The Social Tea #004
Welcome back to another edition of The Social Tea. From sea shanties to story pins, the first month and a bit of 2021 has been anything but quiet. Cuppa at the ready? Great, let’s get stuck in!
Instagram launches professional dashboard
Instagram has launched a new ‘Professional Dashboard’ for creators and businesses. The interface will provide basic performance insight, as well as a hub for resources on how to maximise (and monetise) platform presence. Although these features do already exist on the platform, Instagram hopes that a centralised hub will make it easier for professionals to grow and find success.
YouTube points to Shorts as key development for 2021
It might be too cold to start talking about Shorts, but that’s exactly what YouTube are focusing on at the moment. The recently launched ‘Shorts’ feature now gets over 3.5 billion daily views through its beta testing in India. The success suggests that YouTube will be expanding the offering to other countries in 2021, seeing ‘Shorts’ as a key development for the platform.
Pinterest introduces Story Pins
Dissimilar to its competitors, Pinterest is the latest app to add a carousel of Stories to its home page. Story Pins were introduced in September last year but have been officially rolled out in January. Pinterest is hopeful that showing Stories from creators that you don’t even follow, will help to boost discovery and engagement on the platform, and encourage other creators to start posting more Pins.
Twitter embraces its flaws
Nobody’s perfect. Especially not Twitter. That’s why it’s stepped in 2021 with two new themes in its marketing approach: complexity and imperfection. The platform has launched a new look (think scrapbook vibes) which aims to embrace the essence of the unpredictable nature of our day-to-day lives.
Instagram tests removal of ‘share to stories’
Instagram has become somewhat of a hub for sharing educational content in the last year, with many accounts reaching high volumes of users through the ability to allow anyone to share a feed post to their Story. Instagram is now conducting a test which is stopping users from sharing feed posts within their Stories. The reason behind this, is to prompt users to create content specifically dedicated to each stream. Though there is no plan to officially roll out this change, this is one to keep an eye on.
Sugar, tea and rum
Now we couldn’t end this Social Tea without exploring the harmonic explosion that is sea shanties on TikTok. It seems the world could do with a big old sing song, and off the back of a wretched year, 2021 seems to be the year the ancient seafaring tradition made a comeback, completely out of the blue (sea). What joy! What melody! What polyphony! Thank God for postman Nathan Evans.
&finally: “I’m not a cat”
“I’m not a cat,” were the now-famous words uttered by a lawyer proclaiming his innocence before a judge in America. The hilarious sequence, which has become an instant viral hit, took place during a court case held over Zoom. Seemingly stuck on a cute-eyed furry kitten filter, Rod Ponton graciously kept his cool and maintained his professionalism.
“I don’t know how to remove it… I’ve got my assistant here trying. I’m prepared to go forward with it,” he reassured the judge.
Might as well charge him with a feline-y.