Instagram is making changes to its videos, adding auto-generated captions in 17 languages even as it discontinues support for the standalone IGTV video app to “focus on having all video on the main Instagram app.” It is eliminating the in-stream advertising known as IGTV ads while exploring ways to help creators monetize the short-form Reels format that “continues to be the largest contributor to engagement growth on Instagram,” according to the social platform. Instagram says it will “begin testing a new ad experience” later this year that will “allow creators to earn revenue from ads displayed on their Reels.”  Continue reading Instagram Introduces Video Captions, Shutters the IGTV App

Russia’s attack on Ukraine has focused attention on its attempts to censor Big Tech, but the nation’s most onerous recent move to control speech came last July, when President Vladimir Putin signed a law requiring foreign tech companies with more than 500,000 monthly visitors from within the Russian Federation to establish a physical presence within the country that would be held responsible for violations of local law. Russian authorities have warned companies including Meta, Apple, Google, TikTok and Twitter that they had until the end of February to comply with what has become known as “the landing law.” Continue reading Big Tech in Spotlight as Russia Censors News of Ukraine War

TikTok is pivoting to longer videos. The social platform that became the fastest-growing ever on the strength of short-form videos and had competitors scrambling in its wake to copy the format, is now allowing users to post videos of up to 10 minutes. Launched by China’s ByteDance in September 2016, TikTok was initially formatted for videos of 15-seconds or less. In 2018, when it merged with Chinese lip-sync service Musical.ly, it permitted videos of 1 minute, and then bumped up to three-minutes last summer. By September 2021 TikTok announced it had hit one billion users worldwide in only five years. Continue reading TikTok Shakes-Up Its Content Format with 10-Minute Videos

UK-style child protections are coming to the U.S. if a pair of California state lawmakers have anything to say about it. Assembly members Jordan Cunningham, a Republican, and Buffy Wicks, a Democrat, last week proposed the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, a bill modeled after what is popularly known in the UK as the Children’s Code, and more formally tagged the Age Appropriate Design Code. If enacted, websites and social platforms would have to limit the collection of children’s data in California, enact safeguards protecting minors from other users, minimize addictive features and simplify privacy settings. Continue reading Big Tech Faces Global Pressure to Step Up Child Protections

Having ridden the short-form video wave to popularity, TikTok now faces a quandary: advertisers want longer-form content in which to place their messaging, while users say they don’t even have sufficient attention span for minute-long videos. Last year, a TikTok survey indicated 50 percent of its users find clips of more than a minute stressful, and about a third of them zip through 60-second clips at double-speed. “It’s not because I don’t have time, but because I can’t concentrate,” one twentysomething user reportedly explained in a survey response. Despite that feedback, TikTok began experimenting through the second half of 2021 with videos of five minutes and 10 minutes. Continue reading TikTok Fights Attention Deficit, Chases Ads with Longer Vids

A bipartisan bill to protect kids online was introduced Wednesday by Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee). The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) would give parents more control over social media settings, add opt-out features and establish a “duty of care” that opens the door to liability and lawsuits. “Big Tech has brazenly failed children and betrayed its trust, putting profits above safety,” said Blumenthal. “This measure makes kids’ safety an Internet priority.” The bill follows a media blitz and months of Congressional hearings on the danger of social media to the mental and physical health of young users. Continue reading Kids Online Safety Act Advocates Holding Tech Accountable

Popular messaging app Snapchat has added a new way for its top creators to earn money on the platform, introducing mid-roll ads in public Stories. The feature is in U.S. beta testing now with an early set of Snap Stars, who will receive a share of the revenue generated from ads within their public Stories. “Stories lower the barrier to content creation and engagement, and we believe placing ads within a Snap Star’s public Story will allow an easier path to financial success,” Snap says of the program, which it plans to roll out commercially later this year. Continue reading Snapchat Debuts Mid-Roll Ads with Revenue-Share for Stars

On the heels of its first Congressional hearing for product safety, TikTok has announced policy changes aimed at making the short-form video social platform safer and more secure, particularly for minors, LGBTQ and minority users. In October, TikTok vice president and head of public policy Michael Beckerman testified along with executives from Snapchat and YouTube, addressing questions from U.S. senators as to the social media site’s impact on teen eating disorders and fallout from dangerous hoaxes. The policy updates address those concerns and institute new cybersecurity measures intended to protect user data from unauthorized access. Continue reading TikTok Updates Safety for Minors, Expands Security Features

Meta and Snap both appear to have re-focused their social media strategies on video, leading to speculation they’re chasing TikTok, famously the U.S.’s “most downloaded app of 2021,” which at 94 million handily topped the 64 million of the second most popular, Meta’s Instagram. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told analysts last week that even though Instagram’s Reels is the company’s most rapidly growing format, “we also have a competitor that is compounding at a pretty quick rate, too.” ByteDance’s TikTok, Zuckerberg said, “continues to grow at quite a fast rate off of a very large base.” Continue reading Video Emerges as Killer Social App, Everyone Chasing TikTok

Snap Inc. ended 2021 with its first net profit on quarterly results since going public in 2017, with Q4 earnings of $22.5 million versus last year’s net loss of $113 million during the same period. The company’s Q4 revenue of $1.3 billion marked a 42 percent increase year-over-year, while Snapchat’s daily active users rose 20 percent to 319 million, beating analyst estimates on both counts, which sent Snap stock soaring last week. In 2022, Snap has to contend with Apple’s iOS privacy changes, something Meta Platforms forecasts will take a $10 billion bite out of its own earnings.  Continue reading Snap Notches First Quarterly Profits on $1.3 Billion Revenue

The Commerce Department is taking steps to shore-up federal rules against potential security risks from foreign-owned social platforms like ByteDance’s TikTok, expanding federal oversight to include apps that might be used by “foreign adversaries to steal or otherwise obtain data,” a recent filing in the Federal Register stipulates. The proposed rule allows the commerce secretary to designate certain foreign apps as security risks and force software connected to the Internet to submit to third-party auditing. Such audits could include monitoring logs that show user data as well as the parsing of source code. Continue reading Biden Administration Intends to Contain TikTok Security Risk

As Facebook parent company Meta Platforms continues its planned evolution to the metaverse, observers have begun asking about Instagram. Acquired in 2012, the photo and video-sharing platform may be finding the accommodations that help it with advertisers hurt it with younger users gravitating to TikTok and Snapchat. While Meta doesn’t break out numbers for Instagram, the “family of apps” of which Instagram is a member generated $32.8 billion in Q4 revenue, all but $155 million of it from advertising, according to earnings released Wednesday. That’s an 18 percent improvement over Q4 2020. Continue reading Wall Street Ponders Instagram as Meta Posts $10.2B VR Loss

NBCUniversal is expanding its partnership with social video platform TikTok to include a joint promotion for the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, set to kick off on February 4, and the 2022 Paralympic Winter Games, beginning March 4. NBC Winter Games advertisers will reportedly have first crack at piggybacking onto what is being couched as a new type of brand experience that lets them draw from NBC 2022 Winter Games clips as they try to connect with sports fans. TikTok videos with Olympic-related hashtags have resulted in 18 billion views on the platform thus far, according to NBC. Continue reading NBCUniversal Teams with TikTok to Promote Winter Olympics

TikTok is testing the waters with a paid subscription mode for creators, joining Facebook, Clubhouse and others. Although TikTok remains tight-lipped about the experiment, it seems designed to keep TikTok influencers on the ByteDance platform rather than leaving for more lucrative pastures. Last week, Instagram announced a test allowing creators to charge from 99 cents to $99 per month for exclusive content, while Twitter in September debuted Super Follows, with rates of $2.99 to $9.99 per month. A creator with 13,000 followers that gets a 2 percent take rate at $4.99 per month can make $900 a month. YouTube and Snapchat also offer monetization options. Continue reading TikTok Experiments with Paid Subscriptions, Tweaks Stories

Instagram is testing a feature that allows creators to charge for premium content, a growing trend as platforms vie for popular personalities that drive traffic and engagement. The Meta Platforms social network introduced the feature last week, saying it will initially be offered on a limited basis in the U.S. “Subscriptions are one of the best ways to have a predictable income — a way that’s not attached to how much reach you get on any given post, which is inevitably going to go up and down over time,” Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said in a Twitter post. Continue reading Instagram Begins Testing Subscribed Content from Creators