TikTok and The Others 4 Summer News Stories We Will Still Hear About In Autumn.
Tired of sunbathing? Tired of alternating between going for a dip in the sea and having a cocktail on the beach? So are we! (Riiiiight)
Your holidays may have caused you to miss some more or less important news. We have therefore drawn up and analysed this list of 4 social media-related news stories that happened during the summer of 2020: stories we will probably continue to hear about in the coming months.
Instagram vs TikTok: an open challenge.
We have known for some time now that the Facebook Group was studying a new feature for Instagram that could challenge the unstoppable rise of TikTok. And so, on Wednesday 5 August, Instagram presented the world with Reels: short videos that are very similar to those of the Chinese social network.
So similar, in fact, that in order to incentivize use of the videos and try to break through from day one, Instagram hired major creators by offering them hundreds of thousands of dollars to abandon TikTok in favour of Reels.
Because of this, Instagram hasn’t exactly received the highest praise from newspapers this month. The Wall Street Journal and Forbes reiterated that: “Facebook will continue to do what Facebook does: find great features elsewhere and embed them in their own apps.”
It is not hard to blame them after what happened with the introduction of stories that are, for all intents and purposes, in the format that made Snapchat famous.
But what are the main differences between TikTok and Reels?
- Duration: TikTok allows users to record 60 second clips, Reels currently offers only 15 second clips.
- Layout: While the editing tools on TikTok are on the right side of the screen, Reels has them on the left. But the functions are almost identical: changing speed, inserting effects, inserting audio and using a timer for the duration of the clip.
Other differences: not attained.
The true question is: will Reels be able to convince users to ditch TikTok and move to Instagram in exactly the same way the stories stunted Snapchat’s growth?
Instagram currently seems to have found more favour in America than TikTok has…
Trump, TikTok and Microsoft: the hottest triangle of the summer.
At the end of July, President Trump announced that he wanted to ban TikTok in the United States because he was concerned for the security of American data. The US administration has long argued that the ByteDance app is used by the Chinese government to collect information on American citizens.
So for a month now, there have been rumours of potential acquisitions by large American companies in order to avoid banning the app, which is used by over 100 million Americans. The deals will probably close in September, with an investment of between 20 and 30 billion dollars, a value attributed only to the US part of the platform. The most likely buyer currently seems to be Microsoft, which already owns LinkedIn. The Walmart supermarket chain is a runner up. Although in recent weeks there has been talk of interest from Twitter and Oracle.
It certainly won’t be an easy negotiation. Last Friday, the Chinese government added several artificial intelligence features to a list of export-restricted technologies, such as the recommendation algorithms essential to social media services. In this way China could stop tech deals with other countries, as TikTok sale.
And many questions remain to be answered, such as: will viewers in countries where TikTok is controlled by ByteDance still be able to see and interact with American content?
As a result of all this, there has been a boom in TikTok clone platforms in the United States: these include the American Triller, which Trump himself immediately joined in the hope of influencing his fellow citizens in their choice.
Hate speech, fake news and conspiracy theories: a clear and present danger for all social media networks.
Without straying too far from TikTok, the ByteDance social network recently announced that it has removed more than 380,000 videos, 64,000 comments and 1,300 users for hate speech since the beginning of 2020. In taking such action, TikTok wants to demonstrate its commitment to making the community safer and more welcoming.
“To be clear, these numbers don’t reflect a 100% success rate in catching every piece of hateful content or behaviour, but they do indicate our commitment to action.”
Hate speech is a very difficult parasite to eliminate and TikTok seems to be aware of that: there is still a lot to do and the platform’s moderating team is constantly being trained to understand more nuanced content. This was an interesting move for TikTok to make, as it has been beset with controversy in recent months. Indeed, TikTok has been accused of banning the content of people it considers “too ugly, poor or disabled” on the grounds that such users’ content reduces public interest in the app.
But TikTok is not the only social network fighting something that is apparently hard to eradicate. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Facebook has been working with the WHO and other official health organizations to offer users reliable information and to eliminate fake news. Spoiler: sadly it seems this effort isn’t working.
An Avaaz report found that overall health disinformation received an average of 460 million views per month in Italy, the US, the UK, France and Germany alone.
Vaccination programs have paralysed thousands of children in India, the 5G network and Bill Gates are causes of the pandemic, stories about bogus treatments and false claims about the effectiveness of quarantine and masks. These are just some of the fake news items that have circulated in recent months. Such stories are distributed by accounts and pages called super spreaders, which have spread fake news for years and which support each other to make it difficult to monitor their activity.
It is further proof of the fact that Facebook technicians have not been able to control the rampant disinformation on the platform for some time now. Although the Facebook algorithm is also the platform’s strength, the problem of fake news dissemination lies in the algorithm’s intrinsic structure: it tends to present users with viral posts that are similar to what the viewer has already seen, but without actually verifying the content of the posts.
For its part, Facebook is trying to take small steps to eradicate disinformation. In fact, a few days ago Facebook announced it had banned pages, groups and profiles linked to the conspiracy movement QAnon, an organization which most US federal authorities have considered a danger to public safety for some time now.
Despite having facilitated the expansion of this movement through its own features, Facebook’s commitment appears solid: it has created a task force of moderators who are studying terminology and symbolism used by QAnon in order to prevent the dissemination of content related to it.
News from Instagram and Facebook that got everyone talking.
At the beginning of this article we mentioned Reels, a gauntlet thrown down to TikTok by Mark Zuckerberg. And there was more news from Instagram this summer. Until now, the Instagram feed consisted of a succession of posts published by the accounts we follow — until the posts ran out and an end message appeared on our screen.
To prevent the feed from running out too quickly, a few days ago Instagram introduced Suggested Posts. These are posts published by accounts that are not among those we follow, but which might be of interest us if we knew about them. The idea is to allow users to explore and find new accounts that are aligned with their interests.
A feature which is still being tested, but which may prove to be a good opportunity for brands that could benefit from exposure to genuinely interested audiences.
While Instagram pursues never-ending-scrolling, Facebook continues along a path drawn during the pandemic: focusing on live streaming events and creating paid format.
This is an opportunity for businesses and professionals that are struggling to get back on their feet to monetise their Facebook content and transform it into another source of income. The paid events are added to the introduction of Facebook Shop, which we have talked about in recent months.
To conclude: there was plenty of hot news in August! The advent of TikTok has wreaked havoc both in international politics and within the Facebook Group. Mark Zuckerberg seems to have implemented features designed specifically to challenge the Chinese giant ByteDance. Only in the autumn will we see the epilogue of the whole affair. For the time being we are closely following this new phase that will surely lead some brands to review their social media marketing strategy.
Would you like to understand more about Facebook paid events? Or would you simply like to learn more about an emerging platform like TikTok, to be able to include it in your business strategy?
Contact us to find out what we can do for you: https://sncegroup.ch
