We’ve pulled together the latest news from the social space in our weekly Industry Round Up. Explore the top headlines below and get up to speed with the latest news!
Contents
Pinterest Acquires Video Editing App Vochi
FaZe Clan鈥檚 New Deal with MoonPay
100 Thieves Raises $60 Million
Totally Not Mark Hit With 150 Copyright Claims
Jake Paul Vs. Tommy Fury is OFF
New Creator Monetisation on Discord
Instagram鈥檚 New Features Supporting Young Users
Instagram鈥檚 Story Links Updates
Facebook鈥檚 鈥楶lay Watch Connect鈥� Features
Instagram鈥檚 Return To A Chronological Feed
Pinterest Acquires Video Editing App Vochi
Pinterest is shifting to a video-focused strategy with the dominance of short-form video becoming increasingly apparent across social platforms- thanks to disruptors such as TikTok. To that end, Pinterest has recently acquired the app Vochi, a video editing platform that will be part of the broader Pinterest creator suite enabling users to easily add effects to their clips within the app.
Pinterest facilitating more in-app video creation tools will help creators access quality tools to elevate content, encouraging more video content to be easily generated on the platform in hopes of maximizing engaging formats.
FaZe Clan鈥檚 New Deal with MoonPay
Faze Clan is a gaming organization that has recently announced a multi-year deal with MoonPay – a payments platform that will become the gaming org’s official crypto partner.
The partnership will include FaZe using MoonPay for their upcoming NFT business named 鈥楩aZe Forever鈥�. In addition to this, there will be promotional media for MoonPay within FaZe Clan鈥檚 franchises and campaigns that leverage FaZe鈥檚 esport teams. CEO of FaZe Lee Trink commented that the 鈥減artnership with MoonPay – creates a strong foundation and secure pathway for our journey into the metaverse鈥�.
100 Thieves Raises $60 Million
In news of other gaming organizations, 100 Thieves has just completed a $60 million Series C round at a $460 million valuation. In terms of how the gaming org is planning to spend this new investment, it appears they will turn their attention to the launching and acquisition of new companies.
100 Thieves has seen revenue more than doubled over a short space of time as well as paving the way in generating new and exciting opportunities for gaming creators through the acquisition of Higround – a company that produces keyboard and gaming equipment. Alongside this, 100 Thieves has collaborated with luxury brands such as Gucci and Lexus – moving the gaming organization beyond just gaming collaborations to lifestyle.
Totally Not Mark Hit With 150 Copyright Claims
Mark Fitzpatrick is a YouTuber known online as Totally Not Mark, with over 630,000 subscribers across the platform creating Anime analysis videos. However, the YouTuber was recently in the headlines when Japanese company Toei Animation hit the creator with 150 copyright claims on his YouTube videos.
This has resulted in the creator no longer being able to make money off his content – which he felt was all content protected under fair use. Like most creator’s on the platform, it’s not just Mark impacted, he works with a team to produce content and now three years of work is stripped of revenue for his company. Ironically, the YouTuber stated that Toei Animation reached out in the past to do promotional work, showing the company seemingly valuing his content in promoting the company’s projects.
This whole story highlights the problematic nature of fair use on the platform and YouTube鈥檚 Content ID system. The issue, in this case, is that Japanese copyright law does not have general fair use provisions like the United States, therefore, in Japan, the author has moral rights for any type of work. Interestingly, the copyright law in Japan is so strict that there is a number of issues facing retro games that are wanting to be re-released.
Jake Paul Vs. Tommy Fury is OFF
The highly anticipated boxing event between Tommy Fury and Jake Paul that was expected to take place this month has been called off. Just over a week to go until the proposed fight date, Tommy Fury was forced to pull out of the event due to a bacterial chest infection and a broken rib. According to Fury’s camp, they are looking to reschedule in 2022, but for now, we can expect Tyron Woodley to step in to face Jake Paul.
This will be the second fight between Paul and the former UFC world champion, with the YouTuber turned professional boxer beating out his opponent based on points in a split decision.
New Creator Monetisation on Discord
Discord is launching Premium Memberships, allowing creators to put their server鈥檚 behind a paywall with prices ranging from $2.99 and $99.99.
Prior to this new monetisation option, creators could already offer paid membership access to their servers, which was achieved through integrations through third-party tools. However, this update will now let the process happen natively through Discord. This update follows the platform listening to a top requested feature from its community.
Premium memberships are at present limited to a small test group, with a wider rollout to be expected very soon.
Instagram鈥檚 New Features Supporting Young Users
Instagram is looking to offer new features to protect younger users from the negative impacts of overusing the app and predators. The first of these new features is a new parental control that allows parental figures to set limits on how much time teens spend in the app. Younger users will also be able to notify parents if they report someone, along with an added feature that restricts users from tagging and mentioning teens who don鈥檛 follow them.
Further features include 鈥楾ake a Break鈥� prompts, which were spotted in testing not too long ago. The option allows users to set reminders to take a break from Instagram after a select amount of time. Awareness of this feature will also be prominent in-app through prompts to younger users to actually implement the feature. The feature is slowly being rolled out to markets in the US, UK, Ireland, Canada – to name a few, with more markets to follow.
Additionally, Instagram is launching bulk delete options to quickly remove all photos, videos, likes and comments. Alongside this the final feature announced was a new prompt for users to check out other topics if they’ve been on a certain topic for too long – helping users to broaden their interests.
Instagram鈥檚 Story Links Updates
Instagram has now added the ability to add custom text to link stickers, helping to clean up link appearance and provide clarity on the link within the Story frame. Instagram has also added the capacity to choose from a range of color options to improve the overall display.
These new updates will hope to drive more traffic to specific links as users on the app become accustomed to link taps over the old swipe up function.
The TikTok鈥檚 Seller App
TikTok has launched a new 鈥楾ikTok Seller App in Indonesia, allowing brands on TikTok to manage their product listing in a dedicated space. Features include seller registrations, product management, order management, customer service, data analysis, campaign registration and seller education.
The aim of the app is to enable eCommerce brands to manage TikTok product listings wherever they are – but this app is still in the early stages, so we will most likely see further developments before a wider rollout in additional markets.
This is part of one of many eCommerce offerings that TikTok is building out. Other eCommerce features include shopping live streams and product listings on certain profiles.
Facebook鈥檚 鈥楶lay Watch Connect鈥� Features
Facebook is launching two new features to boost streamer to fan interactivity. The first feature is called 鈥楶lay with Streamer鈥�, a tool that allows creators to go live, then invite viewers to their stream to play games with them while they broadcast.
The second feature is Facebook Interactives, which is essentially new experiences layered on top of live streams, this could in future include audience polls, playable games on-stream and questions, helping to connect streamers and viewers.
Twitter鈥檚 Full-Screen Display
Twitter has launched a test of a TikTok-like full-screen display for Explore, displaying tweets in a vertical scrolling format – this test looks very similar to TikTok鈥檚 鈥楩or You鈥� page, showing how influential TikTok continues to be on other social platforms.
Twitter has already tried to replicate other popular features of other platforms e.g Instagram Stories in the form of Fleets – with this test not panning out and closing down this year.
Currently, this new display test is visible in specific markets, especially in India where TikTok is banned.
Instagram鈥檚 Return To A Chronological Feed
Instagram is looking to bring back the most requested feature…the chronological feed. Adam Mosseri has confirmed the platform has been working on a new version of the feed with plans to launch next year.
The return of the chronological feed will likely mirror that of Facebook鈥檚 feed sorting option, allowing users to view posts from pages and people they follow in order of posting. How this will sit on Instagram will probably be in the form of a toggle – something spotted by app research Alessandro Paluzzi. The toggle will enable users to sort the main feed by profiles you add to your top list and those you follow, as well as the algorithm-centric feed which is 鈥楬ome鈥�. More likely than not the 鈥楩ollowing鈥� option will be displayed in reverse chronological order.
