Elon Musks Drives X Active Users to Mass Decline and YouTube Leans Hard Into AI

1/5 Elon Musk Continues to Drive Users Away From X?

Despite Elon Musk’s continuous claims that X is reaching new usage highs every month, new data from Similarweb shows the exact opposite. As reported by the Financial Times, active daily users on X in the United Kingdom have declined from 8 million last year to 5.6 million at present. More than a third of this occurred after Musk posted about the race riots in the UK, offering up his traditional divisive views. This same mass fleeing of users is occurring all across the world, and not simply in places where X has been banned. In the United States, X’s active users have fallen by a fifth in the same time period.?

2/5 Snapchat and Google Partner Up for AI Push?

Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snapchat, has announced that the company will be integrating even more of Google’s AI Gemini into its own system. In doing so, Snapchat is seeking to expand its own AI offerings. Interestingly, up until this point Snapchat’s AI has been powered by OpenAI’a GPT models; the two companies have been in a partnership for a year now. Reports suggest that Snapchat is making the switch to better power its My AI, enabling it to understand mor information types such as audio, text, video and images.?

3/5 YouTube Loses Major Artists In Licensing Dispute?

YouTube users have noticed a silence descending over the platform in recent days, with music from major artists such as Adele, R.E.M and Green Day suddenly disappearing. The platform is currently in the midst of a dispute with the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers, which has not renewed its YouTube partnership. Whilst the SESAC still has some time before its partnership fully expires, YouTube is already scrubbing its platform of SESAC artists and showing error messages to users. Some believe the preemptive removals are an attack from YouTube, seeking to get the upper hand on SESAC.?

4/5 YouTube Goes Hard on AI?

2024 has been the year of social media platforms leaning into generative AI, and YouTube is no different. While many have been sceptical on how much use gen AI add ons to social media actually is, Youtube has released a new report that could provide the proof we have all been searching for. The report claims that 92% of creators are already utilising Gen AI tools to create their content, with more planning on joining the revolution. In spite of this, 90% of creators feel they are not using gen AI to its fullest potential. This implies that whilst the majority of creators are working with gen AI, many do not properly understand its possibilities. YouTube is planning to monopolise on this gap, providing creators with more information on how gen AI can empower them.?

5/5 TikTok Brings Keyword Targeting to Search Ads Campaigns?

TikTok is adding yet another way for advertisers to target searching users on the platform with an updated Search Ads campaigns. The new update will give advertisers far more control in the placement of their ads relative to user searches. TikTok claims that 57% of users engage with its search function, and 23% head to the search button within 30 seconds of opening the app. As such, allowing advertisers to target specific keywords, controlling the placement of their ads, should be revolutionary for brands.

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