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Twitter Alternative 'Barcelona' by Meta is Taking Shape (5.2)

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Twitter Reinstates Free Blue Checkmarks for High-Profile Users (5.2)

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Facebook Launched a New Feature of AI-Generated Stories Based on Previously Shared Images (4.18)

Recently, Facebook launched a new feature called “Advanced Stories.” It is an automated Stories generation process that uses image recognition AI to create new Stories from your shared content. As described by Facebook, it “Allows Facebook to suggest high-quality, ready-made stories for you using advanced photo and video data, including image quality, location, the presence of people or animals.” This feature is designed to attract more people to post to Stories and improve user engagement.

In fact, this is not the first time Facebook has tried to adapt to the trend that users are shifting towards Stories and private messages. Although people are still consuming a lot of content in the main feed with the help of the powerful AI recommendation algorithm, according to Meta’s own statistic, creation and engagement is declining, with fewer people posting to both Facebook and Instagram than they have in the past, partly because years of worry and division made people extremely cautious about sharing in the public. Meta has already launched several features to align with this such as Channels and Notes on Instagram.

Under such circumstances, the new feature could be a great method for Facebook to increase user engagement. If it is available for business use, The Advanced Stories can be a great tool for companies to enhance their brand awareness, enrich brand culture, and highlight specific products in Stories. For regular personal users, it could be a convenient tool to share daily content and engage with their family and friends via their established social graph, which most other social apps can’t replicate.

However, nobody knows if this new feature is useful. Maybe it is a huge step for Facebook to successfully enhance user engagement and acquire more market share. Or maybe people don’t care about the new feature, and it’ll disappear over time.

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State Governors are Imposing Restrictions on Underage Usage of Social Media Apps (4.18)

With more and more experts raising alarm bells about worsening mental health among American adolescents due to exposure to social media, lawmakers are acting aggressively to curb underage usage of these platforms. TikTok CEO, Shou Zi Chew’s testimony before Congress signifies the trend. During the hearing, he was repeatedly asked to explain any protection measures and monitoring mechanisms that TikTok imposes to protect minors. 

Recently, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a sweeping bill implementing a minimum age limit for social media apps, such as TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. The law enforces companies to obtain parental consent before allowing users under the age of 18 to create an account. The law relies on third-party companies to fulfill age checks. Interestingly, the seemingly universal bill has quit a few categorical exemptions. 

“Media companies that ‘exclusively’ offer subscription content; social media platforms that permit users to ‘generate short video clips of dancing, voice overs, or other acts of entertainment’; and companies that ‘exclusively offer’ video gaming-focused social networking features were exempted. Another amendment carved out companies that sell cloud storage services, business cybersecurity services or educational technology and that simultaneously derive less than 25% of their total revenue from running a social media platform.”

Similarly, last month, Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed two bills requesting social media apps to implement age verification, acquire parental consent, enable guardian access to their children’s accounts, and set default curfew. 

I agree with the move that regulations for social media companies should catch up to the speed as they grow in popularity among teenagers since the industry regulation is still in a relatively nascent phase. However, I doubt whether the straightforward ban would appropriately protect minors. Firstly, giving parents excess access to their children’s accounts probably violates the First Amendment. Secondly, the age limit of 18 means that most adolescents can drive independently before they can log into their social media accounts without parental consents. Lastly, the bill may pose enormous danger on LGBTQ children in abusive families. 

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Instagram NFTs Will Be Deactivated on April 11th (4.4)

Instagram is now informing users that their current, active NFTs in the app will be deactivated on April 11th. The action is among a series of movements of winding down Meta’s NFT-related projects. 

Meta is at the forefront of creating metaverse hype and major breakthrough in the virtual world. In May 2022, Meta launched NFTs on Instagram as a means to showcase digital ownership among the general public. It enabled selected creators to share digital collectibles in the app via various providers, with data linked to the relevant blockchain. 

However, as NFT sales continue to plummet in recent days due to the lack of interest, broader depression in crypto markets, and the economic downturn, the fall of the metaverse is becoming evident. The downturn is also confirmed by Disney’s action of eliminating the entire metaverse sector. 

Although the metaverse is promised to be a thing in the future, how far the future is away from the present world is unknown. In fact, this is not the first time we witness the metaverse failure. Metaverse has been envisioned in the human’s future ever since the 19th century. After that, it has been four waves of up and down around the metaverse including this one we are currently experiencing. 

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Meta Reforms Ad Options on Facebook as it Leans into Evolving Consumption Shifts (4.4)

As TikTok disrupted the social media world with its short-video content, other major players in the industry have followed the suit and launched their own versions of short-video. Meta, for example, rolled out the Reels function on Instagram and Facebook. Since then, consumers have reacted favorably: Reels played across Facebook and Instagram doubled over the last year. Although Meta is not the pioneer in the short-video format, it monetizes the shifting consumer habit earlier than TikTok and initiates a new advertising business model suitable for the short-video content. 

On March 28, Meta announced four reformations in ads options on Facebook. 

Launching Click-to-Messenger Ads in Facebook Reels 

Advertisers can turn organic image and video posts into Facebook Reels ads in Ads Manager. The call-to-action button is available now in the Reels ad, which will drive consumers’ direct contact with the brand via private chat. The new ad placement, in turns, will increase the popularity of short-form video and private message interaction on Facebook. 

Enabling WhatsApp conversation optimization in Facebook Reels ads

Previously, only Click to Messenger ads direct people to initiate a conversation with a business on Instagram, Messengers, and WhatsApp. Now, WhatsApp conversation optimization is enabled in Facebook Reels ads. The change enhances Meta’s focus on WhatsApp as their primary contact channel and facilitates more business opportunities in messaging apps. 

Rolling out the Ads on Reels post engagement objective 

It’s already implemented on Facebook that creators can place ads either Overlay or Post-Loop on their publicly shared Facebook Reels. Meta now puts more efforts in helping advertisers quantify the performance of Ads on Reels, including reactions, comments and likes, and compare them to engagement from other campaigns. The more widely available performance metrics will encourage advertisers to invest heavily in Facebook Reels as a new marketing outreach tool. 

Winding down in-stream reserve program

“In-stream reserve” is an ad buying option that Facebook introduced in 2018. It provides a means for advertisers to reach people watching video content from the highest quality publishers and creator. Originally designed for Facebook’s longer, original watch programming, the ad buying option program is no longer attractive for advertisers given the shifting consumer preference to short-video content. Meta is going to retire the in-stream reserve program at the end of 2023 when all existing deals are completed. 

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FTC Issues Orders to Social Media and Video Streaming Platforms to Address Surge in Advertising Fraud (3.21)

The Federal Trade Commission issued 6(b) orders to eight social media and video streaming platforms - including Meta Platforms, Inc., Instagram, LLC, YouTube, LLC, TikTok, Inc., Snap, Inc., Twitter, Inc., Pinterest, Inc. and Twitch Interactive, Inc - in an effort to scrutinize and restrict paid commercial advertising that is deceptive or exposes consumers to fraud. 

The FTC’s movement is in response to the skyrocketing fraudulent activity on social media platforms since 2017. According to FTC data, “more than 95,000 people reported about $770 million in losses to fraud initiated on social media platforms in 2021”. 

The 6(b) orders authorize FTC to conduct studies that do not have a specific law enforcement purpose. The commission is now collecting a wide range of information from the above-listed companies, including: 

Tools that ensure commercial advertising is distinguishable from other content for consumers, such as disclosure tools for enforcers and influencers 

Policies and standards regarding commercial advertising and the process of compliance monitoring 

The ad revenue, the number of ad views, and other performance metrics on the platforms

The order is approved in FTC in 4-0 voting. Based on the information from 2019 to 2023, the time frame of the pro-COVID era, the study will shed light on:

The prevalence of fraudulent paid advertising on social media and video streaming platforms

The victim of ad fraud

The effectiveness of the compliance screening process on these platforms 

The ad creation process

The method of ad tracking and classification 

The various ad formats available to advertisers, such as shoppable ads, virtual reality, and other extended reality ads 

I believe the move is just the beginning of the increased governmental regulation on social media and video streaming platforms. The debate over the TikTok ban would be a sign of tightening policy. More and more academic papers are revealing concerns about the negative impact of social media on people’s mental and physical health. Major publications begin to disclose underregulated business conducts, like unlawful data trading, in the social media industry. Although the social media and video streaming industry is a billion-dollar business growing at a stunning speed, the market is still in its nascent phase with a relatively short history. So do the legislative forces worldwide.    

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Twitter’s New Text Formatting Options (3.21)

Following Elon Musk’s tweet in January this year announcing Twitter’s native formatting options, the new feature now moves through to the pre-deployment stage in the app. The updated text display will have bold, italic, and underlined options and offer different font sizes. 

The launch moves one step closer to encouraging users to tweet long-form content locally, instead of linking off to third-party sites to view the full-version content. The new formatting feature is among a series of experiments on Twitter aiming to facilitate user-generated content and user engagement, providing an avenue for creator monetization in the app and extra revenue sources for Twitter. 

Last month, Twitter extended the maximum tweet length for Twitter Blue subscribers to 4,000 characters and is working on further expanding the limit to 10,000 characters. Also, a new in-app keyboard allowing users to add line breaks is upon release to improve the readability of long tweets. However, it’s unclear now whether the new formatting features are exclusive to Twitter Blue subscribers or general users. 

Twitter’s experiment has significant implications for the future of social media’s business model. Social media used to be an intimate site for people to socialize with friends, while the general trend now reveals that social media has increasingly become a personalized “TV”, where users receive text-based or video-based content passively. The popularization of TikTok and Instagram’s initiation of the reel function all confirm such a trend. Following suit, Twitter releases new formatting options and expands the text length, which foreseeably makes in-tweet creation easier and will attract more user-creators. In other words, Twitter will have more space for ad insertion and therefore increase its revenue. Without long-tweet functionality, Twitter plays the role of attracting audiences while sending them to third-party sites and letting go of the ad revenue. 

It’s still debatable whether the new feature will create a backfire or new business opportunities for Twitter. For example, some argue that “@” and “#” are more often used on Twitter than line breaks. Other claims that line break is an engagement trick on LinkedIn, imitated by Twitter. Probably, Twitter needs to find a balance between retaining its Twitter vibe and maintaining compatibility in the market. 

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Welcome!

The sector I choose is social media, and I will follow The Wall Street Journal, Social Media Today, and Vox as my main sources.