Business of Creators 💬

Industry latest

🤝Khloe Kardashian signs on to create a new, 26-part “video podcast” on X 

🖼️TikTok has dropped it’s latest app experiment, Whee, which lets you share photos with just your close friends, similar to Instagram

🤖TikTok is also launching virtual characters for businesses looking to use digital influencers in videos to help promote sales

📈Instagram is testing a new feature that shows creators' recent performance data to brands on their profiles.

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Platform round-up

Leverage the latest updates and features across digital platforms to help you get ahead of the game…

✂️YouTubers can now edit videos longer than 6 hours, especially helpful for live streamers editing their replays

🎵TikTok is giving Adobe Express users access to millions of free songs to make TikTok videos directly in the app 

👋Instagram is adding live video chats for close friends, letting you stream with a more intimate group setting 

📸YouTube is testing photo search via Google Lens to help find that one video that’s evaded you 

👻Snapchat is making it easier for anyone to create special effects for videos with new AI updates 

🎶You can now add music to your Instagram carousel posts that include video clips

👀YouTube’s testing its own take at ‘community notes’ 

For God’s sake, bring back likes on X 

For an already fleeting platform that has proven to leave a sour taste for most creators, X’s new major change to the user experience has dug itself a further grave by eradicating a cult favorite discovery feature.  

It first started with providing users with the option of anonymity for their public facing ‘likes’ tab, which was a popular development to some users who, no doubt, wanted to keep a catalog of their favorite sex content reels to themselves. Yet in what feels like a blink of an eye, it’s now become mandatory across the board and I am noticing whatever remnants of enjoyment I had left on this platform has vanished. 

It’s quite a bold move by Elon Musk, otherwise known to the Reddit community as Space Karen, who has already left irreparable damage to the commercial opportunities available to native creators on X. Thanks to copious controversies, overinflated lies of digital footfall across the platform and a vacuum of creators opting for other, more commercially viable platforms - the platform is truly a shadow of itself when it was formerly known as Twitter. And I’m not politically speaking nor am I romanticizing a platform that still had its flaws back in its heyday, I’m just objectively telling you it’s shit. 

What might be perceived as not a big deal to few who point to hollow arguments of privacy (just keep it an optional feature?) is an oversight for others for the effective discovery users had when accessing a profile’s publicly available likes. In fact, I would argue that the feature defined its most social elements of the platform. Whether it was users using it as a bedroom wall moodboard or consciously curating or using it for its most primal use - it was an opportunity to access a wider spectrum of discovery and to be connected in shared interests. I would consider my palette of interests to be quite diverse and broad, so how else is somebody gonna match my freak without exposure to my dumping ground of content creators, culture lore, obscure political memes, edits of Lisa Vanderpump and some other things best not sharing against your will. 

And in the FYP world, at least for myself, it does not have the same expanse. In fact, it's an entirely different experience. My algorithm lately feels vastly oversaturated with Brat-core memes similar to how Sabrina Carpenter plays whenever my playlist finishes on Spotify. I’ve never played Espresso. And whenever I do come across an overwhelmingly unpopular opinion, I no longer get the joy when you would get to see it’s hot take out ratio-ed. Musk mentioned being “attacked for likes” as the reason for its removal, but given his track record being out-ratio-ed by the whole community, it’s not the only gripe his ego has had with the function. 

Time will only tell you how much the feature’s removal will have shrunk the platform’s social mobility but there’s no doubt its real figure will be misleadingly bloated in their next press release. 

When Musk told of his vision for X as a digital town square I pictured The Simpsons’ Springfield Town Square. No joke. At the center, Jebediah Springfield is replaced with a golden sculpture of Musk doing something really cringe surrounded by shopfronts north, east, south and west. Every window was individually unique in style and design as a metaphor for the spectrum the likes feature offered to users. Without it, we’re just left with “Space Karen” graffitied over Musk’s statue and one less reason to visit this ever-less appealing digital town square.