Potholes on the Road to Making Instagram Safe Again –– and Shop, Shop, Shop Til You Drop, Drop, Drop

Shop, Shop, Shop 'Til You Drop, Drop, Drop: Now you can shop everywhere! Twitter tests shopping on business profiles. Snap continues to invest in AR-based shopping. YouTube pilots shopping directly from livestreams. And TikTok just rolled out some neat new live tools as it gears up for live shopping too. (Yes, it really is starting to look like QVC out there.)

Delivering on Diversity Promises: All the major platforms have diversity initiatives, but some seem more lip service than others. Pinterest, though, continues to lean into diversity, in addition to touting itself as the last safe space on the internet. Jeremy King –?Pinterest’s SVP of Technology –?shares his vision in a fascinating interview.?

A Kinder, Safer, and More Immersive Instagram: There’s a lot going on at Instagram as the platform pivots to video (and the metaverse). A new anti-harassment tool called?Limits?is rolling out, and IG head Adam Mosseri hinted at more to come. However, some are saying that Instagram is moving too quickly and censoring many of the creators they hope to protect. The dust-up comes after IG rolled out a new “Sensitive Content Control” filter that automatically defaults to “Limit” without telling users. It led to a precipitous view drop for many creators. I applaud Instagram for their efforts in attempting to make their app a safer and healthier space for everyone, and I don’t buy the accusations that they are deliberately censoring some types of content –– heck, not even Facebook knows how their AI-based algorithms really work! But hey Instagram, let’s give creators and users a heads up before making radical changes. Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose –– and once lost, you’ll rarely get it back.

QUIBIS:?

• Interesting look at four digital media megatrends playing out this year.
• Actionable podcasting strategies gleaned from Reuters’ annual news study.
• NYC TikTokers can make or break your restaurant.
• Video filters are so yesterday. Audio filters are the new frontier, and Twitter is leading the way.
• TikTok partners with Vimeo to bring SMB video-creation tools to Double-T. Magisto lives!
• Congrats to two of our favs! Rhett and Link launch an accelerator to invest in creators.
• Welcome “Se?or Bestia”! VidCon regular and Unilingo CEO Farbod Mansory partners with Mr. Beast.
• Roblox funds community game developers.
• If you’re not paying attention to Discord, WAKE UP! And watch this video.
• Big business –– influencer marketing spend will surpass $3B in the US this year, $4B next.
• Pink Floyd drummer –– and others –– invest in Disciple Media, a platform aimed at the creator economy.
• Startup Lumanu secures $12M?in funding to simplify the business of the creator economy.
• Huge for Big Yellow –– Snapchat up to nearly 300M daily active users!
• Neat new live tools from TikTok aid in moderation and more.
• Stats-A-Palooza! Hootsuite releases its Q3 global state of digital.
• Why we buy merch.

This Week at VidCon Now:

• TUESDAY: Telling stories that matter –– a workshop from global content strategists and creators Cassie Roma and Clare Cheyne. Watch it live at 12 PM (PT) at live.vidcon.com.
• WEDNESDAY: Learn about the ways artists and labels, like Sony Music Mexico, are building strategies around TikTok! This session will be presented in Spanish. Watch it live at 9 AM (PT) at live.vidcon.com.

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Tip of the Week: This week’s Tip of the Week comes from Jon Weilbaecher, frequent VidCon speaker and the SVP of Strategy & Audience Development at Little Monster Media Co.

Impressions (on YouTube) are your direct indication of how much the algorithm is pushing your content.?Impressions can be affected by a myriad of factors. Most directly, performance on videos will increase the total. Impressions often spike when you have a hit piece of content that expands past your core audience. However, this becomes a game of chicken v. egg when your goal is to raise performance.

So, in the absence of outliers (which you can’t really strategize for), you can also increase impressions through third party audience support like collaborations, tentpoles, or trends. Find content ideas that can connect with new audiences, and then create direct opportunities to reach them.

Don’t be afraid of novelty, experimentation, or general new formats. One of the values of doing new things when your channel is in a rut is the chance at generating more impressions as your audience decides to give something new a chance. This is partially why channels with linear content do better with first episodes or #1s of ongoing new series.?

Lastly, the easiest tactic to enact would be the community tab. This affects overall channel health and can help stabilize performance when the channel has average or even below-average performance. This is especially important for channels that might be in a rut or experiencing a long-term plateau.

What We’re Watching: Olympians have officially taken over TikTok, posting videos of their medals, reviewing Japanese snacks, and showing how they prepared for the opening ceremony! Check out @kennychase25, @ilonamaher, and so many more. British Olympian Tom Daley posted an Olympic Village Tour on his YouTube channel as well.

Also, I’m loving the TikTok classic ad remakes. They’re fun to watch, and you can read more about them here.

See you around the internet, and feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested, and if someone forwarded this to you, you can sign up?on our website at?VidCon.com?— scroll down and select “VidCon Weekly Industry Highlights."