Welcome to Part II of Edition No. 46 of my weekly newsletter, providing practical analysis in the world of digital content strategy.
Contents
I. Is Anyone Else Concerned?
II. A Creator-Friendly Reddit Update
III. Will the U.S. Government Ban TikTok?
IV. Speaking of TikTok ‘Bans’
V. Bing’s AI Bot Has Three ‘Chat Modes’
VI. The Machine in the Ghost
I. Is Anyone Else Concerned?
Developers can now integrate ChatGPT and Whisper models into their apps and products through our API.
Why now?
Through a series of system-wide optimizations, we’ve achieved 90% cost reduction for ChatGPT since December; we’re now passing through those savings to API users…
Snap Inc. (see further below) is an early adapter of this technology. Instacart and Shop are other examples named in the promotional blog post.
🛠 Why does this matter? Let me establish a few caveats that may make it seem as if I’m talking out both sides of my mouth, (which is impossible to do at the same time, by the way. Wow. You actually tried it! But you now you know I’m right.)
First: I’m a fan of AI. For three weeks running I have talked about how I’m using ChatGPT, Notion AI and Bing AI to help me write content. (Emphasis on “help.”)
Second: OpenAI is a business. Of course they want people to use their product.
What I’m worried about are the bad actors. The shady but super-smart people who will find a way to use this amazing product for evil. To influence elections. To ruin reputations. To attack cybersystems.
On the other hand, I recognize that, by that logic, we might as well ban knives, cocaine and Tide Pods.
Oh, does one of those three examples stand out?! Well, that’s my point. Where do we draw the line? (No pun intended – I swear.)
I suppose with AI we don’t. We being the public/end-user. It’s up to our Scarlett Johansson-voiced overlords now.
For the record I’m excited to see where this goes and totally support the advancement of AI. But let’s all sleep with one eye open. Or at least ask Alexa to keep a lookout.
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II. A Creator-Friendly Reddit Update
We’ve been listening to your feedback and you can now search comments within a post on desktop, iOS, and Android apps.
🛠 Why does this matter?
So what does this mean? You don’t have to “cmd-f” on the post page anymore and you can search comment threads without expanding them. No more long scrolling sessions — quickly get to the parts of the conversation you’re looking for and jump in where you want.
Reddit is a hotbed of story and source ideas for journalists and content creators. This should expedite research for Reddit-savvy users.
As with any platform, this shouldn’t diminish the process of citing and crediting third parties, even if it is a forum of anonymous users.
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III. Will the U.S. Government Ban TikTok?
Spoiler: I have no idea. And I certainly have no interest in making this a political update.
Lawmakers voted 24 to 16 to approve the measure to grant the administration new powers to ban the ByteDance-owned app - which is used by over 100 million Americans - as well as other apps considered security risks.
🛠 Why does this matter? Banning TikTok would affect so many people’s lives, and I don’t just mean Generation Z’s social life.
It would affect the chef who’s gunning for a book deal by building up his TikTok audiences.
It would affect the singer that’s trying to get a record label’s attention with her original songs.
Those are individuals, though. And while no less important, they’re drops in the bucket compared to the affect a TikTok ban could have on the media industry:
“Between the first three quarters of 2022 and the final one, we saw ad spending on TikTok rise 20%,” said Ben Allison, head of media operations at VaynerMedia. “It’s still early this year to say for sure, but anecdotally we see this trend of investment in TikTok continue to increase with quarterly comps expected to grow at least for the duration of this year.”
…
“TikTok makes up about 25% of the social ad budgets,” said Brendan Gahan, chief innovation officer at digital marketing agency Mekanism. “Since 2020 it’s grown pretty steadily. Each year it’s grown around 50% year over year.”
The people who buy those ads have jobs.
And those ads are presented to users who are presumably buying the ad-featured products and services. (If not, then there wouldn’t be so much money spent on the platform.)
If TikTok goes away in the U.S., what will fill that marketing void? (Not just paid, but organic as well, which is what this newsletter is focused on.)
Not Snapchat, which doesn’t have nearly the reach. Nor Instagram, which is fading like a San Francisco sunset.
That’s because no platform has the combination of young users plus extreme engagement that TikTok can offer. And while it may help the rest of us get off the toiler a little faster (too much?), its reverberations are much farther-reaching than pure digital entertainment and interaction.
My guess? There’s a lot of political posturing going on, but the app isn’t going anywhere. I did love this quotation from Representative Paul McCaul, though:
“Anyone with TikTok downloaded on their device has given the CCP (Communist Party of China) a backdoor to all their personal information. It’s a spy balloon into their phone.”
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