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If you’re looking for the inside scoop on influencer marketing 📱, creator culture🤳, and Gen Z insights 📈, then look no further. TAKUMI’s insights team is curating the most impactful industry news and developments right here 👇.
LinkedIn Launches Creator Accelerator Program, Announces New Events to Support Creators, Social Media Today
“Building on the tools and resources we have available to creators,today we’re rolling out the LinkedIn Creator Accelerator Program and investing $25 million to help creators build their audience and amplify their voice. This 10-week, incubator-style program for up to 100 US-based creators will give accepted participants coaching, a built-in creator network, opportunities to be featured on LinkedIn channels, and a $15,000 grant to help them share content, spark conversations, and build communities.”
TAKEAWAY: After months of working with creators to develop their new program, LinkedIn has launched its ‘Creator Accelerator’ initiative aimed at supporting in-app talent, and keeping the top voices posting to the platform. This plan will ultimately assist in driving on-platform engagement. This could be an interesting opportunity for creators to receive compensation for guest-blogging, which provides more of an incentive, even if the content isn’t the traditional creative form that they’re used to on many other platforms today. So while LinkedIn Stories was short-lived, LinkedIn’s experiments with on-profile tools and options for creators will continue.
What is Twitter Spaces? - Bring your Twitter conversations to life with audio, Sprout Social
“While images once dominated the social media landscape (and they still do), audio has gained momentum in the last couple of years. The social audio app Clubhouse created a lot of buzz when it launched in 2020 on an invite-only basis. Now Twitter has come up with Twitter Spaces to facilitate live audio conversations on the platform.”
TAKEAWAY: Twitter has officially launched their new feature, Twitter Spaces, onto their platform. This feature allows users to conduct live audio conversations while on the app. Similar to Clubhouse, users will be able to host conversations in an audio chat room - a “Space”. This is available for both individuals and businesses, ultimately promoting more personal connections with their audience. Want to know the best part of all? Users no longer have to worry about the 280 character count limitation. The best time to leverage something is when it’s new. Let’s see how this feature evolves over time.
Instagram is Developing a New 'Montage' Feature to Convert Stories to Reels, New 'Favorites' Listing, Social Media Today
“Instagram is very keen to get people using Reels as much as possible, as it works to counter the rise of TikTok, while also aligning with rising usage trends.”
A couple of months ago, Instagram announced that the app would no longer be prioritizing photo images but would instead be pivoting to video. Well now, Instagram has announced their latest development, ‘Montage’. It is currently being tested internally, but this feature would enable users to convert the Instagram Stories into short Reels video clips. Instagram has experimented with many app features over the past few months, and are actively looking for ways to start using the app in the way that they intend for it to be used moving forward.
YouTube Launches First Podcast, Exploring How Online Creators Have Found Success, Social Media Today
“As all social platforms look to implement more ways to enable creators to monetize their on-platform efforts, with a view to keeping them posting to their apps more often, the growth in creators becoming businesses has lead to what’s been coined ‘The Creator Economy’, opening up more opportunities for all types of experts and enthusiasts in virtually every niche.”
YouTube has officially launched its first ever podcast called ‘The Upload: The Rise of the Creator Economy’. YouTube’s goal with podcast is to feature the creator economy in an entirely different way than ever before. The bts aspect of the podcast not only humanizes the creators, but also shares a very different side that most of the world does not see. The Upload plans on featuring interviews from a range of everyone’s favorite YouTube stars today who have gone on to create their own businesses, and will provide more insight into how they manage all of these things at once.
TikTok Adds New Resources to Provide Additional Pathways to Support for Mental Health Concerns, Social Media Today
“TikTok has announced a new set of resources to provide support for users who may be experiencing mental health issues, specifically related to eating disorders, self-harm and suicide.”
TikTok will be expanding its well-being guides to support people who choose to share their personal experiences on the platform. Their new guides are now available in TikTok’s Safety Center. These guides are intended to help TikTok users communicate their experiences, as well as sharing how others can engage responsibility with people struggling or in distress. TikTok has also highlighted a new set of content, with their partner organizations, that provide more information to users about issues related to well-being. Younger audiences have found their home in the TikTok app, and more users continue to join daily. TikTok has found that they now have an obligation to protect these more “impressionable users” to shield them from potential harm and also provide them with support, if needed.