Category: SOCIAL MEDIA

Despite X Premium (formerly Twitter Blue) failing to catch on the way that Elon Musk had hoped, the platform’s keen to find new ways to boost its revenue intake, as it looks to integrate more AI elements, which come at a significant cost, while also offsetting its ad revenue losses.

Along that line, just before Christmas, X announced that the price of its X Premium+ subscription tier, the most expensive X subscription option, would be increasing by 30%, in order to fund the ongoing expansion of its offerings.

As per X:

“We’re updating the X Premium+ subscription price on December 21, 2024. New subscribers will pay the updated price starting that day. If you’re an existing subscriber and your next billing cycle starts before January 20, 2025, you’ll be charged at your current rate; otherwise, the new rate will begin with your first billing cycle after that date.”

The new price adds an additional $6 per month to the X Premium+ price, rising from $16 to $22 per month, or $229 annually.

X says that the higher price point will enable it to offer a completely ad-free experience for its top paying users, while also enabling higher usage limits for its Grok AI models.

It’ll also give X more capacity to pay creators via its updated revenue share model:

“We’ve shifted our revenue share model to reward content quality and engagement rather than ad views alone. Your Premium+ subscription fee contributes to this new, more equitable system where creator earnings are tied to the overall value they bring to X, not impressions of ads.”

X announced this change back in October, with the program shifting from providing creators with a cut of ad revenue for the ads displayed in their post replies (and seen by X Premium subscribing users), to paying creators based on engagement from paying users.

The added cost of X Premium+ will now contribute to this, by giving X a little extra income to share, while also, as noted, funding its ongoing AI development.

Though, technically, that’s conducted via xAI, which is a separate company to X itself. xAI, which is in charge of the models and systems that power its Grok AI chatbot, just closed a Series C funding round of $6 billion, adding to the $6 billion that it also raised back in May, enabling it to expand its operations.

xAI has used the majority of that funding to build its “Colossus” AI data center in Memphis, which incorporates 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs into the xAI operation. That puts it on par with the AI systems currently being operated by Meta and Google, though both of them have significantly more capacity, and capability, to expand further at this stage.

But for now at least, the new AI computing cluster has propelled xAI into a position of legitimate competition on AI development, as it looks to gain a foothold in the space, and cash in on the expected AI boom in the years ahead.

How an increase in X Premium+ pricing might directly contribute to this isn’t clear, but X has continued to pump out new updates for its Grok chatbot (the latest being improved image generation), while it’s also launched a standalone Grok app in some regions.

And it’s using X to promote this:

So there’s an intertwining there, though where the lines are drawn between the two is not clear, so it’s impossible to say how each contributes to the other in this respect.

Regardless, that’s one place that X says the extra subscription intake will be going. Though as noted, the price increase could also be an attempt to cover up for the shortfall in X Premium subscribers, which has left another hole in X’s revenue projections.

According to analysis conducted by TechCrunch and AppFigures back in October, X Premium currently has around 1.3 million subscribers in total, which incorporates all tiers of the offering. Of that, only a fraction would be paying for X Premium+, and as such, a price increase of $6 in this category isn’t going to be a major needle-shifter in this respect.

But those who are paying for the top tier are also less likely to cancel, so maybe, X is just cashing in where it can. Yet, the chances of X Premium ever becoming a major revenue driver, as Elon Musk had originally projected, seem to be very unlikely at this stage.

In his original business strategy plan for Twitter, which he shared with potential investors shortly after he took over at the app (and before the “X” re-brand), Musk predicted that Twitter Blue (now X Premium) would reach 69 million paying subscribers by 2025, and 159 million by 2028.

It’s a long, long way off that, and outside of price increases like this, it’s hard to see how X will be able to generate any real revenue traction from its subscription offerings.  

Unless it comes out with some mind-blowing add-ons to sweeten the deal. I’m not sure what they could even be, but it seems likely that AI will play a part somehow.

Personally, I maintain that social platforms are over-valuing the utility of features like AI image creation to regular users. But maybe Elon and Co. have something else up their collective sleeves.

As Meta works to make avatars a central element of its next-level experiences, it’ll also need to bring users along, by providing more ways for people to use their avatars in different applications.

Which is where this could be headed:

As you can see in this example, posted by app researcher Radu Oncescu, Meta’s working on “Avatar Quests”, which would seemingly enable users to engage in interactive games or world exploration via their digital depiction.

Which also sounds similar to its broader vision for the metaverse, its longer term, next-level social media experience that it’s still developing in the background.

Meta probably went a little too hard on its metaverse push back in 2021, when it renamed the company in line with this vision, and promised new worlds and experiences based around avatar interaction.

That may well be coming, but even then, Meta flagged that such development would be a decade out, at the least. Which meant that its metaverse shift was largely criticized and lambasted, as Meta’s current VR experiences, in particular, failed to live up to its futuristic vision.

Meta has since switched focus to the more trendy AI, and building out its own AI-based offerings, which will also, eventually, build into its broader vision. So it’s all one and the same in Meta’s view, though it’s no longer promoting the metaverse in such grandiose terms.

But a key element, again, will be avatar interaction, and enabling people to engage in its evolving spaces via their digital characters. Which is why Meta’s developing better, more customizable avatars, and adding new ways to use them in games and other experiences.

And soon, that could extend to even more offerings, like Avatar Quests, as Meta looks to set the building blocks in place to guide users towards its more immersive metaverse experiences.

The more it can align people with their digital depictions, the easier this will be, which is why you’re seeing more and more avatar options in its apps. The approach looks to build on how youngsters engage in gaming worlds, with gamers now well attuned to creating 3D characters that they use to interact in these applications.

And soon, that same process will be how you interact in the metaverse as well.

But to get people there, Meta’s going to have to seed more and more avatar experiences, so more and more people feel comfortable using their created characters.

Which, I suspect, is where options like this will come in, and you can expect to see a lot more avatar experiences being introduced on both Facebook and IG in the coming years.

We’ve asked Meta for more info on “Avatar Quests” and we’ll update this post if/when we hear back.

We all know that Meta is he grand champion of the social media revenue stakes, but just how dominant is Zuck’s social behemoth when it comes to ad intake, and how other platforms stack up?

That’s the focus of this visualization from Visual Capitalist, which compares the social media ad spend among the major players.

The data is based on social ad spending in the first half of 2024, using data sourced from app intelligence provider Sensor Tower. So there may be variances in the current time period, and each app also has other sources of revenue. But  advertising is where they make most of their money, which makes this an indicative overview of where they’re currently placed.

An interesting look at the state of play. You can read more in Sensor Tower’s “State of Digital Advertising Report” here.

Hey there, cool dudes, how have you been going with LinkedIn’s puzzle games this year?

As you may recall, back in May, LinkedIn launched three in-stream games which enable you to challenge colleagues, bosses, people from other companies, etc.

LinkedIn added another puzzle game to its library in October, as well as expanded data insights into comparative performance.

And if you’ve been playing along at home, you can expect to get a summary of your in-game performance soon, with LinkedIn distributing a “Playback” overview of your scores, ranking, and more.

As you can see in this example, LinkedIn’s games Playback overview will tell you which games you played most often, when you most often played, and how many CEOs you’re better than.

Though that measure is relative, because there are a lot of people on LinkedIn calling themselves CEOs who are actually just single person operators, or the like.

But regardless, the summary might make you feel better either way, as you imagine some rich looking CEO getting frustrated in his glass-walled office because he just can’t work out the latest puzzle. But you solved it.

So, does the fact that LinkedIn’s added a summary like this suggest that LinkedIn’s games have been a winner?

Well, we don’t have any data as yet on how many people are actually playing LinkedIn’s in-stream games, and they do still seem like an odd fit on the professional social network. But LinkedIn has reported that 80% of users who play a game return to play the following day, while 76% come back again a week later.

So while we don’t know how many people are playing, we do know that those that do keep coming back.

Which is probably a win. It’s all about improving LinkedIn’s engagement metrics, so even if only 100 people are regularly playing, the fact that they’re spending longer in the app would impact the overall average.

So, good for LinkedIn, and if you’re a LinkedIn game player, good for you, because you’re about to get a cool notification telling how good (or bad) you are at its puzzles.

Just imagine that the CEOs it’s referring to are like Richard Branson and Tim Cook and you can convince yourself that you’re actually, probably a genius.

It’s amazing to consider what happens on the internet every minute.

That’s what makes Domo’s annual “Data Never Sleeps” so compelling, because it provides a simple snapshot of all of the web’s activity, via bite-sized summaries of our various cumulative online activities.

This time around, for Domo’s 12th “Data Never Sleeps” report, it’s included AI processing and usage data points, among the various social media, gaming, and other online activities.

Indeed, Domo notes that it’s seeing signs within its data that AI “may be unseating digital juggernauts as it brings in new forms of engagement.”

You can check out the latest overview below, or see Domo’s full report here.

Oh, what a surprise, now that the U.S. election has passed, Meta is re-thinking its approach to political content on Threads.

Well, not political content specifically, but over the past week, some Threads users have been prompted to take part in a new survey related to content moderation in the app, and whether Threads should allow more or less topical discussion.

As you can see, the survey, which some users have been prompted to complete in-stream, asks questions about whether Threads removes too many posts, and how that impacts your perception and usage of the app.

There are also questions about Threads’ moderation and posting rules, and how users feel about posting in the app.

The “only for illegal activities” response echoes Elon Musk’s stated approach at X, with Musk repeatedly noting that X won’t remove content unless it breaks the law in a given region. Which X hasn’t always stuck to, but conceptually, this aligns with X’s freedom of speech approach, which would allow anybody to post anything, within legal guard rails.

And many believe that Threads should align with the same, and stop restricting political content, in particular, in order to ensure that it can provide a full, real-time stream of the latest news and discussions at any moment.

Because during the U.S. Election, many found that Threads’ political content restrictions limited its viability as a real-time info provider. That’s always been the key strength of Twitter (now X), that when something is happening in the moment, you can tap into X for the latest feed of posts related to that event. The fact that Threads was so bad on this front, especially on Election Day, is what led many to Bluesky instead, and Threads is pretty clearly concerned about the threat that Bluesky now poses to its ongoing growth.

Which is why it’s now re-thinking this. Though, really, it’s always seemed like Meta would re-assess this after the Presidential vote.

Meta has long been concerned about how it’s perceived in regards to political influence, especially after the 2016 election, when it got blamed for enabling the spread of propaganda and misinformation, which eventually led to the election of Donald Trump. Whether those influence campaigns were designed to get Trump elected, or indeed, had any real effect, is unclear, but either way, the perception of such led to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg being hauled before congress, and impacted Meta’s broader brand perception.

That’s potentially one of the reasons why it changed its company name to Meta in 2021, in order to distance itself from negative association, while it’s also rolled out a range of election integrity and misinformation detection measures to ensure that its on top of such in future.

Though even then, it still got dragged into the political blame game around the Capitol riots in 2021, and since then, it’s been looking to move away from political news entirely, and further separate itself from the issues that it can cause.

All of this, however, was really designed with the 2024 election in mind, knowing that it would once again be a divisive poll, and that its platforms could play a role in amplifying such.

But with the election now passed, with relatively little angst, Meta’s looking to revise this approach, with Threads specifically set to get a revision of its rules around political content.

And it does need it. If Meta genuinely wants to challenge  X, then the trending news of the day, whenever Trump announces some new, controversial policy, can’t be some light hearted headlines about baby pandas in a zoo. Threads needs to also serve broader news needs, and ensure that it keeps users informed, in real-time.

And while Meta doesn’t want Threads to replicate what Twitter was, as such, with Zuck and Co. seeking to build a more friendly version of a real time platform, if Threads is going to succeed, it needs a less filtered flow of the latest posts.

Threads is asking the question now, and I suspect that the responses will drive this next shift.

X users may soon get more DM functionality, with the capacity to attach files to DMs currently in testing in the app.

As you can see in this screenshot, back-end iOS code strings on X already include DM attachment references, which suggest that expanded elements are coming. The same code strings are also included in the Android app.

That would boost the capacity of X as a messaging tool, and align with the broader vision to convert it into an “everything app”, through which users would be able to conduct more of their day-to-day activities on a single platform.

And dedicated messaging, which has become a key connective element, is a big consideration in this respect.

Indeed, back in September, X owner Elon Musk said that X is working on “decoupling” DMs from public posting in the app: “so that if all you want to do is use this platform for messaging, but not post publicly, you can do so.”

Being able to attach files, then, makes a lot of sense, enhancing the messaging capacity of the platform to make it more of a dedicated messaging tool, if that’s how people want to use it.

The “everything app” vision is still a long way off, with X reportedly delaying its payments push due to an issue in obtaining payments processor licensing in New York. But X is still building out its functionality in other ways, while it’s also added various DM updates to enhance this aspect.

X added voice and video calls earlier this year, while it also added DM editing in September.

In combination, X has made some significant shifts, while the “de-coupling” of DMs from the main app would mark another major milestone in expanding app usage.

There’s no word as yet on a potential live test or release date, but considering X’s rate of rollouts, I’d say it’ll probably launch soon, though likely for X Premium subscribers only.

YouTube is trying out another new gaming element, with multiplayer games now available within its “Playables” gaming platform.

As explained by YouTube:

“We’re beginning to test a new multiplayer feature for a few select games on YouTube Playables. Multiplayer on Playables lets you play games in real-time with other users. We’re starting our tests with two games: Ludo Club and Magic Tiles 3 on desktop and mobile devices. We’re just getting started testing out new features for YouTube Playables with more to come in the future.”

So now, you’ll be able to challenge a friend to some of YouTube’s in-app games, which could be an interesting way to draw more attention to the feature, and maybe even lead to YouTube content opportunities on the back of this experience.

YouTube launched its “Playables” in-app games back in May, with more than 75 basic mobile games now available direct in the app.

Gaming is a critical driver of YouTube engagement, with many of the most popular creators in the app having direct links to the gaming community, while gaming content also generates billions of hours of watch time in the app every year. As such, given the already-present, and active gaming focus in the app, in-app games seem to make some sense, though YouTube hasn’t shared any data on the usage of Playables as yet.

But given this expansion, you would assume that people are indeed playing these lightweight games in-stream.

Various apps have tried out gaming to boost engagement, including Netflix, Meta, and more recently, LinkedIn, with its in-stream puzzle games.

Maybe, hosting these mini-games is a better way to maximize time spent, and facilitate more opportunities for each app, and as such, variable experiences could be a good way to encourage more usage.

But it remains to be seen whether people really care about these mini-games, with only a small percentage of users in these other platforms regularly coming back to them.

Still, their hosting load is small, and again, multiplayer games could provide YouTube content opportunities too. So it’s a good experiment, and it’ll be interesting to see whether YouTube’s Playables are actually catching on.

This could help to spark more interest in VR, depending on how it develops.

Today, Meta announced a new partnership with Lightstorm Vision, which is the visual effects company headed by legendary filmmaker James Cameron, who brought Terminator (1 and 2), Titanic, the Avatar films and many more to the big screen.

As per Meta:

“Sci-fi adventures. Star-crossed romances. Deep-sea documentaries. Filmmaker and explorer James Cameron is synonymous with all these genres and more. A pioneer in the merging of cutting-edge technology and blockbuster storytelling, Cameron has been at the forefront of innovation within the film industry for 40 years. And today, we’re thrilled to announce a new partnership between his venture, Lightstorm Vision, and Meta, to scale the creation of world-class 3D entertainment experiences spanning live sports and concerts, feature films, and TV series featuring big-name IP on Meta Quest – which will be Lightstorm Vision’s exclusive MR hardware platform.”

Beyond Hollywood blockbusters, Lightstorm Vision has also been developing innovative 3D capture process for live events, which lends itself perfectly to Meta’s evolving VR experiences.

Meta’s hoping that Lightstorm will help it evolve its presentation tools and formats, in order to bring VR into the mainstream.

Which is a big step. Part of the challenge for Meta right now is that there really aren’t that many compelling VR experiences available, which means that there’s not a heap of justification for investing in a Quest headset.

That’s changing over time. The release of big titles like “Batman: Arkham Asylum” is already attracting new users, while Meta’s also working with Rockstar Games on a VR version of the popular “Grand Theft Auto” franchise (currently on hold), among other titles.

That, combined with the steadily decreasing cost of VR headsets is prompting more take-up, while Meta’s also developing new ways for VR and non-VR users to interact, as it looks to tap into the next cohort of gamers whose online gaming experience is as much about being social as it is playing the games themselves.

These are all key steps, and enhanced visual worlds, powered by the team that created Avatar’s “Pandora” can only be a benefit in this respect.

As such, this could be a major announcement, aligning Lightstorm’s vision with Meta’s immersive content ambitions. And that could eventually see all-new VR experiences that really drive take-up.

Meta has launched a new info hub for Threads creators, which includes a range of explainers, notes, and pointers on how to create and grow your Threads presence.

Well, kind of.

Most of the tips included here are honestly too generic to be of significant value, but if you are just starting out on Threads, there could be some notes that will help to guide you in the right direction.

The new Threads mini-site includes a basic overview of how to get started in the app, by connecting your IG account.

Threads is working on separating Threads and IG, but right now, you still need to sign-up using your Instagram credentials.

There’s also an overview of how Threads works, and how to align your feed to your interests:

Though the examples above actually highlight a key concern for Threads, in that the Threads team seem to want it to be something that it’s not. I mean, look at those suggested topics of interest in the app.

Big community around “school lunch ideas” in the app. Time to get on it.

There’s also a section on “topic tags” because Threads refuses to have hashtags as we’ve traditionally known them.

While Threads has also included some tips and notes on how to grow your Threads presence.

Pretty generic, as noted, and the only actual, data-backed tip is the first one above on posting frequency, which Threads says is based on “internal analysis over a 30-day period in H1’24 among global Threads creators”.

That’s what I would have really liked to see, more data-based trends and insights to help guide your approach in the app. Maybe the Threads team will provide that in future, but right now, the best you’re going to get is a listing of basic tips and notes, which could be helpful, but might also be a little too generalized for most.

Still, it may be worth bookmarking this new hub as a means to stay up with the latest Threads news and updates, and tips direct from the source. Especially if you’re keen to tap into the lucrative “school lunch ideas” crowd.

If that’s you, then maybe go check it out.

Meta’s Threads tips hub is available here.