER can now outperform the leading industry standard, Imagenet, in terms of accuracy. Meta increased images in its database, which began at 1 billion and now is at 10x the scope.

According to Meta, the leverage of this denser parameter allows the computer vision system to be able to “assign meaning and interpretation to objects from varying global regions.” Traditionally AI is trained in the US or wealthy European countries, which creates a bias in the systems and limits recognizing images outside a particular culture and socioeconomic status. In terms of implementation, Hutchinson explains this improvement with object identification can help visually impaired users with automated captions along with product identification matching and branding alerts. This is key because Meta recently faced a significant plummet of its market value within the past month due to Apple’s privacy policies. To combat a projected $10B hit in ad revenue, Meta signaled the next stage of this AI technology to help identify objects in video. By doing so, Meta can collect data insights via users’ posts. It enables the company to create subsets of users based on product posting patterns to aid in high-efficiency ad targeting. According to the Wall Street Journal’s podcast, Google is in a similar struggle to create new ad technology with  Google Topics; a compromise to marketers, regulators, and privacy advocates. At first, Google used FLoC, a cohort-based targeting instead of individuals. Topics now is a less specific grouping than cohorts. It assigns a number of interests via chrome analysis of a person’s browsing history and then abstracts a number of top-level interests for the user. According to Sam Schechner, this is an alternative to putting them into “faceless cohorts.” It is important to note because Google Chrome is used by about  ⅔ of internet users. It seems clear that the decision Google makes around advertising sets the market. It is fascinating to watch tech companies restructure the dominant internet financing model. Despite new technology, it seems that third-party cookies will be hard to replace, and any solution will be inefficient for marketers that expect a 1:1 targeting rather than 1:1000 in a cohort. Although advertising is the social media company’s primary form of revenue, the technology behind SEER will help build the Metaverse. Meta notes that SEER could help “build AR glasses that can guide you to your misplaced keys or show you how to make a favorite recipe; we will need machines that understand the visual world as people do.” The Metaverse is another way Meta tries to rely less on Apple’s policies and create hardware itself. This leading technology might not only benefit the building of the Metaverse while also lessening the sting of the company’s plummet in ad revenue but also it might finally create a feed algorithm advanced enough that it can compete with Tiktok’s.

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A Change by Apple Is Tormenting Internet Companies, Especially Meta

According to the New York Times, Meta's stock price collapsed by 26% on  Thursday, February 3rd. Meta went into free fall following a weak quarterly earnings call, wiping out $230B in market value by market close. It was the largest one-day loss in market capitalization in U.S. history. 

The decline in value reflected Meta's projections on its earnings call on Wednesday, February 2nd. Meta announced a decline in Facebook's daily active users combined with a loss in ad revenue due to privacy features Apple added last year. The company's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, mentioned that it was having trouble competing with TikTok. The Verge accredits this overall decline in daily users globally to Facebook's increasing lack of relevance with young people. CFO David Wehner relayed that Meta would likely lose more than $10 billion in ad revenue due to the new iOS rules, which limits customer tracking. This long-planned shift in data privacy created significant volatility among others in the industry. Other social media competitors such as Snap and Twitter were trading lower. The privacy features made it difficult for apps to track iPhone users' online consumer behavior. Thus, preventing granular targeting to users. The company's estimated loss in ad revenue is comparable to its losses at about $10 billion in building augmented and virtual reality hardware for the metaverse. Meta hopes that this new theoretical vision for the internet would allow Facebook to be less affected by Apple's policies. 

  Until then, Apple still has extraordinary sway over tech giants because of its control of the iPhone. The rising concern over data privacy has changed consumers' attitudes and expectations around the industry and how brands work with the use and storage of data. To respond to consumer attitudes, Apple and Google have been taking steps to become more privacy-compliant and build a brand reputation around privacy and consumer control of data. 

Although the company's growth has been clearly called into question, the hit to Meta's core business isn't news to the company. In its 2020 10k report, the company cited this very issue as a risk to its business model:

"Our advertising revenue is dependent on targeting and measurement tools that incorporate data signals from user activity on websites and services that we do not control, and changes to the regulatory environment…will continue to impact, the availability of such signals, which will adversely affect our advertising revenue" (17) 

Meta specifically mentions Apple's iOS 14 announcement to limit the ability of application developers to collect and use these signals to target and measure advertising.

Google and Facebook are "walled gardens" in the ad tech industry. With the impending depreciation of third-party cookies, the duolopy must rely on its vast amount of first-party user data to maintain the high level of attribution ad accuracy that digital advertising leverages over other forms of advertising. Although Meta still dominates the advertising industry alongside Google, Kara Swisher questions whether the emerging cracks allow other players, like Amazon, to gain more ground?

Even with 2.8B monthly users in Meta's database, Amazon has coveted purchase intent data. Moreover, as Emarketer points out, Amazon's ad business growth shows that this data becomes extremely valuable to specific buyers, such as e-commerce brands and retailers.  

Overall, Meta still reported over $40 billion in profit for 2021. Vox mentions an estimated $129 billion in ad revenue in 2022 with growth at about 12 percent this year, compared to a 36 percent increase the previous year. This fall may reflect a structural change to the advertising and social media landscape. It is interesting to think about how the most prominent companies have really shaped the modern experience of the web as built around online advertising. Users expect the internet to be free. Will Facebook turn to a subscription model? Or will it look to more branded content? According to the Wall Street Journal, Twitter CFO Ned Segal says these changes "present Twitter with an opportunity rather than a risk," with 85% of Twitter's ad revenue coming from brand ads. These type of ads are less affected by Apple's changes compared to direct-response ads.

With a heavy focus on primarily selling advertising to brands and small and medium-sized businesses, Facebook might need to switch its strategy toward the creator economy. According to the New York Times, major platforms have realized that future value comes from attracting and retaining creators "who make content that keeps people coming back regularly." In addition, the creator economy creates an opportunity for growth; as a strategy to both attract new users and diversify advertising strategy. 

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Beta Post

My sector is Social Media and I will be following Social Media Today, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal.