133 NEW updates, tips, tools for social media pros

April 09, 2021

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Hello, Geeks!

First off… This is the most ironic Facebook notification in 2021 (so far!) 😆

Soooo much new social media stuff spotted in the past seven days....

DID YOU SEE...

Facebook never fails to deliver when it comes to controversial decisions and facepalm moments. This week was no different, with 533m users' data appearing for free download online. To bring yourself up to speed, read this. So, Facebook’s PR team basically said “Yes, we know this happened, but we’ve dealt with it already, and there’s no issue any more”.

As the heat got turned up on them by further scathing news coverage, Facebook then issued a new explainer about the incident hoping it would pour cold water over the story. It didn’t. I spoke to the Press Association about Facebook's response being so cold, clinical, and lacking in empathy, you’re left wondering whether one of their A.I tools wrote it! More on this mess below.

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HIDDEN GEM: Acid Tabs for Chrome - Auto-grouping magic for your Google Chrome tabs.

This has saved me from Chrome open tab hell!

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Clubhouse news has been flying out thick and fast again this week. The main headline being about a $4 billion valuation, and rumours that Twitter was considering acquiring it.

I remember when people’s mouths dropped when Facebook stumped up $1 billion for Instagram back in 2012, and now that price seems like Zuck got it at a bargain price. However, I do think $4bn for Clubhouse would be a risky high price to pay for such a new app widely regarded as facing a lot of hurdles and challenges to stay on top in the years ahead.

Celebrities and influencers fiercely try to control their image online. When something bad about them is leaked, their PR team and publicists go into damage limitation mode. BBC News asked me and a few other industry experts whether in an era of social media, private messaging apps, and live streams, how much control do celebrities really have? [Read the full story]

ICYMI

Ok folks… Let's jump into this week’s biggest social media industry talking points in this week’s news roundup...

— Matt

P.S.

🟣 JOIN ME ON TWITTER SPACES!

I will host my weekly Geekout hangout on Twitter Spaces at 4PM UK today (FRI 9 APR).

We will be discussing all this week’s top talking points for social media managers.

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🚨 Everyone's talking about...

When news broke that 533 million Facebook users' personal details were floating around on the internet for anyone to access if they cared to look in the right place, Facebook was very keen to downplay the incident.

"This is old data that was previously reported on in 2019. We found and fixed this issue in August 2019," said a member of Facebook's comms team. 'Nothing to see here - old news, old data' was seemingly the message they were going for.

They were right that it was old news. Facebook publicly acknowledged the breach in September 2019, and the data cropped up in a story in January this year when it was publicly searchable — for a price — via a Telegram bot.

But that same data now being freely available is absolutely a story, and it wasn't going to go away just because Facebook wanted to brush it under the carpet. That was especially true once it turned out that Mark Zuckerberg's own phone number was part of the breach 😱

Facebook published a slightly more thorough response a few days later, but the truth is this story might not disappear any time soon.

There's a lack of clarity about exactly when the data was scraped. If any of it was from May 2018 onwards, Facebook will have violated current European data protection laws by not notifying regulators and affected users as soon as it discovered the breach.

And Facebook's decision not to notify users even now has led well-respected site Have I Been Pwned to have to pick up the slack (search there to find out if you're affected). While Facebook's reasoning for not notifying users may arguably have some merit, this whole mess shows just how tricky data protection issues can be.

[$$$]

It was a pretty safe bet that Clubhouse will have fielded acquisition offers over the past year, but now it seems we have details of one of them.

Twitter reportedly held discussions with Clubhouse over a $4 billion acquisition. This begs the question 'is it worth that'? The answer hinges a lot on when this deal happened. Bloomberg didn't share that detail in its report.

A few months ago — especially in January this year — Clubhouse looked like the the next big, hot thing, and Twitter (even though it had already announced it was working on Spaces at that point) may well have thought $4bn (coincidentally the same valuation Patreon reached this week after seven years) was a fair price.

Indeed, Clubhouse announced it had raised funding at a $1bn valuation in January, and Twitter's offer apparently inspired the founders to raise again at $4bn — something it was reported this week they are doing right now.

But is Clubhouse still worth $4bn in April 2021? Its core offering is being copied by pretty much every social app out there. 'What can it possibly offer beyond that?' many are asking.

But don't write Clubhouse off quite yet. If Instagram was just 'sharing square photos with filters' it would have been a footnote in social media history now. Clubhouse's true worth will be decided by what it does with the community it builds. And it's just getting started there. This week it launched a beta test of direct payments to creators from users and it hasn't dropped its invite system or launched on Android yet.

Brands may be holding off on getting involved for now, but Clubhouse has the kind of mainstream awareness many one-year-old startups would kill for, and a warchest to act on it as it opens up to more users.

One area where Clubhouse and Spaces currently fall short is in letting creators easily record their conversations as podcasts. The most straightforward way of doing that right now is by recording the audio-out from a phone into a separate device, and in a world where smartphone manufacturers hate headphone jacks, that's not as easy as it could be.

So it was encouraging to see Facebook's experimental NPE team launch perhaps the least out-there app they've created yet. It's not a niche, wacky idea — it's actually a solid concept! Available only as a web app, Hotline lets creators run Q&A sessions and record them for later replay.

Now available in beta, Hotline is focused on a very specific kind of creator, those who help their audience "expand their professional skills or their finances," according to TechCrunch. Unlike Clubhouse and Spaces, there's an option for video too.

Hotline isn't available in the UK yet so I've yet to try it, but if more Clubhouse-style services move in this recording-focused direction, the style of many podcasts could change very quickly.

👀 ICYMI...

Stories you need to know about:

Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp:

It's not clear why this happened, but it's not a good look.

  • Four US lawmakers have requested more information from Facebook about reported plans for an 'Instagram Kids' app. [@RMac18]

  • EU regulators may probe Facebook's acquisition of customer service tech company Kustomer. [VentureBeat]

  • Facebook ran ads for a malware-infested fake 'Clubhouse for PC' app. [TechCrunch]

  • Facebook has released an A.I. data set for researchers, based on people who were paid to share their information — not the company's usual model, for sure. [CNN]

Twitter:

The US National Archives should probably hold a record of Trump's tweets while he was President, but Twitter says no.

  • Twitter has reworked its ad offerings, with a simplified array of options for advertisers. [Social Media Today]

  • Twitter has published its first Global Impact Report, which is describes as "a cohesive representation of the work we’ve done across environment, social, and governance issues since Twitter’s founding in 2006." [Twitter blog]

  • Twitter has repeated its suggestion that it may introduce commerce features directly within its app. [@Cheddar]

  • The notorious Fyre Festival 'terrible lunch' tweet is being auctioned as an NFT to pay for its author's kidney transplant. [The Verge]

  • 😭 is now the most-used emoji on Twitter, overtaking 😂. [Emojipedia]

TikTok:

TikTok has teamed up with IPG Mediabrands to help brands establish presences on the platform.

  • TikTok is partnering with LiveRamp to help brands better target their campaigns. [Social Media Today]

  • TikTok is marking Sexual Assault Awareness Month with new resources for users and plans for more in the future. [TikTok newsroom]

  • TikTok's parent ByteDance is trying to attract Western A.I. talent with a 'ByteCamp' training week in Beijing as it looks to compete with Facebook and Google for the world's best developers. [Insider $$$]

  • TikTok will mark National Pet Day in the US with a charity drive. [Adweek $$$]

And the rest:

New figures from the Pew Research Center shows YouTube has seen the most US user growth of any social media app over the past year.

  • Amazon apologised for one of its cranky tweets aimed at politicians, but only because it was factually incorrect. The apology also went out of its way to attempt to deflect as much blame from Amazon as possible. [The Hill]

  • Snap reportedly explored ways of circumventing Apple's forthcoming anti-user-tracking feature, but says it will not do anything in violation of the rules. [Financial Times $$$]

  • Snap acquired an app called Screenshop last year, it has emerged. The technology will reportedly be used to recommend clothes for users to buy within Snapchat. [The Information $$$]

  • Snap and Twitter have invested in the Indian startup behind Moj, a TikTok-style app that has picked up traction since TikTok was banned in the country. [CNN]

  • Apple's Tim Cook says he is "shocked" at some of the negative reaction to the anti-tracking policy coming in iOS 14.5. [MacRumors]

  • The UK's new 'big tech' regulator has begun work. It will tackle the dominance of companies like Facebook and Google. [TechCrunch]

  • YouTube is opening up about how many views videos that break its rules get, via a new metric. [CNet]

  • YouTube Kids is a "wasteland of vapid, consumerist content", according to a committee of US lawmakers. [BBC News]

  • Pinterest has launched a $500,000 Creator Fund. [TechCrunch]

  • Pinterest is reportedly in talks to acquire VSCO. [New York Times $$$]

  • Pinterest is bringing its ad offerings to Latin America, starting with Brazil. [Bloomberg $$$]

  • Twitch says it may take action against users who commit serious offline acts such as terrorism. [CNBC]

  • Australia is considering a ban on anonymous internet use. The controversial plan is being fielded as a drive against domestic violence. [Gizmodo]

  • Khloe Kardashian has been trying to get an unfiltered photo shared to her accounts "by mistake" removed as other users repost it. [BBC News]

  • Welsh football club Swansea is boycotting all social media in response to racist abuse against two of its player. [Sky News]

  • RIP Yahoo Answers. Yahoo's parent company Verizon is shutting down the ageing Q&A platform and removing it from the internet on May 4th. [The Verge]

❓ Question of the week

An idea is brewing at Geekout HQ...

Some of the replies here are genius!

Click through and share your own slogan ideas! 👇

🔨 Tool of the week [sponsored]

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🤔 Thought of the week

🔍 Insights

Social media data, insights and reports to give you an edge at work:

  • Make sense of Clubhouse's userbase and the hot topics on the platform with this collection of insights. [Michael Brito]

  • And here's a look at the ecosystem of third-party apps springing up around Clubhouse. [Jeremiah Owyang]

  • How does Ben & Jerrys craft strong social media messaging? Find out in this 16-minute video interview. [Fast Company]

  • What are the top social platforms used by US adults? Here's a chart from March 2021, including Clubhouse. [Insider Intelligence]

  • Instagram has shared tips on making the most of influencer marketing. [Social Media Today]

  • Planning a back-to-school marketing drive? Snapchat has a guide to help you out. [Social Media Today]

  • Want to understand advertising on Reddit? The company has launched a resource hub just for you. [Social Media Today]

_______________________

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📲 Quick hits

Updates, experiments, and useful info snippets:

  • Facebook has introduced labels for satire pages, hoping to help users tell when they're looking at something false. [The Verge]

  • Facebook has introduced a new dynamic ads product aimed at helping streaming services target users with the right content. [Adweek $$$]

  • Facebook is testing QR codes for p2p payments with Facebook Pay. [MacRumors]

  • Facebook has announced new tools and content to mark the month of Ramadan. [Social Media Today]

  • Facebook has added a ‘Layouts’ feature for sharing multiple photos. [@MattNavarra]

  • Facebook has added support for Zoom and GoToMeeting to Portal TV. [Facebook newsroom]

  • Facebook has discontinued the Oculus Rift S, saying retail stocks will no longer be replenished. [The Verge]

  • Facebook is testing 'see less' and 'see more' buttons on Watch videos. [@MattNavarra]

  • Facebook is working on a "Captions" sticker. Instagram has also recently been spotted developing one. [@alex193a]

  • Facebook marked World Health Day with sticker packs and a Covid-19 vaccine photo frame across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. [Adweek $$$]

  • An 'emotional health' section has been spotted in the Facebook app. [@ItsJeffHiggins]

  • Instagram is developing an intriguing 'Incentives' feature to let users earn money by completing milestones. [@alex193a]

  • And the intro page for the incentives feature has been uncovered. [@alex193a]

  • Instagram is working on a 'Reshare' sticker for Stories. [@alex193a]

  • Instagram has added a ‘shake phone to report a problem’ feature. [@MattNavarra]

  • Instagram has been spotted letting users manage their shop catalogue in the app. [@MattNavarra]

  • Instagram is planning an icon to show when audio is trending in Reels. [@alex193a]

  • Instagram is working on a button to let you quickly create a Reels remix. [@insta_leaks]

  • Instagram appears to be testing artist profile pages when using music stickers for Stories. [@MattNavarra]

  • WhatsApp is working on the ability to migrate your chat history from iOS to Android and vice-versa. [WABetaInfo]

  • WhatsApp is rolling out the ability for businesses to create and manage shop catalogue from WhatsApp on desktop and to hide unavailable items. [@MattNavarra]

  • Twitter has launched a hashflag in support for the Milk Tea Alliance pro-democracy movement. [Gizmodo]

  • Twitter has confirmed that Spaces is coming to desktop browsers. [The Verge]

  • Twitter is testing a new style for its 'twemoji' in fleets. [Emojipedia]

  • Twitter's Birdwatch programme is now accessible from the main Twitter web interface, for those who already have access to the tweet annotations initiative. [@birdwatch]

  • TikTok is officially rolling out auto-captions in the US as an accessibility feature. [TikTok newsroom]

  • TikTok has launched a video editing tool to let you create native video ads in your browser. [TikTok newsroom]

  • TikTok now offers a 'Wellness Hub' offering content related to 'Food and Nutrition', 'Fitness', 'Life Advice' and 'Mindfulness'. [Social Media Today]

  • TikTok now lets you cast your live stream on PC or Mac. [@MattNavarra]

  • TikTok has tweaked its QR code feature. The background colour is now customisable, and they're no longer called 'TikCodes.' [@MattNavarra]

  • TikTok is warning advertisers about the impact of upcoming Apple iOS 14 changes to user tracking. [TikTok Business Help Center]

  • A TikTok job vacancy hints at new APIs for business accounts and creator monetisation. [@MattNavrra]

  • Pinterest has launched new business tools to make life easier for people who work on Pinterest ad accounts. [Social Media Today]

  • Reddit has dropped support for iOS versions below 12. [MacRumors]

  • Houseparty users can now stream their Fortnite gameplay directly inside the social video app. [TechCrunch]

  • Signal is testing a cryptocurrency-based payments service within its app in the UK. [Android Authority]

  • Telegram's experimental 'X' app has been updated with new emoji, improved dark mode support, and more. [Android Police]

📖 Weekend reading

The problem of how social media and photo apps make painful memories hard to forget

💀 Meme of the week

Junior social media manager vs. senior social media manager:

Credit: @workinsocialtheysaid on Instagram.

📅 Back next week...

Does anyone ever actually get to the end of my newsletter and read this bit?

Yes? You legend. Tweet me to tell me about this important achievement! :)

BEFORE YOU GO...

🟣 JOIN ME ON TWITTER SPACES

I will host my weekly Geekout hangout on Twitter Spaces at 4PM UK today (FRI 9 APR).

We will be discussing all this week’s top talking points for social media managers.

💲 TELL 10,000+ SOCIAL MEDIA PROS ABOUT YOUR NEW THING!

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Right… I need to get outta here and start my weekend! (*pops wine in fridge to chill*)

Goodbye, geeks!

— Matt

This newsletter is edited by Martin SFP Bryant.

Copyright 2021: Matt Navarra Media Ltd

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