Happy Thursday folks! It was naive of me to think we might be closer to a resolution on the TikTok saga by the time I wrote to you today, but I’ve done my best to sum up the situation below. I’ve also taken a look at Bluesky and what’s happened since we last spoke about it, as well as a look at the other key stories affecting the world of digital marketing this week.
What’s the latest with TikTok?
- TikTok are said to be preparing to shut down the app in the USA on Sunday, and it seems ByteDance is resigned to this.
- There are numerous names linked with a potential acquisition of TikTok, most prominently Elon Musk. It seems unlikely however that this will be resolved by Sunday.
- Donald Trump is said to be considering an executive order to “save” the app. Of course, he would only be able to do this from Monday; it sounds, however, like he is on the side of keeping the platform up and running. Joe Biden and his team (let’s face it, it’s his team) are also said to be looking for solutions.
- Those same articles also state that the Supreme Court in the States is sceptical that a short-term reprieve is legally possible, so this may all just be bluster.
- In the meantime, a lot of TikTok users are turning to rival Chinese app Rednote. Indeed, the platform topped app store charts this week in the US.
- Obviously, this is a live situation, and its possible that by the time you’ve gotten round to reading this there will have been a reprieve.
- Either way, if you’re in the US, it’s fairly obvious to say you should be avoiding investing resources in assets or ads for the platform until we know more; if you’re based in the UK or other English-speaking markets, it would be worth thinking about alternatives, as with the loss of so much English-language content from a major market, this has to have an overall effect on TikTok’s usability.
And what about Bluesky?
If we take ourselves back five weeks, it was hard to avoid conversations about Bluesky and how it was about to change the internet. I think we all knew that the reality would be far more prosaic. I’ve pulled together the key developments over the last few weeks below.
- The first isn’t really a new development, but is that I haven’t seen any figures on users or usage since the platform announced it had reached 26 million in December. This probably means that the figures frankly aren’t impressive, and anecdotally from my own experience on the platform, it feels like we’ve reached a plateau – though I can’t find data just yet to back that assumption up.
- The platform has however added a trending topics section which, while obviously calling back to Twitter, does make it feel like a more engaging experience.
- Somewhat inevitably, the platform has started to see an influx of bots and bad actors. The platform has said its tackling this and has quadrupled its moderation team, but these are inevitable growing pains.
- There’s been a lot of talk about Bluesky’s ownership model, and how they are keen to avoid another scenario similar to Elon Musk buying up Twitter, or the dominance of Mark Zuckerberg at Meta.
- The platform will be getting a sibling “Instagram-style” app called Flashes, probably aimed at reaching disenfranchised Instagram users looking for new pastures.
In short, Bluesky has entered something of a lull. Until it can start to raise funds to drive user growth, as well as launching a sophisticated advertising offering, its not something I would worry too much about for corporate social marketing, outside of ensuring you have your handle tied up!
Further Reading
Social Media Today pulled together an interesting piece asking if this is the year social media will see a shake up (in a word, no).
Mark Zuckerburg took to the Joe Rogan podcast to criticise Apple over its random rules and “lack of innovation”. I suspect they won’t be losing any sleep, but its hard to argue too much with him on many of the points.
Google will be integrating AI into its free Gmail and Docs apps – but raising the cost of Workspace as a result.
That’s it! If you found this interesting, I would appreciate it if you shared it with your friends and colleagues.
If you’re feeling particularly generous, I won’t stop you from buying me a coffee. Otherwise, I’ll be back next week. See you then!