This is a friendly reminder for my American friends. You have until Aug. 25th to file a claim for a piece of Meta’s $725-million privacy settlement. It’s related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where Facebook allowed third-parties unauthorized access to user data. You may file a claim if you were a Facebook user living in the United States between May 24, 2007, and Dec. 22, 2022, inclusive. Mashable has more details.
In today’s newsletter:
Inside Instagram: WYNTK about posts, who Instagram cares about most, and payments
App Snack: The top app for the past 12 consecutive quarters is…
Black Business Month: Highlighting one of my favourite, local black-owned businesses 🍦
Hey friends, Aug. 7 is a holiday here in Canada. So, the next newsletter will arrive in your inbox on Monday, Aug. 14th.
Inside Instagram
What types of posts is Instagram prioritizing? Who are Instagram’s VIPs? And how do Instagram creators get paid?
These are just a few of the topics that Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri recently talked about on the 20VC podcast.
The podcast was over an hour, and you’re welcome to listen to the whole interview. Or keep reading for key highlights…
1/4 DMs > Stories > Feed
Instagram is like the Swiss Army Knife of posting options. Between the Grid, Stories, Reels, Lives, Notes, and now Threads, your options are endless.
But which types of posts is the company prioritizing? According to Mosseri, it’s Direct Messages and Stories.
“Basically what people don’t realize is — they think of Instagram as a feed of square photos, sometimes in chronological order. And if you look at how people share, all of the growth has been in Stories and in DMs over the last five years or so.
And if you look at how teens spend their time on Instagram, they spend more time in DMs than they do Stories, and they spend more more time in Stories than they do in feed, yet people think of Instagram as a feed, and it’s the third most important surface at best, maybe fourth now.”
*Note: This is the reason that Instagram introduced “Recommendations” in the Feed. “You don’t share personal moments in feed today the way you did five or 10 years ago; you share them in Stories or in messages. So the feed had to evolve otherwise it would just slowly decay.”
2/4 ‘Conversation Starters’
Instagram continues to shift more resources to DMs. Why? According to Mosseri, there are more photos and videos shared in DMs than there are shared in Stories (and more rich media shared in Stories than in the Feed).
But Mosseri also admits Instagram is not a messaging app.
“What Instagram DMs are great for is they provide you an excuse to start a conversation. We call them ‘conversation starters’ a lot internally.”
In addition to DMs, the Notes feature is also a huge ‘conversation starter.’ And while Mosseri says most Instagram users over 20 years of age don’t use Notes very much, it’s a focus for the company because teens are one of their top markets.
3/4 Instagram ❤️’s Young People and Creators
“We care about young people, and we care about creators most.
Because young people, I mean, they grow up. But also, they are where creators gravitate to over time and they set trends. And they often serve as a bellwether.
And creators I just think are becoming more and more important over time for a bunch of reasons we can go into.”
Mosseri says he’s willing to take the hit to overall app engagement and overall revenue in the short term “because I think it’s going to be better and healthier for the company in the long term.”
4/4 How Creators Get Paid
Social media platforms pay creators in different ways, and YouTube is arguably the best at sharing revenue. In the podcast, Mosseri says they’ve been trying to figure out a way to support creators for a while now.
“But I think you can’t just pay everybody who is a creator, cause if there’s 10s of millions of creators, that just adds up to money that’s going to just completely destroy your business model. So, you have to figure out ways to give them tools to make money, in my opinion.”
Instead of paying creators directly, Mosseri says they are focusing on things like Subscriptions (Instagram recently announced it was going to roll out Subscriptions to global content creators). It also focuses on facilitating brand content deals, which Mosseri says is “actually going really well.”
So, based on this interview, I’d love to know if this is going to change your Instagram strategy…
📱 APP SNACK 📱
The top app for the past 12 consecutive quarters is…
Surprise, surprise — TikTok! This is based on data from mobile app analytics SensorTower, which recently reported on top worldwide apps in Q2 2023. “This remarkable achievement is a testament to TikTok's unparalleled popularity and its unwavering ability to captivate users with its unique blend of short-form videos and innovative features,” SensorTower said in a blog post.
Other highlights:
ByteDance, which owns TikTok, also owns editing app CapCut, which has been in the top 5 since Q4 2022.
Temu, an online shopping app, cracked the top 10 for the first time in Q2 2023. (Want to learn more about Temu? Here’s an article from CBC News).
ICYMI
Meta now allows you to record video messages on WhatsApp [Meta Blog]
TikTok unveils text posts [TikTok Blog]
Twitter, now X, opens up its ad revenue sharing program with global creators [TechCrunch]
YouTube creators share their secret sauce for reaching 10 million subscribers [YouTube Blog]
Pinterest announces 2023 ‘Pinterest Presents’ Advertiser Showcase Event [Social Media Today]
Black Business Month
August is Black Business Month, and to celebrate, I want to highlight one of my favourite local, black-owned businesses — Four All Ice Cream 🍦. Owner Ajoa Mintah, a graduate of the University of Waterloo, started her career as a chemical engineer, but transitioned to the ice cream business in 2017. Learn more about Ajoa on the Four All website.
Favourite flavour: Vegan chocolate chunk in a gluten-free cone. 😋 But there are many other flavours I also love.