Hello, geeks!

Well… It’s been yet another eventful week in social media land. presidential Threads, lawsuits, and yet another u-turn by Musk 🙄.

But before we get into that… 

• Do you talk more like a MILLENNIAL or a BOOMER at work? Take the test!
  

• Can you guess my results? Reveal my score 👀

So… President Joe Biden has joined Threads. A noteworthy milestone for any major social media platform. Sources tell me the decision to have the President join Threads was hotly debated inside the White House.

Watch the President’s social team hitting send on the White House’s first Thread.

Does this mean President Biden will join the X exodus and quit using Elon’s hellsite any time soon? Apparently not. As much as many love to hate the platform, it still remains an important comms channel for the President as we head into election season. 🇺🇸

It’s probably very sensible that he sticks around on X to set the record straight, as we’re about to see a tsunami of election misinformation crash over the platform in the coming months! 🌊

Meanwhile, I have been locked out of my old Twitter account. Not that I have much use for it any more. I upgraded my iPhone and now the 2FA is bugging out and won’t let me in. I’m taking it as another sign to never go back. ❌

You won’t be surprised to hear that X support has ignored my multiple requests to help me regain access to the account. 🤷‍♂️ 

QUICK THING… 

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🔥 GEEKOUT HOT 5

Geekout with our hottest picks of the week:

1. X Sues Media Matters After Report On Ads Next To Nazi Content [OH, ELON]

2. President Biden + The White House Are Now On Threads [HELLO, MR PRESIDENT] 

3. Elon Musk Is Bringing Back Headlines To Link Previews On X [U-TURN, AGAIN]

4. YouTube Admits Slowing Video Loads Times For Ad Blocker Users [FFS, YOUTUBE]

5. U.S. Senate Subpoenas CEOs of X + Snapchat To Testify On Kids’ Safety [BACK TO D.C]

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🚨 EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT…

X is spiralling fast… And Elon is talking nonsense (again)

How do you react if you’re accused of antisemitism and advertisers flee your platform? If you’re Elon Musk you don’t go into apology mode, you shoot the messenger.

Media Matters for America was sued by X this week for showing that X was displaying brands’ ads next to Nazi content. X might have called the article a “deceptive attack” - but that was debunked by users who could easily replicate the problem themselves.

A new report showing X profiting from Israel-Hamas war misinformation won’t help, either (even it the company doesn’t agree with the report’s findings).

It really is looking bleak for X now. Apple, Disney, Paramount and many more pulled their ads. Even Paris Hilton, who signed up to a high-profile partnership with X last month, has already pulled out.

Musk is never wrong, of course 🙄. His response was to call those brands “the greatest oppressors of your right to free speech”. I’m not sure anyone but his biggest fans believe that.

To be fair, there was a PR fight back of sorts - Musk claimed not to be antisemitic and introduced new moderation rules. But gravity only pulls you down, and X is falling fast.

Right-wing influencers want to bail Musk out, but their ad buys can’t match the lost revenue from all those big brands. If you’re reduced to taking help from Andrew Tate of all people, things can’t be great.

Let’s face it. X’s best hope might be as a home for the right, although that’s not the ‘global town square’ Musk wanted, and won’t help his plans to become an ‘everything app’ that is the centre of everyone’s finances.

It’s no wonder top ad execs have pressed CEO Linda Yaccarino to quit for the sake of her own reputation. But I wonder if she’s now too deeply indoctrinated into Musk’s circle to break free unless she’s fired.

Biden joins Threads, but X isn’t his ex (yet)

Threads has been slowly building back up from the slump after its launch, and that rebuilding got a big boost from none other than Joe Biden this week, as a bunch of White House-related accounts launched on the platform.

The White House might say the move has nothing to do with the meltdown on X (Biden and co will continue to post there) but posting a promo for his new account on X does suggest the social team there know which way the wind is blowing

…and we know they’re not afraid of trolling for the lols.

But while Threads is gaining traction and relevance, the question remains: is it good for following news or bad for following news?

Most of the news around the drama at OpenAI this week was made on X, as the key players posted updates there. But it was perfectly possible to follow along on Threads, with a fraction of the noise and baseless speculation on Musk’s platform.

Still, for Meta to become a better live news reporting space, it will need to fix the problem where threaded posts get displayed as self-replies, rather than posts in their own right, making them nearly impossible to follow.

With their caution around news, I wonder if Adam Mosseri and his team are thinking very carefully about whether they want to fix that or not - even if a product called Threads really should do threads properly.

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✨ NEW & NOTEWORTHY

Everything else you need to know from the past seven days…

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😆 LOL

When people freaked out over Threads’ version of ‘hashtags without the hash’ last week, Zuck proved he’s quite chill about the fictional version of his life these days…

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🪧 BRAND SOCIAL

Not every brand has the budget for this, but Stanley certainly caused a buzz this week, and made one customer very happy indeed…

Also:

• When Balenciaga launched a £695 ‘towel skirt’ that was just a towel, Ikea leapt in with some excellent reactive marketing… and so did Asda 😆

• McDonald’s wants a new director of social media and influencer marketing, and the job ad is well worth a read!

• Read this interview with the man behind Ryanair’s social media success, after his very public falling out with the airline

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🙊 WHAT DID YOU SAY?!

“…You can have the greatest salesman in the world trying to sell you something. You’re only going to buy enough buckets of shit before you realize it stinks…" 💩

– An unnamed agency strategist tells Digiday why things look so bleak for X

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💬 YOU CAN QUOTE ME ON THAT

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

I spoke to The Drum about the advertiser exodus at X, and what might happen next.

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🙄 YOU DON’T SAY…

If you use Threads, you’ve probably seen users writing ‘Dear algorithm’ posts where they list their interests in the hope they’ll see more of that stuff in their feed.

Unsurprisingly, Meta says this doesn’t work. Only engagement will influence your feed…

👀 MY FAV READS

Richard Cook is always worth a read. Here he is on the challenge of tracking memes and trending content in 2023…

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🗳️ X-IT POLL

How long does Linda Yaccarino have left at X? My Threads followers reackon she’ll be gone in days. But is she too far into the cult of Musk to step away?

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🪦 RIP

Social media features heading for the graveyard:

Not everything needs an A.I. chatbot, so it’s goodbye to Discord’s Clyde from next Friday.

Also:

• Facebook is removing 'Hobbies' info from profiles on Dec 13th

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🛠️ TOOL ALERT

This app lets you cross-post to X, Threads, Bluesky and others.

It uses the internal API that the Threads web client uses…

"Because of this hack of sorts, being able to use Threads via Yup means having to turn off Instagram’s two-factor authentication"

But will Threads block it soon? I wouldn’t recommend using it.

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🤖 SOCIAL A.I.

All the ways A.I. is transforming social media:

Google Bard Can Now Understand YouTube Videos. It can respond with answers based on the spoken words in a YouTube video.

This means that after you ask Bard for a list of YouTube videos on a topic, you can ask it to tell you more about what was shown or spoken in that video.

• TikTok is testing letting users tell its algorithm what they want to see more or less of in their feed, complete with freetext input

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🤦 FAIL

Some people will do anything for fame. And some people will go to prison for it.

The icing on the cake: the judge telling Mizzy his videos weren’t funny.

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🔍 Insider interview

Twitter’s original trust and safety chief has spoken up on X’s approach. She’s not impressed.

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📊 SOCIAL STATS

69%

…the percentage of US teens using TikTok every week, as it overtakes YouTube for the first time.

Also:

• Stats from TikTok show how the app is a force for good in the music industry (apparently)

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📈 CHARTED

Also:

• Is the advertiser X-odus actually more of a trickle?

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• A recent court decision against Meta threatens to disrupt online advertising by effectively banning demographic targeting, a lobbying organisation has warned. [MediaPost]

• A judge has dismissed most of Sarah Silverman‘s lawsuit against Meta over unauthorised use of authors’ books to train its generative A.I. model. [The Hollywood Reporter]

• Meta could benefit from all the drama at OpenAI over the past week. [CNBC]

• Meta's head of augmented reality software stepping down. [Reuters $$$]

• Meta Quest 3 is estimated to cost $430 to make, meaning it’s probably a loss-making device on hardware sales alone. [Android Central]

• Meta has disbanded its Responsible A.I. team. [The Verge]

• Italian regulators are probing Instagram’s branded content. [WSJ]

New features and tests:

Facebook:

• Facebook now shows if a profile is on Professional Mode or not, and if the profile is running ads. [@theahmedghanem]

• Facebook has been spotted offering a shortcut to users’ Instagram profiles on their Facebook profiles. [@theahmedghanem]

• Facebook has moved the ‘About’ section of profiles for some users. [@theahmedghanem]

• Facebook is testing a new hovering bottom bar. [@theahmedghanem]

Instagram:

• Instagram is testing a new display for post shares and comments. [@theahmedghanem]

• Instagram has added an ‘Invite to join’ feature for livestreams. [@jonahmanzano]

• Instagram now has a ‘partnership ad code’ option in Reels, like TikTok. [@yassermasood]

WhatsApp:

• WhatsApp is adding email verification for authentication. [9to5Mac]

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

• Meta Business Suite now allows you to create, post, and schedule Reels directly from the app. [@theahmedghanem]

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• Linda Yaccarino wants staff to cut spending as advertisers walk. [Fortune]

• Music legend Neil Young has boycotted X over Elon Musk’s antisemitic post. [The Guardian]

• X is working on integrating xAI’s Grok chatbot into its web app. [TechCrunch]

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• TikTok has partnered with Royal Mail to improve the delivery experience for TikTok Shop merchants in the UK [TikTok Newsroom]

New features and tests:

• TikTok has a new UI for Live Center. [@theahmedghanem]

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💥 EVEN MORE SOCIAL MEDIA NEWS & UPDATES

• EU lawmakers have backed rules forcing Big Tech to tackle CSAM without breaking encryption. [Reuters $$$]

• TikTok, Snap, and other companies are calling for a new engagment-based ad measurement standard. [Marketing Brew]

• Trust issues are holding back social commerce, a new report has found. [Social Media Today]

• Truth Social’s parent company has sued 20 media outlets for reporting its finances incorrectly. [Bloomberg $$$]

• Teen boys are falling for a Snapchat nude-photo scam. [Wall Street Journal $$$]

• New platform Noice is trying to take on Twitch and Kick by adding minigames to streaming sessions. [Tubefilter]

Insights to give you an edge at work:

• 9 top social media competitor analysis tools tor 2024. [Hootsuite blog]

• LinkedIn has shared new insights into engagement with collaborative articles. [Social Media Today]

New features and tests:

• LinkedIn is launching new features for advertisers. [LinkedIn Ads blog]

• Snapchat now has new autumn icons for Plus subscribers. [@theahmedghanem]

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📰 WEEKEND READS

• How social media is turning into old-fashioned broadcast media

• Why $1 per year won’t solve Twitter/X’s bot problem

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😳 AND FINALLY…

The stuff of Thanksgiving nightmares. 😭😱

Sending positive vibes out to Geekout’s U.S social media manager fam ✨

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📅 BACK NEXT WEEK…

… Right folks, that’s EVERYTHING you need to know this week. ✅

I’m heading off to prepare for filming in London next week.

I’m being interviewed for a NEW documentary which will air on Channel 5 (UK) in January 2024. More details soon. 🎬

I hope they have a good hair/makeup artist… I’m going to need a lot of work! 😱

Goodbye geeks!

p.s. This newsletter is edited by Martin SFP Bryant