Will Meta’s Twitter app be a hit? The verdict is in…

...can Zuck beat Elon?

Author

Matt Navarra
May 26, 2023

Hello, geeks

I bring you this week’s Geekout from inside a tent at the Creamfields festival! 🏕️

First up this week… Will Meta’s incoming rival Twitter app be a hit? 🔥

I polled social media managers. 📊 The results are in.

Here’s a catch-up on everything we know about the new Meta app.

Meanwhile, Twitter’s new CEO is up for a fight… She was said “bring it on!” in response to the news about Meta’s new app.

However, according to AdWeek, marketers are not that excited about Meta’s plans to launch a ‘Twitter-killer’ app. And to be honest, I'm not surprised.

Meta’s track record for creating new social apps has been pretty abysmal for a long time now. Their copy/paste app development strategy has been far more successful for them.

😆 Before we get started…

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Alrighty then…. Let’s dive in. Here are the hottest headlines this week:

🔥 GEEKOUT HOT 5

  1. DeSantis Presidential Campaign Launch Glitched Out on Twitter Spaces [SPACED OUT]

  2. Meta Fined Record $1.3B by E.U. for GDPR Data Privacy Violations [FLUSHED OUT]

  3. U.S. Surgeon General Warns Social Media May Be Hazardous to Teens [HEALTH HAZARD]

  4. TikTok Sues Montana to Overturn First U.S. State Ban [LAWYER UP]

  5. Meta Forced to Sell Giphy to Shutterstock for $55M After Buying It For $400M [GIF-AWAY]

What else did I spot that’s new and worthy of your attention this week?

Lots! But here are the highlights to bring you up to speed 🆕👇

Meta / Messenger / WhatsApp

Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses got smarter with improved voice control features … Meta is in talks with Magic Leap over a metaverse AR deal … Meta looks set to add WhatsApp-style Communities feature to Messenger … WhatsApp now lets you edit messages with a 15-minute time limit.

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Twitter

Twitter is making researchers delete data it gave them unless they pay $42k … Twitter has introduced a new $5k per month ‘Pro’ API tier for developers (still stupidly expensive) … Elon Musk wants to kill Twitter Circles … Twitter now publicly displays who you’re paying to subscribe to via Subscriptions … Twitter also added the ability to search for Twitter lists (finally!)

TikTok / YouTube

Tiktok is testing its own in-app AI chatbot … TikTok added auto-generated captions for live streams … TikTok says it will give Oracle full access to its algorithm and code (but will that be enough) … YouTube testing a TikTok-style recommendations tab for Shorts called ‘Samples’ … YouTube is also testing the ability to upload podcasts via RSS.

Twitch / Signal / LinkedIn / Snapchat

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Right… Let’s take a closer look at the stories generating the most news headlines this week. Geekout’s analysis is coming up next 👇

– Matt

🚨 Everyone's talking about...

The surgeon general's advisory on risks of youth social media use could shift the conversation

After years of reports suggesting how social media can be bad for young people’s mental health, we have something that hits a little harder - an advisory report from the US Surgeon General

In it, Dr Vivek Murthy writes [emphasis, mine]:

More research is needed to fully understand the impact of social media; however, the current body of evidence indicates that while social media may have benefits for some children and adolescents, there are ample indicators that social media can also have a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.

At this time, we do not yet have enough evidence to determine if social media is sufficiently safe for children and adolescents. We must acknowledge the growing body of research about potential harms, increase our collective understanding of the risks associated with social media use, and urgently take action to create safe and healthy digital environments that minimize harm and safeguard children’s and adolescents’ mental health and well-being during critical stages of development.”

– Dr. Vivek Murthy, US Surgeon General

While the advisory acknowledges social media can also be a positive tool, Murthy writes that children start using social media too young, children vulnerable to low self-esteem should be monitored closely while using social media, and he warns that some studies show social media can affect brain development.

Murthy admits there’s still a lot we don’t know and more research is needed, but what we do know is enough to warrant being very careful around how social media is used by kids and teens.

And the warning comes as governments are increasingly looking to regulate pre-teens’ use of social media.

But given how social media affects some adults (hi, Elon!), I’d suggest we should all be a bit more careful.

Facebook owner Meta fined €1.2bn for mishandling user information

Meta’s dispute with the EU over how it handles data transfers between servers in the Europe and the US has been going on for years, but this week it came to a head, with Meta receiving a record-breaking €1.2 billion fine.

What’s more, Meta must suspend data transfers across the Atlantic within five months, and delete all EU citizens’ data from US servers within six months.

Meta quickly said it would appeal, but it then found its options limited after the second-from-top European court swiftly ruled the decision against Meta legitimate. The company says it is now considering its next move.

So will Meta pull out of Europe, as it has threatened in the past? It seems unlikely. Europe is a real moneyspinner for the company. But it’s hard to see how services like Facebook and Instagram can show EU users’ posts and messages to US users and vice versa without the data crossing the Atlantic in some form.

This story is far from over.

Meanwhile, Meta felt the bite of another European regulator, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, on its balance sheet this week.

Finally offloading Giphy, as it had been forced to do, Meta sold the GIF platform to Shutterstock for $53 million… after having originally bought it for $400 million. Ouch.

Elon Musk fails to launch Ron DeSantis in disastrous Twitter Space

After seemingly years of debate about his potential to ‘out-Trump Trump’, Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign isn’t getting off to a great start. Case in point: he decided to formally announce his run in a Twitter Space with Elon Musk and Musk’s friend, the investor and podcaster David Sacks.

But counter to the hype from his own campaign, the Space did not “break the internet”. Instead, it just broke.

DeSantis eventually did launch his campaign, but the event was mired with problems from the very beginning — and DeSantis didn’t manage to use the initial Space hosted by Musk.

When moderator David Sacks, a venture capitalist and former PayPal product lead, first unmuted himself to start the talk, the Space was filled with loud, echoing feedback sounds before quickly going silent. The accounts of DeSantis and Sacks popped in and out of the initial room, muting and unmuting themselves before leaving entirely.

– Makena Kelly, The Verge

Fox News (I assume rather smugly) called it amateur hour.

And yet, Musk shouldn’t have been surprised by how it (literally) went down. The Spaces team has reportedly shrunk from around 100 to just three in recent months. And an engineering boss at the company quit (coincidentally?) quickly after the mess.

Other cracks in Twitter’s failing infrastructure this week included fake images of an apparent attack on the Pentagon being spread around by Twitter Blue ‘verified’ users, a move that briefly spooked the stock market.

Meanwhile, false election claims thrive while Musk happily tweets conspiracy theories, and the new two-hour video feature is already attracting pirated movies.

Oh, and there was a frankly ridiculous bug that reinstated deleted tweets.

Epic fails aside, the DeSantis event and news that right-wing site The Daily Wire is bringing all its podcasts to Twitter adds to the argument that Musk has turned Twitter into a ‘far-right social network’. What does that mean fore the likes of Truth Social?

Alternatively, you could argue that Musk might skew right but he isn’t all that bothered as long as his businesses thrive. With that in mind, it was, er, interesting to see that the day after his Twitter Space, DeSantis signed a Florida law that seems tailored to benefit SpaceX 🤔.

😆 LOL tweets

Amazon makes its position on password sharing very clear here, quote tweeting a now very out of date Netflix tweet, from the days when it was cool with users sharing their passwords around.

📊 Trending memes

When someone left a couch on a New York City sidewalk, they probably didn’t expect it to become a meme.

After plenty of debate over whether the couch was a designer model or a knockoff, or whether it was a health hazard etc etc, predictably, the brands got involved:

Mashable has a good roundup of the NYC couch Twitter discourse.

Meanwhile, the DeStantis Twitter Spaces fail spurred plenty of memes:

📈 Going viral

As an early taste of the kind of chaos A.I. generated images can create on social media, a bunch of (Twitter Blue verified!) accounts shared fake images of what looked like an attack on the Pentagon this week.

The move briefly spooked the stock market, but a close look at the images revealed them to be fake. A better job could have been done with Photoshop… which this week introduced A.I. features of its own.

Things are going to get crazier, folks.

Verified Twitter Accounts Spread AI-Generated Hoax of Pentagon Explosion

🪧 Brand social

This is a good read about one of the most offbeat and successful brand social strategies out there…

How Duolingo Grew Its TikTok to 6.6M Followers

👀 Good reads

The Influencer to Social Media Manager Pipeline Is About to Take Off

Why brands are hiring influencers as behind-the-scenes creative directors.

And don’t miss:

As more news starts to drip out about the Twitter-like app from Meta that could be with us next month, let me know…

❓ Question of the week

As more news starts to drip out about the Twitter-like app from Meta that could be with us next month, tap through for some good ideas for what it should be called… and add your own!

Some of the suggestions so far…

😮 WTF?!

Ouch: “A Spanish YouTuber was sued by his ex-girlfriend’s father after the influencer made videos levelling accusations of abusing women.”

The result? A month of weekly shame via his own YouTube channel 👇

YouTuber Ordered to Read His Defamation Sentence Every Week on Camera

🔨 New tool

This is very handy if you’re trying to keep up activity on both Twitter and Mastodon and are tired of manually cross-posting:

This iOS shortcut lets you post to your Twitter and Mastodon accounts at the same time

🤖 A.I.-mazing

The latest ways A.I. is transforming social media:

TikTok is the latest social platform to experiment with an A.I. chatbot:

Also:

🤦‍♂️ FAIL

Twitter users are increasingly posting pirated movies now that Blue subscribers can upload up to two-hour-long videos. ‘Shrek The Third’ was even posted in the replies to Elon Musk announcing the feature!

Twitter’s new 2-hour video feature is already making it a hub for pirated movies

Also:

💬 What did you say?!

It seems Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom isn’t keen on the social media landscape he helped build:

🪲 Bugging out

And the award for dumbest bug of the year (probably) goes to…

A Twitter bug is restoring deleted tweets and retweets — including my own

🪦 RIP

Features on their way to the grave:

The ‘Stories everywhere’ era is over. YouTube is killing its Stories feature as it wants you to post Shorts instead.

YouTube Stories are shutting down June 26 as company focuses on Shorts

Also:

💡 New feature spotlight

This might seem like an odd one until you remember how much WhatsApp is leaning into communities and groups - handles are far better than phone numbers there:

💬 You can quote me on that

When I’m mentioned in the news, you’ll find it here:

I spoke to Bloomberg about the unenviable task Twitter's new CEO faces working with Elon Musk:

The Biggest Challenge for Twitter’s New CEO Will Be Managing Elon Musk

Also:

📊 Stats of the week

How big is Snapchat in the UK? We didn’t really know until this week:

Also:

📈 Charts of the week

The number of viral videos on TikTok has declined significantly:

Also:

Meta News

ICYMI: Instagram's New App Could Be Here By June

The first screenshots emerged of Meta’s Twitter-like app, which could emerge as soon as next month.

  • …and Twitter’s new CEO responded by tweeting “game on”. [Fortune]

  • Meta carried out its final round of pre-announced layoffs this week. [Bloomberg $$$]

  • …but the layoffs could affect the company’s ability to fight disinformation. [Washington Post $$$]

  • Mark Zuckerberg says he wants Meta to have more stability and less bureaucracy. [Washington Post $$$]

  • Meta could partner with Magic Leap as it looks counter the incoming AR/VR threat from Apple. [Financial Times $$$]

  • The UK government is restarting its attacks on Meta’s encryption plans. [BBC News]

  • WhatsApp faces its first fine in Russia for failure to delete 'banned' content. [Reuters $$$]

New features and tests:

Facebook:

  • Facebook now has the post composer and a ‘Top action items’ menu in the Groups tab, for some users. [@oncescuradu]

  • Facebook is promoting landscape videos as Reels and adding a link to the full video. [@oncescuradu]

  • Facebook has been spotted pushing VR videos in users’ feeds. [@MattNavarra]

  • Facebook is adding a timer counting down to ads on Reels. [@oncescuradu]

Instagram:

  • Instagram has added search ads placement into its marketing API. [Social Media Today]

  • Instagram has consolidated all types of drafts into a new section in the Professional dashboard. [@howfxr]

  • Instagram has been spotted offering a new ‘Plays’ badge in Reels achievements. [@BusMark_w_Nika]

  • Instagram looks to be planning an option to link to your profile on its Twitter-like app from your main Instagram profile. [@alex193a]

Messenger:

  • Messenger is adding a WhatsApp-style ‘Communities’ feature. [@oncescuradu]

  • Messenger is testing a new ‘Family Center’ including new supervision features for parents and teens. [@ahmedghanem]

  • Messenger has been spotted testing a new unread messages filter. [@ahemedghanem]

WhatsApp:

  • WhatsApp now lets you edit messages with a 15-minute time limit. [TechCrunch]

  • WhatsApp is working on a usernames feature. [WABetaInfo]

  • WhatsApp is set to prompt users to make sure they know the password for their encrypted backup. [WABetaInfo]

  • WhatsApp is testing making group chat settings easier to use. [Android Police]

The rest: Creator Studio/adtech/Quest and more:

  • Meta Quest will now let you customise your home virtual world. [The Verge]

  • Meta’s new A.I. models can recognize and produce speech for more than 1,000 languages. [MIT Technology Review $$$]

  • Meta has added new voice control features to its Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses. [Tech at Meta]

Twitter News

Twitter introduces a new $5,000-per-month API tier

This is PRICEY: “Twitter announced a new API tier today called Twitter API Pro for startups that costs $5,000 per month. The tier gives developers the ability to fetch 1 million tweets per month and post 300,000 tweets per month.”

  • Twitter is likely to quit the EU’s code against disinformation, anb EU official says. [Reuters $$$]

  • Twitter Circles could be removed as a feature, judging by a tweet from Elon Musk. [Social Media Today]

New features and tests:

  • Twitter now lets you search for Lists on the web. [@TwitterSupport]

  • Twitter has been spotted having removed the ‘verified followers’ tab. [@ahmedghanem]

  • Twitter now publicly shows who you're paying to subscribe to via Subscriptions. [Mashable]

  • Twitter appears to have rolled out picture-in-picture video globally. [@oncescuradu]

  • Twitter is working on a ‘verified since…’ label. [@nima_owji]

  • Twitter is tweaking the way emoji reactions work in DMs. [@512×512]

  • Twitter is working on a "Videos for you" section in the sidebar. [@nima_owji]

  • Twitter is tweaking Community Notes to help identify inaccuracies in notes. [@CommunityNotes]

  • Twitter is planning more media control options. [@ehikan]

TikTok News

Driver’s Licenses, Addresses, Photos: Inside How TikTok Shares User Data

“Employees of the Chinese-owned video app have regularly posted user information on a messaging and collaboration tool called Lark, according to internal documents.”

  • TikTok is suing Montana over its new law to ban the app. [BBC News]

  • TikTok has reshaped its ecommerce unit in bid to crack Western markets. [Financial Times $$$]

  • TikTok videos will be shown in airports thanks to a new deal with ReachTV. [AdAge $$$]

  • TikTok ‘prankster’ Mizzy’s videos show flaws in TikTok’s moderation system [The i]

  • TikTok says it will ‘soon’ share its code with Oracle for auditing. [Bloomberg $$$]

  • TikTok stars are getting hired as social media directors at major companies. [dot.LA]

  • Ongoing Chinese influence operations could strengthen the case for a TikTok ban. [Social Media Today]

  • MEPs grilled Ireland’s data protection commissioner this week over the pace of action against TikTok. [TechCrunch]

  • TikTok doesn’t seem ready to launch search ads soon. [Digiday $$$]

New features and tests:

  • TikTok has added the ability to import sounds from videos and locally under the 'Sounds' feature. [@jonah_manzano]

  • TikTok is testing a new way to repost videos from the comments box. [@ahmedghanem]

  • TikTok has added auto-generated captions for live streams. [@jonah_manzano]

  • TikTok now lets users set a default audience for their posts. [@oncescuradu]

  • TikTok is testing a retouch feature. [@juleserpak]

  • TikTok has added a new option for selecting the video quality in certain live videos. [@jonah_manzano]

💥 More social media news and updates

YouTube Undercuts Amazon on Streaming Push

  • YouTube will offer US users unlimited NFL Sunday Ticket streams, but only at home. [The Verge]

  • LinkedIn has a problem with fake commenters. [Financial Times $$$]

  • The skin care brand Bioré apologised for appearing to trivialise school shootings in a social ad. [New York Times $$$]

  • Spain wants to ban end-to-end encryption, according to a leaked EU document. [Wired]

  • Twitch is raising the price of Turbo, its monthly subscription that removes ads. [The Verge]

  • A teenager died while climbing a Los Angeles bridge in an apparent social media stunt. [The Guardian]

  • Tweetbot creator Tapbots has launched Ivory for Mac, a desktop version of its Mastodon client. [Macrumors]

Insights to give you an edge at work:

  • How Duolingo grew its TikTok to 6.6 million followers. [Digital Native]

  • How Michelob Ultra used real-time marketing to capitalize on a viral moment. [Future Social]

New features and tests:

  • YouTube has made Community Posts available to all channels. [Social Media Today]

  • YouTube is testing uploading podcasts via RSS feeds. [Podnews]

  • LinkedIn is rolling out new verification and anti-scam features. [Engadget]

  • LinkedIn has integrated more buyer intent signals into Sales Navigator Alerts. [Social Media Today]

  • Snapchat has added a 'Tag a Place' feature when uploading a Spotlight. [@jonah_manzano]

  • Snapchat’s AR filter can now paint your nails. [The Verge]

  • Snapchat+ now offers new app icons, themes, and bitmoji items. [Snap newsroom]

  • Twitch is testing changes to the ‘Views from Switch’ data panel. [@TwitchSupport]

  • Pinterest has launched a new system to ensure its discovery features include more diversity. [Social Media Today]

  • Discord is testing new parental controls for teens. [TechCrunch]

  • Signal now offers a choice of app icon - you can even change the app’s name on your homescreen. [Android Police]

  • Stream Deck has launched custom Discord-branded hardware. [The Verge]

  • T2 has added an ‘invites’ tab and suggested follows when a new user signs up. [@jonah_manzano]

  • Microsoft has launched a text and image moderation tool that uses A.I. [TechCrunch]

  • Flipboard has added support for Bluesky and Pixelfed. [TechCrunch]

📖 Weekend reading

Are Bluesky Social’s Good Vibes Doomed?

“As Elon Musk’s Twitter continues to turn off users, the hot new invite-only social media platform Bluesky has been billed as a refuge. But the company is already facing content-moderation issues. ‘You still have to draw that line somewhere,’ one ex-Twitter executive says.”

😳 And finally...

I mean, I like a good TikTok session, but this is ridiculous:

“An influencer marketing agency has opened up applications for its ‘TikTok Watching Job 2.0’ which includes scrolling TikTok to discover new trends.”

An influencer agency is offering people $1,000 to scroll TikTok for 10 hours straight

📅 Back next week...

…And that’s EVERYTHING you need to know this week.

Geekout download. DONE. 👊✅

I’m off to go get this Creamfields party started >> It’s going to get crazy shortly! 🔥 😮

Goodbye, geeks!

— Matt

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This newsletter is edited by Martin SFP Bryant

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