More and more Dutchies join social media. This year's social stats are ready for you! NewCom and Meltwater International published their annual surveys and slowly but surely the Q4 results of various social media platforms are rolling in.
In the Netherlands, TikTok continues to grow steadily, BeReal is a major newcomer, Clubhouse has been labeled a one-day wonder and Facebook, Youtube and even Instagram are increasingly being abandoned by young people. Compared to other countries, the Netherlands belongs to the rearguard with an average of 1:39 hours of social media use per day. The global average is more than 1 hour higher. Furthermore, Meta showed an unexpected recovery, where on the contrary Snap is very cautious with its predictions which gave them a big drop in shares.
That social media is widely used to provide updates to friends and family is common knowledge, but figures show that a new trend is emerging among younger generations. For example, 30% use social media as a search engine for videos, articles but also shopping and reviews - Google is going to feel the effects!
The tech sector is having a hard time, this is demonstrated again by the layoffs at Yahoo and ZOOM. Yahoo will lose 1,000 jobs, ZOOM even 1,300! At Meta, another round of layoffs is also coming in 2023, which Zuckerberg has dubbed "the year of efficiency."
Twitter.
Never a dull moment with Elon at Twitter, there is noise once again! It seems that the platform wants to drastically curtail free API-access and has also stopped the CoTwee feature it had only recently launched.
Do you suddenly see a lot of Musk's tweets passing by on Twitter? Could be right. Rumor has it that Musk is making his own tweets more prominent in the algorithm. And speaking of tweets, don't you think 280 characters is enough? Paying customers of Twitter can now put up to 4,000 characters in a tweet. Will this feature be rolled out to all users as well?
Also, according to Musk, Twitter is going to share ad revenue with creators. But, those creators must first become paying customers of Twitter.... So this means that creators must first have a paid Twitter Blue subscription ($8 on the Web, $11 on iOS devices) before you can participate in the ad revenue sharing program. So you first need to donate to Musk’s bank account before you get anything in return!
Meta.
Expert Jon Loomer lists Facebook's 3 most recent (important) ad updates:
- The return of conditional formatting
A great tool for getting a quick picture of how ads perform based on colors, just like in Excel sheets! - The return of conversion breakdowns
Allows you to breakdown your conversions by various categories, including type of placements. - Placement of Instant Articles disappears for good
As of mid-April 2023, the Instant Articles feature will disappear for good.
Meta has also taken another step in terms of ad transparency, by expanding its publicly accessible 'why am I seeing this ad' feature.
Just like TikTok, Meta is also discontinuing live shopping on both Facebook and Instagram. What is wildly popular in Asia is not yet catching on in Western countries. The focus is therefore moving more explicitly to advertising to support social commerce.
After Twitter, the time has come for Meta to start testing with a paid verification feature. Meta claims this will help creators to position themselves, however we all know it’ll primarily be to generate additional revenue. This test is going to take place in Australia and New Zealand. For paid verification, you get the following:
- A verified badge
- More protection against impersonation
- Help with access/account issues
- Greater visibility and reach
- Exclusive features
Furthermore, Tencent and Meta are reportedly working on a deal to start selling the Meta Quest VR headsets in China to compete with Bytedance.
Instagram.
You may have already noticed! Instagram rolled out a new feature in Europe called notes. Notes? You know, those kind of memos/status updates that appear at the top of your DMs! These are short messages that, like stories, remain available for 24 hours and then disappear on their own. By clicking on someone else's message, you can post a comment, which will appear in that person's DM.
Meanwhile, Instagram continues to expand its "gifts" program, which allows users to give creators gifts (and money).
To further enable creators to keep followers informed, Instagram is launching a one-to-many messaging feature called Broadcast Channels.
Also, Instagram appears to be testing pushing products in group chats. An interesting feature for (especially) SMEs.
Artifact.
The founders of Instagram are coming out with a new social media app: Artifact. The app is all about news curation, with a similar algorithm to the one used by TikTok. Artifact is a combination is articles, facts and artificial intelligence. The platform's algorithm works just like TikTok, when you click on an article that interests you, the platform will show you similar articles down the road.
TikTok
TikTok is once again under pressure in the US. A Democratic senator who is a member of the Senate intelligence committee wants Google and Apple to ban the TikTok app in America for breaching US national security.
YouTube.
YouTube breaks through the barrier of 50 billion daily impressions with Shorts. A huge success story, although Meta is still at double the number of impressions with reels, for example.
Also, YouTube comes with a new update, which was long-awaited and perhaps crazy even that it wasn't there; the multilingual audio clips. So this allows creators to record multilingual audio clips.
Podcasters and podcast fanatics beware! YouTube has been seeing a trend for some time that podcasts are also increasingly being distributed via the platform. YouTube is adapting by adding podcasting as a feature of the YouTube studio app.
Pinterest.
Pinterest lost 12% in the stock market this past month. This was due to weak Q4 numbers and uncertain Q1 expectations shared by the platform. The company also shared that CFO and chief operating officer Todd Morgenfeld will be leaving Pinterest effective July 1st, 2023.
Roblox.
Roblox, one of the most concrete and successful companies in the Metaverse category, experienced 23% growth in 2022 and now has 56 million users. The growth can be seen in all regions ages, where previously the Metaverse was mainly focused on children other age groups seem to be catching on as well.
LinkedIn.
Linkedin has often been criticized that the appearance of the platform is quite bland, amid a world that is becoming increasingly visual. That's going to be addressed now, with more visual options in your profile.
"Whether it's images, videos, newsletters or documents, you get to choose which type of content your Activities section displays first. This new experience will be available to all members in the coming weeks, and we hope that as a result, your network will quickly find and engage with your content, leading to more professional connections and opportunities."
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