Welcome to Part II of Edition No. 67 of my weekly newsletter, providing practical analysis in the world of digital content strategy.
Friday Five
I. Meta to the Moon: Stock Pops on AI Investments
II. Now You Can Create Images with Bard
III. Make These Urgent Email-Related Changes
IV. TikToks Are Showing up Again as Featured Snippets on Google
V. Easier Than Ever To Give GA4 Feedback
VI. Other Important Updates
I. Meta to the Moon: Stock Pops on AI Investments
Meta, the conglomerate behind Facebook and Instagram, reported a tripling of its fourth-quarter profits compared to the previous year, attributing the success to advancements in artificial intelligence (A.I.) and significant cost-cutting.
The company announced its first-ever stock dividend payout and a $50 billion stock buyback.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized continued aggressive investment in A.I., with plans to further integrate Meta AI across the company's apps, enhancing creator and community engagement through technology.
More tidbits from The Information:
“Reels videos had 3.5 billion reshares each day across Instagram and Facebook.”
“Threads now has 130 million monthly ‘actives,’ according to Zuckerberg. That’s up from just under 100 million last quarter.”
“Meta will stop reporting Facebook users numbers.”
🛠 Why does this matter?
That last point – no more Facebook user numbers – sticks out. Perhaps because they’re either no longer growing, or no longer expected to grow?
Maybe that doesn’t matter, though, with the health of Instagram and persistence of Threads. (Don’t forget about WhatsApp, either.)
Apart from being a great stock to invest in a year ago, Meta and its properties appear to be sticking around. For all the talk of Facebook being a relic for Baby Boomers to share conspiracy theories, Meta continues to invest in other platforms that we’ll need to continue to invest in ourselves.
The initiation of dividend payments and a large stock buyback plan also reflect growing investor confidence in Meta's long-term viability and its ability to generate substantial cash flows, marking a significant milestone in the company's evolution.
Zuckerberg's commitment to aggressive A.I. investment, along with the expansion of Meta AI and innovative features like the new Ray Ban "smart" glasses, highlights the company's focus on sustaining growth through technology innovation and creator economy engagement, despite the need to demonstrate the long-term returns on these investments.
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II. Now You Can Create Images with Bard
Google Bard introduced Gemini Pro across over 40 languages and 230 countries.
A new feature enables image generation in Bard, offering high-quality, photorealistic visuals based on user prompts, accessible at no cost in most countries.
🛠 Why does this matter?
ChatGPT has allowed us to generate images with DALL-E 2 for a while now. Google is simply playing catchup.
Google Bard's image generation introduces technical safeguards, such as the SynthID watermark system, to promote ethical use by clearly marking AI-generated images.
They also put safeguards in place that aim to “limit violent, offensive or sexually explicit content.”
I asked Bard to generate an image for this newsletter. It didn’t go so well:
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III. Make These Urgent Email-Related Changes
Google and Yahoo's new email practices started yesterday (Feb. 1, 2024), focusing on authentication and enhanced unsubscribe mechanisms.
Non-compliance could lead to email delivery issues, including spam classification or blocking.
🛠 Why does this matter?
Google and Yahoo are mandating stronger email authentication via SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to bolster confidence in email origins and close security loopholes. Compliance ensures your emails are trusted and reach inboxes.
Both platforms require a one-click unsubscribe feature and a two-day processing window for requests, emphasizing user convenience and control over their inboxes.
Enforcing spam rate thresholds aims to keep inboxes free from unwanted content, aligning sender practices with user expectations for relevant communications.
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IV. TikToks Are Showing up Again as Featured Snippets on Google
“Anyone else seeing SGE without the thumbnail carousel in the top right?”
This isn’t the first time TikToks have been spotted on Google, but this format does appear to be new.
-X
🛠 Why does this matter?
There has been a lot of talk about how Google was losing users – especially Gen Zers – to TikTok searches.
This is one way for Google to keep users on its platform while still bowing to the dominance TikTok has over younger generations.
This doesn’t necessarily mean you should go out of your way to optimize TikTok captions for Google search, but it would be bonus to have your content show up there.
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V. Easier Than Ever To Give GA4 Feedback
🛠 Why does this matter?
Google has implemented many changes in the past year-plus based on user feedback.
It’s now easier than ever to give that feedback directly on the platform.
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VI. Other Important Updates
“We're investigating an issue with indexing in Google Search that's affecting a small number of sites.” -Google
The New York Times is building a team to explore AI in the newsroom
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