In Other News: Musk Shares His Twitter Pitch Deck

May 11, 2022Gra GarethIn other news  

Welcome back to In Other News, our fortnightly segment of the latest digital marketing news where we do the reading so you don’t have to. This week, we have updates on Twitter, Google and WhatsApp!

 

Elon Musk shares his Twitter pitch deck

Elon Musk is a man known for lots of well-thought-out, practical ideas, and he’s showing no signs of stopping with his forthcoming acquisition of Twitter [best read in a silly voice]. 

The key takeaways from the pitch deck shared with the New York Times are his intent to double user activity in the next 3 years from ~300m to 600m, increase Twitter revenue by 5x to 26.5 billion in the next 6 years, and reduce ad revenue by half, from 90% of the site’s takings to 45%.

Musk also plans to fire 1000 members of staff by 2023, as well as hiring 2700 staff by 2025. How he’ll achieve all this wasn’t made clear… Through magic? Maybe through magic.

 

Google Invests $14 billion in Goodwill Digital Careers

The tech giant has had a partnership with non-profit organisation Goodwill since 2019 and are investing even more heavily to provide digital skills training to help people compete in a digital-first job market. 

Kent Walker, Google President of Global Affairs said of the landmark investment: “The funds support infrastructure development and expansion, like tracking systems for hiring and training that will improve the reach and effectiveness of Goodwill’s services at the local level.”

 

WhatsApp seeks to improve community features

As part of a series of quality-of-life initiatives, WhatsApp is working on rolling out some significant new features for the platform. 

These include emoji reactions, which everyone but me seems to have on Instagram (how else am I supposed to communicate to my pals that I’m feeling 🤠?)  and 32 person audio chats, which must be useful to someone, though it’s difficult to imagine how. There’s 7 billion people out there, so someone’s bound to like it. 

WhatsApp will also introduce 512 person text group chats. Why? Why not!? Me and my 512 acquaintances have business to discuss, and the previous 256 person limit just wasn’t cutting it. Up to 2G file sharing is also coming, which actually sounds quite useful for when you need to share a really really really long music video with your 512 pals.

Do you have questions or want to discuss what these changes mean for your business? Drop me a line at gra@pilotfishmedia.com!

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In Other News: Musk Turns Down Twitter, Pinterest Joins The Climate Change Misinformation Battle and Google Tests Topics

April 14, 2022Maya BenabdelhadiIn other news, Pinterest, Twitter, Twitter  

Welcome back to another week of In Other News, our fortnightly segment on the latest digital marketing news. This week, we have Twitter, Pinterest and Google updates – we’ve done the reading so you don’t have to! 

Elon Musk turns down Twitter’s board

Earlier this year, Tesla boss Elon Musk announced his ambition to revolutionise social media. This was followed in early March by him buying a 9.2% stake in Twitter, making Musk the primary shareholder of the social media giant. Musk then indicated his desire to discuss a potential merger or board collaboration with Twitter. The following weekend, he proceeded to tweet about potential changes, such as removing the letter w from Twitter or turning their headquarters into a homeless shelter.

In a surprising turn of events, Twitter’s Chief Executive announced on the platform the following Sunday that while the board had seriously considered Musk becoming a board member (pending a background check), the Tesla boss declined the position on the morning of the day of his official board appointment. Musk replied to this announcement by a single emoji, which was deleted a little while later.

Despite this board membership saga, Musk maintains that he remains open to future involvement with the social media giant. As the majority stakeholder, he also still holds significant power and, as such, he may yet still influence Twitter in an indirect way.

Pinterest joins the battle against climate change misinformation

On Wednesday the 6th of April 2022, Pinterest unveiled a series of guidelines to actively combat climate change misinformation, including conspiracy theories. This new policy was promoted under the motto ‘positivity starts with policy’ and makes Pinterest the first social media platform to set anti climate change misinformation rules.

From now on, content that falls in the following categories will be removed from the platform:

  • Content that denies the existence or impacts of climate change, the human influence on climate change, or that climate change is backed by scientific consensus
  • False or misleading content about climate change solutions that contradict well-established scientific consensus
  • Content that misrepresents scientific data, including by omission or cherry-picking, in order to erode trust in climate science and experts
  • Harmful, false or misleading content about public safety emergencies, including natural disasters and extreme weather events

These rules also apply to advertising content. Advertisers must now also comply with these guidelines and in particular, assets containing climate change conspiracy theories, misinformation or disinformation will be barred on Pinterest.

Sarah Bromma, Pinterest’s Head of Policy, explains that the driving force behind these new guidelines is a desire to safeguard Pinterest users’ wellbeing while on the platform as well as their trust in Pinterest. It’s also interesting to note that this new policy comes into effect after Pinterest recorded a sharp increase in green-living and sustainability-related searches.

Google start testing Topics

After much pressure from legislative bodies on user privacy, Google announced that it would progressively faze out cookies. This, however, would mean that its primary clients, advertisers, would be left without consumer data.

Since then, Google has worked on alternatives to cookies, with their first proposal, FLoC, being abandoned. In January 2022, Google introduced its successor, Topics. Topics are meant to fill the gaps in tracking that cookies will leave behind and provide advertisers with the data that they need. These nifty little trackers are an attempt for Google to balance out governmental concerns for privacy with its clients’ (advertisers) needs for data. Testing is now underway.

Topics will track information on Google Chrome and Google services (Gmail, Google Calendar, etc.) that the user has shown interest in in the last 3 weeks and provide the information to advertisers. The insights will then be stored for a limited time only.

 

 

Do you have questions or want to discuss what these changes mean for your business? Drop me a line at maya@pilotfishmedia.com!

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In Other News: Pinterest Makes Moves and Twitter Follows In TikTok’s Footsteps, Yet Again!

April 5, 2022Rachel FoxIn other news, Pinterest, TikTok, Twitter  

This week, we’re back to bring you some of the latest updates in the world of social media.

Pinterest now allows users to share idea pins on other platforms

Following in the footsteps of TikTok videos and Instagram reels, Pinterest now lets content creators share Idea Pins on their other social media pages. This feature will allow pinners to reach a much wider audience and gain more exposure. This will be super handy when it comes to repurposing content across different platforms. 

Twitter ‘Collabs’ feature could make it possible for users to co-author tweets with brands

Currently, users are able to “collab” on Instagram, which allows two accounts to post the same image to increase reach. However, Twitter is now working on offering the same for their platform. They are continuing to work on a feature that would allow multiple users to co-author a tweet, which is referred to as “collaborations.” The option has yet to be made publicly available and only works after one user accepts a request to collaborate from another. 

It also seemingly hints at a possible plan to give creators a way to partner with businesses on brand ad deals — something that’s already common on rival social networks like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and others.

Pinterest to invest an additional $1.2 million in its Creator Fund for underrepresented groups

Pinterest is making big moves at the moment, one of which is that they have invested additional funds into their creator fund for underrepresented groups. This means that they are more than doubling their investment in a combination of cash grants, ad credits and other creator resources.

The company last year announced the debut of its $500,000 Creator Fund alongside new content policies and other creator tools. However, even with the fund’s increase and Pinterest’s other creator commitments, Pinterest’s investment remains smaller than the massive efforts from other social giants, including Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap.

 

Want to know more about what’s going on in social media? Get in touch with me at rachel@pilotfishmedia.com to chat!

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