Category: SOCIAL MEDIA

Zuck wasn’t lying about Threads’ growth momentum.

As flagged by Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg in yesterday’s Q2 earnings call, Threads is now up to 200 million monthly active users, as confirmed today by Threads chief Adam Mosseeri.

Which means that Threads has taken just over a year to reach this key milestone. Which many, of course, will dismiss, because it’s piggybacking off of Instagram, by linking the two apps. But even so, profiles created and active users are very different, and the fact that Threads has 200 million people participating in the app each month is notable in its own right, no matter how you view it.

Though even more notable here is the growth momentum, as noted by Zuck.

Because in addition to the topline usage figure, Threads’ growth rate has also increased significantly in recent weeks, based on the usage data shared by Meta.

As you can see in this chart, Threads is actually gaining growth momentum over time, based on the data shared by the company. To clarify, Threads would have been growing steadily in the flat periods signified here as well, but using only Meta’s milestone figures as a guide, you can see how Threads has gained a lot more users in the last month than it had in the preceding three.

To recap, Threads reached 100 million active users just in October 2023, before rising to 130 million users in February this year, seven months after launch, then 150 million in April. The app then reported reaching 175 million users early last month.

Based on averages, that means that Threads was adding 7.5 million new users per month between October 2023 and February this year, which then increased to 9 million more actives per month up till July.

But in the last four weeks, according to these figures, Threads has added 25 million more MAU. That means that Threads’ growth momentum increased by almost three times in July, a very positive sign for the future potential of the app.

So what’s driving that growth?

Well, I’d suspect part of it is the U.S. election, because even though Meta has an aversion to politics, many people are still discussing major events, like the switch from Biden to Harris for the 2024 election campaign.

That change has sparked a new level of vitriol from right-wing pundits, who are now gaining more and more traction on X, while the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump (July 13) also marked a significant shift in that app, as owner Elon Musk announced his public endorsement of Trump as the next commander in chief.

That may have pushed more people away from X, and over to Threads instead, while the Olympics has also sparked new interest in real-time discussion, which is rising on Threads.

And maybe, with more and more commentators posting to Threads instead, that’s boosting interest, which is seeing Threads gain even more momentum as the discussion venue of choice continues to shift.

Threads’ growth increase is significant, and it’ll be interesting to see when it reaches the 250 million MAU mark as an indicator of rising interest. Or not.

To be clear, Threads is still a fair way off of X’s usage, as X has 250 million daily active users and 500 million monthly participants. So Threads is currently at around 40% of X’s audience, but that’s still significant, and again, momentum is an important indicator at this stage.

Maybe, then, the tide is turning towards Threads, and as the platform adds more and more trending topic discovery features, that could help to further fan those flames.

Again, we won’t definitively know until Threads reaches the next usage milestone, but if that happens in the next couple of months, you can bet that Elon and Co. will be publishing some new “active user nanoseconds” type stats that they proclaim shows that X remains well in the lead.

But if that momentum rises, the signs will start to become very clear that Threads is becoming the place to be, for a significant portion of real-time social media users. People always gravitate to where the conversation is happening, and there are signs that Threads now has a real opportunity to take a much bigger portion of online attention.

Publicis Groupe has entered into an agreement to acquire Influential, the world’s largest influencer marketing company by revenue, according to a company announcement. Published reports indicated the deal was worth $500 million.

Influential runs a network of more than 3.5 million creators, including 90% of the global influencers who have 1 million followers or more. The agency currently serves more than 300 brands around the globe. Publicis will use Influential’s platform in concert with the consumer insights from its martech unit Epsilon to help clients find influencers that meaningfully connect with target consumers and communities. 

With nearly half of all consumers making purchases based on influencer marketing — and trust in influencers rising — Publicis’s acquisition demonstrates the sector’s importance for the future of marketing. Indeed, global social media spending will reach $186 billion in 2025, exceeding linear television ad spending for the first time, per details shared by Publicis.

The influencer marketing segment is a big driver of that growth. By acquiring Influential and pairing the platform with Epsilon, Publicis will be able to offer clients access to high-quality and highly followed digital creators. Epsilon wields insights into more than 2.3 billion people at a global scale. 

“Not only does this acquisition mean we will take the leadership of Influencer marketing. It also uniquely positions us at the centre of the new media ecosystem,” said Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun in a statement. “It’s how we are putting power back into the hands of brands in a fragmented media landscape, and driving marketing transformation that delivers real business outcomes.”

With Influential, Publicis’s combined assets will give clients access to a network of more than 3.5 million creators (including 90% of those with more than 1 million followers), better planning capabilities using Epsilon’s consumer data and stronger cross-channel marketing opportunities. Influential Founder and CEO Ryan Detert will work centrally within Publicis to bring these tools to bear for clients. 

Publicis’s acquisition announcement came only one day after Stagwell announced it had acquired digital influencer marketing agency Leaders and its InfluencerMarketing.AI platform. Such deals could herald a wave of other acquisitions in the coming months as the creator marketplace becomes firmly entrenched in the marketing industry. 

“Creator marketing is now an essential part of every major brand’s marketing mix, and holding company consolidation of the best boutique players over the past four years illustrates that they’re taking this seriously and focusing on a more integrated approach to creator work,” said Ryan Stern, co-founder and CEO of Collectively, in emailed comments.

“Major brands now expect all of their partner agencies to understand creators and how to deploy them in different channels and contexts. The consolidation we’re seeing by holding companies reflects the urgency for those businesses to quickly adapt,” the exec added.

Earlier this month, Publicis announced its organic growth increased 5.6% year over year in Q2 2024, with net revenue reaching roughly $3.8 billion. The strong earnings led the agency to raise its full-year guidance to growth between 5-6%, up from prior estimates of 4-5% growth.

Reddit has launched its own version of Lead Gen Ads, which will enable marketers to gather prospective customer info direct from their promotions in the app.

As you can see in this example, Reddit’s Lead Gen Ads function pretty much as you would expect. The ads include a “Sign Up” CTA (or similar), which, when clicked, takes the user through to a sign-up form, where they can enter their details.

Reddit says that this updated ad format is better aligned with mobile users, and includes elements like auto-population of the email field “for a frictionless user experience.”

And early testers have driven good response:

“During beta testing, advertisers across various industries experienced improvements in lead quality and campaign performance. LaunchDarkly, a feature management platform that helps software development teams implement and control feature flags, saw a 30% decrease in cost per lead and a 25% increase in lead submission rates compared to their previous conversion campaigns on the platform in early testing.”

Lead gen ads can be a valuable way to build connections, and broaden your business networks, and being able to target them into specific Reddit communities could be a great way to increase brand awareness and interest for the right brands.

In addition to this, Reddit’s also announced a new integration with automation platform Zapier, which will make it easier to send lead info from Reddit directly into your CRM of choice.

It’s a good addition to Reddit’s growing ad suite, as the company looks to maximize its business opportunities, and build on its revenue potential. Feeding lead information from your campaign direct into your CRM could help to provide more opportunities, adding another consideration for your ad planning.

Reddit’s Lead Gen Ads are now available to all advertisers globally, while the Zapier integration is available to those brands that are working directly with Reddit’s ad team.

Okay, this one may be something, or it could be nothing, at least not what some expect.

Back in May, app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi uncovered a back-end code element on Threads which refers to a section called “Your Feeds”.

As you can see in this example, “Your Feeds” would enable users to easily access different elements of the app, including your main “Following” feed, a list of posts that you’ve saved, posts that you’ve Liked, etc.

Some got excited about this, anticipating that this could become the home for variable feed algorithms, so you could govern your own in-app experience, or lists, so that you could switch across to alternate Threads feeds based on different topic-based groups of users.

But the Threads team dismissed the finding, saying that it’s just another way to access these elements.

But it is still working on it.

As you can see in these new screenshots, shared by Radu Oncescu, Threads is still developing the UI for these alternate “feeds”, which would still only give you access to your liked and saved posts.

But it does seem like an opportunity to provide further customization of the Threads experience.

Right now, on the desktop version of the app, you can already set up streams of your liked and saved posts, along with “For You”, “Following”, “Search” strings, “Your Activity” and your profile.

This in-app “Your Feeds” display is essentially a mirror of the same, but Threads could also look to implement list functionality, providing more ways to interact with different topic elements. And potentially, custom algorithmic timelines as well, based on your algorithm of choice.

Yet, both seem somewhat unlikely, or at least less of a focus for the Threads team.

Back in February, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said that lists, while they are on the blueprint of things to build for the app, probably aren’t as big of a deal as people think.

“My honest take is that requested features like lists, an edit button, a following feed, trending, and hashtags are all good to build, but none noticeably grow Threads or Threads usage. We’ll continue to build them because it’s good to build features that your most engaged users are excited about, but it’s hard to prioritize them when the measurable impact is negligible.”

So lists seemingly are coming, and they could fit into this new display, where they seem like a perfect fit. But they might not be coming any time soon.

In terms of variable algorithms, which have been a key tenet of the new wave of decentralized social apps, that would also seem to fit with the broader vision for Threads, in aligning with fediverse sharing. But there’s a lot of complexity here, and I don’t think that would be on the cards for the Threads team as yet.

And even if it was, I suspect that the majority of users won’t actually be interested in variable feed algorithms, unless they can be easily explained and implemented.

Which is also where this display could fit, but right now, I’m not sure this is anything more than a placeholder UI that could become something, but might also just be a mobile interpretation of the web functionality.

So, read into it as you will, but I don’t think this is the list/alternative algorithm function you’re looking for, at least not yet.  

X is expanding its Community Notes option once again, this time by adding the capacity for users to request a note on posts that they believe may include questionable claims.

As you can see in this example, there’s now a new option within the post menu on desktop to “Request Community Note”, which will then flag that for checking by Community Notes contributors.

As explained by X:

“People on X can request a Community Note on a post they believe would benefit from one. If there are enough requests, Community Notes contributors will see an alert, and can choose to propose a note. This gives people on X who are not contributors a way to help, and lets contributors know where notes might be found helpful.”

It could be a good way to dispel misinformation in the app, by making it easier for users to actually seek out notes, rather than only relying on those that are available under the current system. Of course, that also depends on users actually going to the effort of making such a request, but it could be a valuable supplemental process to the Community Notes system.

In order to request a Community Note, the user must have a verified phone number attached to their profile, which is also a requirement for X Premium subscriptions.

Accounts will initially be allowed to submit up to five requests for notes per day, though X says that this may be increased if requests end up driving more helpful notes.

Community Notes has been one of the top innovations boosted by Elon Musk since he took over the app. Initially developed under Twitter (as “Birdwatch”), research has shown that Community Notes can be a valuable tool in dispelling misinformation, and reducing amplification of false claims.

The only concern, at present, is that X is putting too much reliance on Community Notes to do all the heavy lifting in content moderation, after Elon Musk gutted the company, by culling 80% of its staff.

Many of those cut roles were in content moderation and safety, with Musk hoping to reduce the company’s overheads by putting more reliance on crowd-sourced fact-checking and feedback. That also aligns with Musk’s view that X users should be the arbiters of ultimate truth, not X management, which is another reason why Musk’s pushing Community Notes as the key solution in moderation.  

But studies have shown that Community Notes, by itself, is not able to handle the full scope of moderation requirements at the app, which is allowing misinformation to gain traction, and drive alternative narratives, largely unchecked.

And with the U.S. election coming up, that could be a significant concern, and we’ve already seen conspiracy theories and misinformation gain momentum via X posts early on in the campaign.

As such, while Community Notes is a good system, which offers significant value in many respects, it may not be up to the task of covering all of X’s content detection and clarification needs.

But it’s what X is going with, and we’ll see how that leaves it in the upcoming election push, and the aftermath of what’s expected to be a divisive campaign.

TikTok’s looking to make it easier for independent musicians to build a presence in the app, via a new partnership with DistroKid that will enable DistroKid artists to build their TikTok presence, direct from the promotion platform.

As you can see in this example, with this new process, artists using DistroKid, which is a key daabase for independent musicians, will be able to quickly create a TikTok profile, complete with artist-specific features, by tapping a create button in their DistroKid dashboard.

As explained by TikTok:

“Starting today, DistroKid members can create their official TikTok Artist Accounts directly from the DistroKid dashboard, unlocking artist-first features like a Music Tab, New Releases, By Artist, Behind the Song, Fan Spotlight, Ticketing and more. This collaboration aims to build a stronger connection between DistroKid’s artist community and TikTok’s global community of music fans.”

That’ll provide a heap of handy promotion features to artists who may not be as versed in how to utilize TikTok, nor have the backing of production assistants to help with such.

It’s another way for TikTok to further integrate itself into the broader music community, with the platform already playing a key role in driving music trends.

Indeed, according to research, TikTok users are significantly more likely to both discover and share new music content in the app, while 75% of its users also find new artists via TikTok clips.

TikTok’s influence over music trends is so significant that publishers are now changing the names of artists’ tracks to align with TikTok trends, while it’s also re-ignited the careers of older musicians via the same.  

As such, it makes sense for TikTok to double down on this connection, as a means to drive more usage. The partnership with DistroKid will provide a means for lesser-known artists to tap into the same trends, and use TikTok’s massive reach to connect to a wider audience.

YouTube’s trying another way to integrate more social platform type elements, this time through a new Community Spaces test, which enables channel fans to engage and interact via text posts.

As you can see in this example, posted by influencer marketing expert Lindsey Gamble, YouTube’s new Community Spaces, which are now available on selected creator profiles, provide a dedicated space for fans to view text updates from the creator, while also sharing their own posts.

The feature is an extension of YouTube’s Community Posts, which enables creators to post text updates in a dedicated stream.

YouTube made Community Posts available to all channels in June last year, providing another way for creators to interact with their fans.

And now, it’s looking to get fans involved in the same, which will facilitate more engagement and interaction within the app.

Which is interesting, considering YouTube’s changing relationship with social media-like elements.

YouTube has de-emphasized video comments over time, due to the sometimes toxic nature of responses, which was arguably its most social element. But at the same time, it’s also sought to enhance engagement within channel communities, via Community Posts, which seemingly facilitates more positive engagement.

This new expansion is another step in that direction, switching the interactive elements to another part of the app, which could be more beneficial for building community, and could make YouTube a more social app.

And for creators, that could be a valuable consideration, in engaging with fans, and building connections in the app. The capacity for fans to post, and for creators to respond, could be a big update, driving more connection via YouTube clips.

YouTube’s currently testing Community Spaces with selected creators, with a view to a broader expansion in future.  

Here’s a small but important update from IG regarding a coming functional improvement.

Right now, if you want to add a collaborator to your IG posts, you need to do so in the initial creation flow, it’s not possible to add a collaborator in retrospect.

Well, you can on Reels, as of recently (check out this how-to guide from influencer marketing expert Lindsey Gamble), but for feed posts and Stories, you can’t add a partner profile after publishing.

Which Instagram is now looking to fix:

So it’s not available as yet, but the fact that Mosseri has specifically posted about this suggests that this will be made available soon, providing another way to utilize collaborative posts.

Which can provide significant reach benefits. Collaborative posts appear in the feeds of both the creator and collaborator, reaching a broader audience, while they’re also hosted on both users’ profiles. Accounts that accept a collaboration invite can also see all likes and comments on the post, providing data benefits.

It’s another way to maximize your IG efforts, and soon, you’ll have more ways to do this.

We’ll keep you updated on any progress.

With the U.S. TikTok sell-off bill still in place, which could see the app removed from America as of January next year, advertisers are already considering their options, according to new insights.

As reported by Adweek, overall TikTok ad spend declined in both April and May, while four of the platform’s biggest spending advertisers have significantly reduced their TikTok ads focus in recent months, according to insights from MediaRadar.

Among the biggest declines, Target has reduced its TikTok ad spend by 30%, DoorDash has slashed its TikTok spending by 25%, while Bayer (-20%) and Procter & Gamble (-10%) are also shifting their focus.

Which makes sense. If TikTok is indeed going to be exiting the U.S., then brands, logically, will need to look elsewhere in future, and as such, they may well be hedging their bets now, and shifting away from TikTok promotions ahead of a broader change.

So does that mean that you should also be reducing your focus on the app?

Well, there are a couple of ways to look at this.

For one, TikTok remains hugely popular, and while you have access to that audience, you should probably capitalize on it. Reduced ad spend from the bigger players could also mean that there’s more opportunity, and less competition, so in the short term at least, it makes sense to keep pushing TikTok promotions, and seeing what results you get.

At the same time, increasing your reliance on a platform that may soon be gone could be problematic.

If you come to rely on the results that you get from TikTok promotions, that could be hard to take in six months’ time, if it does exit the U.S., leaving a potentially significant hole in your performance data as a result.

Which is why the big teams are changing focus, to soften the blow if the platform is soon gone.

Is TikTok actually going to get banned?

Well, right now at least, it is looking like it. TikTok has launched a legal challenge against the U.S. Government’s sell-off bill (important to clarify that this is a forced sell-off, not a ban, as such), but legal experts are mostly of the view that this will not succeed, due to the government invoking national security concerns. The only other option would be a sell-off, which Chinese officials have publicly stated is not going to happen, so on balance, as it stands at this stage, it does seem like TikTok is going to be existing the U.S.

But then again, if Donald Trump is re-elected in November, that could swing things TikTok’s way once again, with Trump voicing his opposition to the TikTok sell-off bill.

It’s unclear if Trump could or would reverse the sell-off order, but there are seemingly still a few options that could change TikTok’s fate.

Till then, however, it’s a judgment call. TikTok offers great reach and resonance for the right ad campaigns. But I wouldn’t be putting too much reliance on any one app.  

Can you believe that Meta’s Twitter-like Threads app is a year old already?

The text-based social app, launched in order to gather up cast-offs from Elon Musk’s X project, has risen to become a genuine player in the social media space, piggybacking off of Instagram to establish its own audience, which now does seem to have a life of its own.

But is it an actual rival for X in the space? Can Threads become a viable replacement for real-time, conversational engagement?

Also, can Threads, as Meta has envisioned, become the next billion-user app?

Well, there are some good and bad signs in its first year of performance data, but at the least, the groundwork has been laid for Meta to build Threads into something more significant. If things go right, or more operatively, if things go wrong on X.

As noted, from the start, Threads was designed as a response to Elon Musk’s less popular changes at Twitter/X, which have included mass layoffs, relaxed moderation rules, forcing users to pay for checkmarks, paywalling elements of the product, and more. But the biggest change may have actually been Elon himself, and the divisive opinions that he now feeds into his X profile on a regular basis.

Indeed, Musk has altered his public persona through his constant stream-of-consciousness X feed. And given that he’s also the most followed user in the app, those posts are also pushed into almost every single X users’ feed, one way or another, whether they like it or not, which, for some at least, has been a key driver in them shifting away from the app.

But there’s a lot more to it than that.

Musk’s initial layoffs at the company sparked the first major shift away from X among the tech community, which has since become one of the most active groups on Threads. Left-leaning political commentators and entertainment identities have also turned their back on X, and are now posting to Threads instead, and it’s these communities that have had the most influence in making it a more active, engaging space, essentially moving their Twitter discussions to the new app.

Yet, at the same time, many other, less exposed communities, particularly sports, remain attached to X, and have thus far shown little interest in re-creating their networks on another app. X’s focus on in-the-moment updates, via its real-time feed, combined with the curated “Following” lists, which users have built over years, means that it’s still a highly valuable stream for live events, and as such, X remains a critical connector, with many key updates still flowing first through X posts, as they once did through tweets.

But at the same time, that initial cohort of Threads users is building momentum within the app. At a slower pace than the app’s initial rush, for sure, but it is still steadily rising over time.

That early rush saw Threads set a record for the most account sign ups ever, reaching 100 million profiles created within days of its initial release. It followed that up by reaching 100 million active users just three months later, proving the stickiness of the app, before rising to 130 million users in February this year, seven months after launch, then 150 million in April.   

And today, Meta has confirmed that Threads is up to 175 million users, marking its first 12 months.

Which is a solid user base. For comparison, Reddit has 82 million daily actives, while Snapchat has 422 million DAU.

Though the more direct comparison, of course, is X, which is still sitting on 250 million daily active users, where it’s been stuck since November 2022, shortly after Elon took over at the app. Threads is closing in on this number, which is when you could definitively label it a genuine rival for Musk’s social project, though it also worth noting that Threads’ growth momentum has slowed a lot, even if it is still rising.

Threads added 7.5 million new active users per month between October 2023 and February this year, but that’s now declined to 5 million more actives per month over the most recent three-month period. So its growth rate has dipped by more than 30%, so while it is growing, it’s not exactly hooking people in droves at this stage.

Is that a bad sign?

Well, again, X hasn’t seen any growth in daily actives at all for almost two years, so the fact that Threads is adding 5 million more per month is significant, in relative terms. At 5 million more users per month, Threads is also on track to surpass X in active users by October next year, though that would also depend on X not adding any new users, and a lot can happen between then and now to change this.

Essentially, Threads still has a way to go to win over many of its potential users. And that, at least partially, could relate to its resistance to real-time news content.

Which is also only partially true. As Meta has made clear, while it does want to steer clear of divisive content, like political news and ideological debate, it is happy to host real-time news on certain topics, like sports and fashion.

As per Instagram chief Adam Mosseri (in an interview with Platformer this week):

“It’d be great to go to Threads and see what’s happening during the NBA finals, during the Super Bowl, during the Met Gala if you’re into fashion, during the Grammys, or the Emmys. So we do need to be a place for news. I just don’t think that it’s our place to be showing you political takes from people you don’t follow. I think that’s fundamentally going to create more problems than it solves.”

That aligns with Meta’s push to be a place for more positive discussion, because, essentially, Meta has had enough of users complaining about political debates taking over their feeds, and its executives being hauled before Congress to answer for such.

That’s why Meta’s taking definitive steps to avoid political content, but that does then also leave the door open for X to dominate during major real time events. Because Threads, as it currently stands, is not fundamentally designed to provide a live stream of in-the-moment posts.

It’s working on this as well. Mosseri says that the team has been increasingly focused on real time engagement as time has gone on, and it is developing better solutions to keep users updated as news breaks. That would be a significant shift, but right now, its resistance to news updates remains a bugbear for many.

Though if Meta’s metrics show that this is the right move, then those complaints likely matter a lot less, but will it inadvertently help to maintain X’s relevance?

Really, probably not, because the people who are now most aligned to political discussion on X were likely never coming over to Threads anyway. So while this seems like an obvious miss by the Threads team, over time, Meta’s betting that a more positivity-focused approach will win out.  

We don’t know if that’s true, and again, as much as there’s a lot of onus on the Threads team to get things right, the more that Musk agitates the X user base, the more that also works in Threads’ favor.

So as of right now, Threads is in a strong position to eventually overtake, and potentially surpass X as the real-time social platform of choice. It also has more variables working in its favor, and if it can win over some of those embedded X communities, like sports and music fandom, that could spark a much bigger shift.  

And then will come the ads, and a new platform for marketers to consider. Mosseri says that this is in the works, but it feels, at least at this stage, like Threads needs another big growth surge before Meta makes the next move on this front.