The Folly of TPP Dependence
Those who don't learn from history are bound to suffer the consequences of algorithm changes.
Welcome to Edition No. 9 of my weekly digital strategy newsletter, providing practical analysis of the latest in the world of content creation.
Please consider supporting my work in any of the following ways:
Become a member. (The entire newsletter is free for a limited time.)
Forward this to a friend or colleague and encourage them to subscribe.
Share this post on social media.
For the best reading experience, go to the website.
Contents
I. News: Europe Goes After Big Tech – Again
II. Analysis: The Folly of TPP Dependence
III. Tip: In-App Twitter GIFs
News
BIG CHANGES COMING TO BIG TECH IN EUROPE
This comes a few years after GDPR came into effect. While the U.S. hasn’t adopted a GDPR-like law nationally – but Brazil and Japan, yes – it will be interesting to see if the Digital Markets Act has a greater affect stateside.
This new European legislation, which is expected to be passed, would affect Alphabet, Meta, Apple, Amazon, YouTube and Microsoft, among others, according to the Times.
ANOTHER INSTAGRAM FEED TWEAK
The app now has three total feeds, two of them new, both reverse-chronologically ordered:
Favorites shows the latest posts from a list of up to 50 specific accounts that you choose.
Following shows posts from the people you follow.
Home is the existing – and will continue to be the default – view. “…it will remain a mix of content that you see today, including ranked content from people you follow, recommended content you may like, and more.”
That’s right – it seems that every time you open the app, you’ll have to change from Home to Favorites or Following if you want to see things in reverse-chronological order. Choosing them once doesn’t mean the app lands on that feed by default the next time you open it.
Here’s Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri explaining more in a Twitter video. “…we believe it’s important for us to help people discover new things. … We believe in personalization.”
Mosseri ends his video saying, “Peace.” I don’t know if that’s him trying to be hip, or if he’s asking for a truce with all the people who have begged for years for a return to the reverse-chronological view.
UPDATES & TESTS
TweetDeck may soon be a paid service, though “a spokesperson from Twitter told TechCrunch that the company doesn’t have anything to share at the moment.”
Also, you can now search your DMs.
YouTube
The ability to go live with a guest is in testing stage. Live videos could include pre- and mid-roll ads.
Also being tested in live: full-screen mode and Q&A, respectively.
Snap
Bought a company that makes headbands that more or less lets you control an interface with your mind.
“This technology monitors neural activity to understand your intent when interacting with a computing interface, allowing you to push a virtual button simply by focusing on it,” Snap adds. “This technology does not ‘read’ thoughts or send any signals towards the brain.”
Analysis
The Folly of TPP Dependence
“I completely credit them for our growth — and then the algorithm changed and our sales dropped horrifyingly.”
That’s Sana Javeri Kadri in the New York Times talking about the adverse effect Instagram’s latest changes – a shift to prioritizing Reels – have had on her spice business.
Kadri’s relatable problem is as old as Facebook’s algorithm, though it’s a mystery why it still catches anyone by surprise.
On June 29, 2016, then-Facebook VP of Product Management and News Feed, Adam Mosseri wrote: “Today, we’re announcing an update to News Feed that helps you see more posts from your friends and family.”
This change was a torpedo to a news industry that had become addicted to guzzling organic referral traffic from the world’s largest social network.
At the Daily News, for example, we averaged 1,638,955.67 visits from Facebook per month in my first three months, from June–Aug. 2013. In my final three months – May–July 2015, we averaged 8,939,277.33 visits per month. A 445% increase in just two years without paying a single penny for traffic.
Although I believe the work we did there made our growth exceptional, even in our industry, I know from friends in other newsrooms that they reaped similar benefits. Fast forward a year, and most of that traffic had evaporated thanks to Facebook’s “friends and family” update.
It was in mid-2015 that Facebook launched Instant Articles, a way to host content on their platform in exchange for the promise of shared ad revenue and faster page-load times. (Similar to Google’s AMP.)
Coming roughly a year before the rug-pulling-out-from-under announcement of the F&F update to News Feed, it reminded me in retrospect of a Twilight Zone episode from 1962 (spoilers ahead) called “To Serve Man.” Aliens come to Earth and solve world hunger, among other problems. Peace abounds. So much so that the U.S. military is disbanded – that is, they let their guard down - and the “Kanamits” were welcomed all the more, establishing embassies across the globe.
One character translates a book the aliens brought to Earth and discovers its title: “To Serve Man.” An apparent confirmation of the invaders’ good intentions. But as the episode comes to a close, that same character tries to warn her friend whose already aboard the soon-departing spaceship: “To Serve Man” is a cookbook.
He tries to escape, but is blocked from disembarking. He’s then whisked off with his captors, presumably to their planet to be eaten.
It’s no coincidence that the Head of Instagram is Mosseri, the same man who led the “friends and family” Facebook update nearly six years ago.
But to think this is a Meta (the company) problem would be naïve. Even the platforms themselves are getting caught up in the wild goose chase of the latest feed trends.
There was a time when Facebook was alone at the top of Algorithm Mountain, but later came Instagram, so Mark Zuckerberg scraped together some pocket change and bought the photo-sharing app for $1 billion. Then came Snapchat, and when Evan Spiegel rebuffed an offer-berg, Instagram simply copied the disappearing-in-24-hours updates feature. (That’s how we got Instagram stories.)
Now, TikTok is the latest stick in Zuck’s craw, which is how we got Reels. And since simply copying TikTok wasn’t enough, now this very feature has become a priority, hence the struggles of people like Ms. Kadri, from the beginning of this post, to reallocate resources in a way that continues to generate revenue.
As another interviewee, Abigail Knoff, explains in the Times article: “The planning, editing and voice-over and music skills for more produced video content are very different from still iPhone photography.”
Counterpoint: Neither video nor video-editing skills are new phenomenons, and they have always been more expensive to produce than photos. The problem, then, isn’t that video is the latest algorithm darling (again), it’s that there is a “latest algorithm darling” at all.
Ergo the folly of third-party-platform (TPP) dependence.
As you may have read above, Europe continues to take aim at big tech’s information monopoly, proposing new measures that could have far-reaching consequences for the world’s largest social networks.
In other words, they have to do whatever is necessary to survive, regardless of what effect it might have on thousands of creators that heavily depend on their platform to grow their businesses. The aliens have to eat, too.
The real question is, why do people continue to stake their business plan on the sandy foundation of someone else’s platform?
Social media is a great way to drive traffic/generate sales/grow your audience/foster partnerships, but if a change in a social network sinks your business, then maybe it’s time to reevaluate your plan.
I’m certainly not saying to abandon these platforms, but at the very least, diversify. And more importantly, create a space – whether in person or on your own website – where you (more or less1) control the entire process and you’re the one who decides what changes to make.
That’s why, for example, news organizations that have invested in digital subscriptions continue to grow while those who rely on print revenue and remain inexplicably skeptical of going all-in on digital are getting trampled underfoot, or worse, bought out by partisan billionaires.
The only way forward is to control your own destiny so that in 30 years, when most or all of these social networks cease to exist, or at least be relevant, your “business” – however you define it – won’t.
How do you stay up to date with the latest algorithm changes? Let me know in the comments.
Weekly Tip
Create GIFs Directly in the Twitter (iOS) App
1. In the Twitter app, tap the compose tweet button.
2. Click the camera icon (to the left of the three thumbnails in the following screenshot):
3. Your camera will be opened, and at the bottom, you’ll see a GIF option. Make sure that’s selected.
4. Set the camera to front- or back-facing, choose your lighting (flash or no) and tap and hold for the duration of your GIF creation.
5. When you finish, you’ll see two pairs of options.
First, you have the option (the two stacked arrows) to make it a forward-and-backward looped GIF (like in my live example below), or you can make it forward-only (one arrow pointing to the right) for a GIF that plays more like a video on a loop as opposed to going back and forth through the duration of the clip.
Second, now that you see what it looks like, you can redo the GIF (bottom left) or use it in a tweet (bottom right). If you choose the second option, you’ll be taken to the compose tweet screen, where you can add text, links, etc.
6. Once you’re tweet is ready, post it, and voilà:
If you think I should have shaved before tweeting that, I agree.
Did you find this post useful? Please share it to help spread the word!
“More or less” because sometimes you have to build your website, for example, on a third-party platform like WordPress or Squarespace. But they’re much less likely to blindside you with a business-altering change than an algorithm-driven social network.
It’s the difference between selling your products in someone else’s store vs. selling your products in lots of different stories, or even better, having your own store, even if you rent and not own the property.