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It’s time for our monthly rundown of social media news and trends!
A lot happened in November. Let’s go over the major updates.
Meta & Amazon Partnership
There were talks in November between Amazon and Meta to give Facebook and Instagram users access to purchase Amazon products in-stream.
Amazon went on to explain:
“For the first time, customers will be able to shop Amazon’s Facebook and Instagram ads and check out with Amazon without leaving the social media apps. Customers in the U.S. will see real-time pricing, Prime eligibility, delivery estimates, and product details on select Amazon product ads in Facebook and Instagram as part of the new experience.”
With Meta and Amazon sharing data and insights, they would be able to better inform relative marketing strategies and ad performance on Facebook and Instagram.
When looking into the fine print, you’ll see that, based on details from your Amazon account, Amazon will display updated product pricing on ads. Also, Amazon will share in-app activity data with Meta to show more relevant product ads, based on the ads you engage with.
I know that sounds but the data shared will be limited. Amazon won’t share the specific shopping actions that you make on Amazon (searches, product views, searches) just to improve Meta’s ad targeting.
I find this partnership between the two powerhouses, Besos and Zuckerberg, to be a bit surprising. I know that Meta has been trying to drive more in-app shopping, especially with Instagram Shopping not working too well since its launch. But this partnership might be a brilliant move for Meta.
Do you think this is a good partnership?
Platforms Add New AI Features
This last month, multiple platforms have announced new AI-powered content creation features. The biggest announcements come from Meta and YouTube.
Meta’s New AI Tools
First, Meta released a new AI-powered text-to-image & video generator based on Meta’s “Emu” AI research project.
As explained by Meta:
“This is a unified architecture for video generation tasks that can respond to a variety of inputs: text only, image only, and both text and image. We’ve split the process into two steps: first, generating images conditioned on a text prompt, and then generating video conditioned on both the text and the generated image. This ‘factorized’ or split approach to video generation lets us train video generation models efficiently.”
Meta hasn’t said when these new tools will be available in its apps, but both look set to be coming soon.
YouTube’s New AI Tools
Then on Youtube’s end, they announced a new experiment to support AI music creation.
Google announced Dream Track for Shorts and Music. Dream Track is an AI-powered music creation feature that is “powered by Google DeepMind’s most advanced music generation model to date, Lyria.”
To use the feature, users type an idea into the creation prompt and select a participating artist that appears in the carousel, an original Shorts soundtrack featuring the AI-generated voice of that artist will be produced for the creator to use in their Short.
“I know there’s been a lot of talk about music artists vs AI, so as of right now YouTube has artists like Alec Benjamin, Charlie Puth, Demi Lovato, John Legend, Sia, T-Pain, Troye Sivan, and a few more who have chosen to collaborate in this experiment and work with YouTube to help shape the future of AI in music.
These artists are giving a small group of select US creators the chance to create unique soundtracks of up to 30 seconds for their Shorts.”
I always get excited to hear about new ways AI is getting integrated into the content creation process. If it’s something that can help save creators time, money or effort, I always think it’s worth exploring!
What do you think about these AI updates?
Good News
Before moving on to the best of November, I want to mention Storyy. Not because they’re sponsoring this post, but because they’re where I get all my news and updates from. They have a weekly Trend Report that’s free to sign up for and it’s perfect for staying up to date as you grow your following on social media.
Moving on!
There wasn’t only boring, corporate news in the month of November. There was also a lot of good that happened! Let’s touch on a couple of those good moments.
Stanley Cup Video
If you didn’t understand the hype of the viral Stanley Cups before, you might get it now.
In late November, a video went viral from user @danimarielettering (Dani), who shared the inside of her car, which caught on fire the day prior. The car and everything inside are completely destroyed and melted — except for her Stanley resting in the cupholder as if nothing happened. The tumbler still had ice in it!
The video went mega-viral, with many telling Stanley to use the video as an ad for their product quality.
This led to Stanley President, Terence Reilly, responding to Dani in a TikTok telling her they are sending some new Stanleys, and are going to replace her car!
“We’ve never done this before, and we’ll probably never do this again,” said Terence as he made the announcement.
Jacksfilms/SSSniperwolf Drama Update
One of the biggest stories from October was the doxing drama between popular YouTubers Jacksfilms (Jack Douglass) and SSSniperwolf (Alia Shelesh).
In the aftermath of the drama, many wondered what would happen to Jacksfilms’s 2nd channel titled “JJJacksfilms.”
After taking some time off, Jack returned to the channel to announce he would use the channel for good, and use it to showcase up-and-coming creators and give them advice and constructive criticism to improve their videos live on stream.
You can submit your own video for the chance for Jack to review it on stream via this Google Form.
I think this is a brilliant pivot for the channel. Instead of parodying SSSniperwolf and showing what he believes creators should NOT be doing, he’s now able to share his ideas of what creators SHOULD be doing in the reaction niche.
And that’s it for the overall news on social media. Stay tuned for another post coming soon on platform-specific news and updates.
Follow your joy!
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