Weekly Marketing News, 5th February 2021

This week we’ve seen the return of Bebo, Amazon facing tough competition, Alex George becoming a mental health ambassador, influencers under fire again, social media firms faced with fines, Clubhouse subscriptions, Instagram prevents resharing and how brands are tackling the Super Bowl.

What is this?

Each week, Socially Powerful get together and share industry news and what is inspiring us from The World of Social Media, Advertising, Influencer Marketing, Gaming and more…

INDUSTRY NEWS

1. Bebo is back! Co-founder reveals plan to take on Facebook and Twitter

Bebo’s co-founder, Michael Birch plans to relaunch the social network with a focus on profiles and “real-time” interactions between friends rather than the news feeds at the core of Twitter and Facebook. He told the BBC he was coding the effort himself. In 2008 Mr Birch and his wife Xochi sold the site to AOL for $850m (£623m), later buying it back for $1m before finally selling the business on to Amazon’s Twitch in 2019 for $25m.

2. OOOOO live Shopping app fights Amazon as it reaches first spot in iOS shopping charts

After only after 2 months since establishing itself in the UK, the OOOOO app is now the #1 downloaded shopping app. OOOOO is a live-streaming video commerce platform that follows a mega trend in China for live shopping, already estimated to be worth US $180 billion dollars a year in sales. Through the OOOOO platform, consumers can access real people reviewing real products in live shows, which they can buy in a couple of clicks from the OOOOO app.

3. Dr Alex George named government mental health ambassador

A&E doctor and ex-Love Islander Alex George has been appointed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson as youth mental health ambassador for the government. He will “shape policy” and advise on support for young people in his role, Downing Street said. In a post to his 1.7 million Instagram followers, Alex wrote: “Never has mental health been as important as now.

4. Influencers told not to use ‘misleading’ beauty filters

Filters should not be applied to social media adverts if they exaggerate the effect of the product, the Advertising Standards Authority has ruled. The ASA was responding to the #filterdrop campaign that called for it to be compulsory for influencers to state when they use a beauty filter to promote skincare or cosmetics.

5. Social media firms threatened with billion-pound government fines over abuse

Social media companies face “large fines” which could total “billions of pounds” from the UK government if they fail to tackle abuse on their platforms. Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden says he is prepared to ‘get tough’ and says senior management at social firms could face ‘criminal sanctions.’ Individuals and clubs, as well as the Football Association and Premier League, have called on social media firms to take tougher action against hateful messages.

PLATFORM NEWS

6. Clubhouse, the social network Elon Musk just joined, plans to make money through subscriptions

Clubhouse, the buzzy audio-only social app, is looking at ways to monetize the platform for its creators. Its revenue plan is similar to crowd-funding service Patreon’s model, which allows independent creators to receive funds directly from their audience. After debuting last year, Clubhouse is now valued around $1 billion and hosts more than 2 million users.

7. Instagram is stopping some people from posting feed photos to stories

Instagram is disabling the ability to share (and reshare) posts from your feed to stories as part of a test to see how it changes engagement with the popular feature. Resharing posts to stories is a fairly common practice, though it does create situations where you’ll see a post in your feed and then immediately see that post duplicated in your friend’s stories.

INSIGHT

8. How Cheetos, Nike, Facebook and other brands plan to own the Super Bowl social media conversation

Brands are either skipping expensive buys in the Super Bowl and diverting their attentions entirely to social media, or are supporting their Big Game ads with large social pushes – Virtual stadiums, interactive filters, football stars and loads of sweepstakes are this year’s Big Game social themes.

Our Influencer marketing agency and Social agency are located worldwide, with our agency network based in the USA, UK, UAE and China.

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@ Socially Powerful

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