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Looks like social audio has had its moment, doesn’t it? That it was a pandemic-induced trend, which is still valuable to some degree, but is unlikely to become the tool for transformation and connection that many envisioned back when Clubhouse had a valuation of $4 billion.

Clubhouse is now struggling to sustain its growth, Facebook has all but abandoned its social audio initiatives, and other apps, though they keep trying, don’t really seem to be gaining traction with their copycat features.

Which leads to Twitter Spaces.

Of all the audio social adds, Spaces seemed to be gaining the most traction, and with Twitter’s established network to hang on to, it also seemed like the most likely to be successful in the long run.

But it hasn’t become an important part of the Twitter experience yet.

Can he? It definitely looks like Twitter still has confidence as it continues to experiment with new Spaces options and tools, while Spaces also has its own tab in the app’s bottom function bar, highlighting the potential Twitter sees in it to improve the user. live.

And the next step could be coming – according to new screenshots, Twitter is getting closer to launching a revamped version of the Spaces tab that will separate audio broadcasts, both live and recorded, into topics, in what looks like a podcast display.

As you can see in this extended layout examplepublished by an application researcher Alessandro PaluzziTwitter’s new themed approach to Spaces will make it easier to find content on key discussions of interest, including dedicated displays of the latest shows on “News”, “Sports”, “Music” and more.

Twitter has been working on the new format for some time, with its initial topic layout spotted during testing in June, which at that time also included popular podcasts in the feed.

That, along with the addition of Saved Spaces, seemed to suggest that Twitter was looking to incorporate podcast discovery into its audio tools, expanding its listings beyond just Spaces content.

This could make Twitter a more essential audio companion, while providing more ability for Spaces hosts to convert their streams into downloadable and potentially monetizable shows, while the approach to more dedicated topics would improve the discoverability of Spaces content, which has been a key problem hindering Occupation of spaces.

Because, most of the time, the majority of current Spaces are irrelevant. Tap on the Spaces tab and you’ll see a bunch of Web3 and NFT chats. But if you’re not into those subjects, there’s usually not much variety at any given time.

Accessible and categorized Spaces recordings solve this problem, while the addition of other popular podcasts could also encourage more people to turn to the app when looking for audio content – ​​although it should be noted that this last example does not show existing podcasts in the same way as the original test.

Perhaps that’s why Twitter recently asked TechCrunch not to share these early images, as it’s still working on the format. Maybe Twitter couldn’t get a license to include outside podcasts in the new display — though either way, it still seems like an improvement that, at the very least, will give Spaces the best chance. to succeed.

And it is still possible. Time Magazine, for example, regularly streams through Spaces during the summer, which could make Spaces an ongoing content avenue.

It might get more people listening – but the main problem with Spaces remains the same as with live video streaming before it.

When you open a broadcast tool to everyone, you get a lot of bad content. It’s inevitable – as more people get the chance to stream, they will, and only a limited number of creators have the talent and skills to create consistent, engaging content, with large audiences. .

As such you need filters, you need tools to be able to bring out the best, to showcase the crème de la crème, to deliver the best experience, which will then keep people coming back .

Right now Twitter’s Spaces tab doesn’t, but maybe with more specific curation and the addition of recordings, and potentially outside podcasts, that could still happen and could do of Spaces a more valuable item.

As all the major platforms now look to integrate commerce options, YouTube is expanding its testing of third-party product tags, which allow chosen creators to tag products featured in their music videos, with the creator being, at least currently, paid by YouTube directly for the use of these highlights.

As you can see in this example, some creators are asked to label products as purchasable itemswithout having to enter into separate branded content agreements for them.

“Viewers will be able to learn more about the products and discover ways to buy them without leaving YouTube.”

As Business Insider reported, YouTube launched the first iteration of the program in April, but more recently has invited more creators into the fold. Over time, this increases the amount of product tags in clips, which will help raise awareness of the option, while also allowing user behaviors to change around the process and possibly providing another avenue of in-app monetization.

It’s similar to Instagram’s product tagging process, which it also launched in April, allowing creators to earn a commission on any direct sales generated through their product tags.

Although, as noted, YouTube’s system, at least for now, isn’t commission-per-sale-based, with YouTube instead offering a flat monthly fee to creators for using the tool.

According to Business Insider:

“[One] The creator was offered a minimum of $50 per month for using the feature, and he could earn up to $0.08 each time a viewer clicked on a product label and visited the product page. product. The cost-per-click rate offered by YouTube varies by creator and product based on “a number of factors,” the company told Insider, but declined to elaborate on the exact payment structure.

Eventually, you’d expect YouTube to look to move to a direct affiliate program, with creators earning a cut of sales generated, establishing another ecosystem to facilitate in-app monetization, while helping to expand its push for e-commerce.

Although questions remain as to how many users actually want to buy from social apps and the value of these beacons and streaming options.

In-app purchases have been a transformative trend in China, with some other Asian markets also embracing the more streamlined product display process for purchase. But so far, Western audiences have not been so quick to follow the trend, despite the overall increase in online shopping behavior.

Live commerce is where most social apps are currently focused, with TikTok, Meta and YouTube all incorporating different forms of live shopping tools to align with impulse buying behaviors and consumer trends. modern commitment.

It could still become a thing, but results so far show that even though consumers search for products in social apps, they’re generally happy to buy them from each company’s website. Which could present a greater challenge here, as it may reflect a distrust of payment services offered in social apps and the recording of your bank details in relation to your data embedded in the application.

I mean, considering the bad press around data sharing and privacy that’s been attached to Meta and TikTok in particular, that wouldn’t be surprising, when Chinese regulators have a lot more control over the how these businesses operate in their region. This could be a major challenge for Western platforms to overcome – or maybe it’s just a generational shift, and as younger consumers grow older and have greater spending capacity, in-app purchases will become a more accepted and adopted behavior.

Either way, the jury is out on the process right now, but what you can be sure of is that whichever platform is launched, the others will follow, as they all seek to offer the best deals on revenue sharing for creators, to better align them. to their applications.

If streaming shopping catches on, TikTok could see great success with Product Tags and its Shop tools, as it has already done in China, which is why Meta and YouTube have no choice but to do so. ‘offer the same, in case it happens, and they miss out on a key opportunity.

I don’t see it becoming a big thing right away, but you can expect streaming buying to pick up momentum over time, especially as more and more people have better safer experiences by providing their payment details in each app.

Based on at least some recent numbers, the air seems to be blowing out of the initial NFT bubble, which means that if Meta wants to launch at the end of the hype, it needs to launch the NFT storefront features now. .

As such, it’s no surprise to see that Instagram’s in-development NFT display options are now getting an initial release.

As announced by Instagram boss Adam Mosseri, IG launches a first test of its new NFT features with selected designers in the United States. The process will include integrations for Ethereum and Polygon, with additional support for Flow and Solana to come. NFT owners will be able to connect their Rainbow, Trust Wallet and MetaMask accounts to verify NFT ownership.

Users will be able to post their NFTs on the main IG feed, in stories, or in direct messages. Although there will also be a new NFT tab added to participating accounts, with a checkmark in a hexagon to indicate verified NFTs.

You can see in this image that the hex tick indicator will also be included on NFT images posted to your main post feed.

Instagram has been developing the option since June last year, with initial examples showing how IG could not only showcase your NFTs, but also facilitate NFT sales, merging with the broader market for digital goods.

You can see in this example how NFT auctions could potentially be integrated into the process, providing a more comprehensive connection to the wider NFT market.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also spoke about the potential of NFTs and the expanded role digital goods will play in the upcoming Metaverse shift, with the clothes you dress your digital avatars in potentially minted as NFTs. and linked to your digital identity.

But as noted, NFT trading has been steadily declining since its initial hype period. A recent Wall Street Journal report noted that there has been a 92% drop in NFT sales since September and an 88% drop in active wallets since November.

This reduced demand has also caused the value of some big name NFTs to plummet.

According to WSJ:

“An NFT of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet was sold in March 2021 for $2.9 million to Sina Estavi, the chief executive of Malaysia-based blockchain company Bridge Oracle. Earlier this year, Mr. Estavi put the NFT up for auction. He received no offers over $14,000, which he did not accept.

NFT enthusiasts have questioned these data points, suggesting they are hand-picked examples, but the larger trend, based on industry statistics and projects, suggests that NFTs are cooling off, at least in their current form.

Which is probably the most critical point. As Zuckerberg notes, the potential of NFTs extends far beyond the current flood of cartoonish avatar images, with seemingly thousands of “artists” throwing together all sorts of random images in hopes of take advantage of it.

These PFP (profile picture) projects do indeed appear to be losing popularity, but eventually there will be ways to use the back-end process of NFTs to display ownership of a wide range of digital assets.

So while NFTs as we currently know them appear to be on the way out, the process they embody may well become a key foundation for the next stage.

That’s probably why Meta is pushing ahead, even though people seem a bit fed up – and with so many rug pulls and ripoffs, and so many shitty “projects” in the space, it doesn’t is not surprising to see people turn away.

But there is still underlying potential, as many people are already well invested in today’s NFT space.

In addition to today’s launch, Zuckerberg also notes that NFT display options are coming to Facebook soon, along with Augmented Reality NFTs for Instagram Stories.

Will this lead to wider adoption of NFTs, or is it just a way for Meta to hang on to the initial hype phase before they die out?

We’ll find out soon, as NFTs become more widely visible in Meta’s apps.

Of course, it always happened, but this week, as part of its latest earnings report, Google confirmed that it had launched an initial test of ads served between YouTube Shorts clips, its abbreviated TikTok-esque video feed. .

And that’s not all – according to Google, Shorts is now on average on 30 billion daily views. This is a significant increase from the 5 trillion views of shorts all time YouTube reported in February, highlighting the growing popularity of short-form content and why every platform is now making it a priority.

Shorts ads will provide another monetization route for the option, a key consideration for YouTube, because if more people watch more Shorts content, that’s good, overall, for the app, more time spent in Shorts also means less time spent with his other monetizable video. clips.

Google also noted this in its results call, saying it was “is experiencing a slight headwind to revenue growth” as short film viewership increases as a percentage of total time on YouTube.

So really, YouTube needs to monetize shorts, and quickly, in order to dilute its impact on overall revenue, while it also needs to establish new avenues for shorts creators to maximize their revenue potential, and you cannot directly monetize the short video. clips with mid and pre-roll commercials.

This adds a level of complexity to monetizing short videos, something Vine fought against at the time (which ultimately led to its closure), and which TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube are also working to address in this regard. moment.

The main option they have relied on so far is dedicated creator funding pools, from which creators can then earn an allocation of funds based on the performance of their Shorts clips.

But that has already proven problematic, with variable payouts and shifting incentives frustrating top creators, many of whom already earn large and reliable incomes from YouTube and Twitch, and are used to the established economy of online video streaming ( which, it should be noted, may change on Twitch too).

The risk here is that if these platforms can’t establish solid revenue streams for their top stars, then eventually, much like what happened with Vine, those top creators will turn to platforms that offer funding deals. more stable and lucrative. Which will inevitably lead them to YouTube anyway, which pays out billions every year to creators through its YouTube Partner Program.

In that sense, Shorts can act as an additional promotional channel for your main YouTube stream, where you can earn real money – and with that as a lure, and with Shorts’ views growing so quickly, YouTube represents the biggest challenge to TikTok’s continued dominance. in space, although it seems that, at the moment, TikTok is almost too big to fail at this stage of the game.

But it could – while Google also notes that:

“More than 40% of creators who received payment from the Shorts Fund in 2021 were not part of the YouTube Partner Program.”

That’s a huge amount of new voices that are now being paid by YouTube for their Shorts content, and if YouTube can establish a clearer path to getting paid more, more often, that will inevitably lead to them sticking with YouTube as their platform. key. of choice.

Ads in shorts are another element of this, providing another revenue avenue for the option, which YouTube can then funnel back into its creator funding process or invest in other ways to advance its sharing models. income.

No one has “cracked the code” as such on how best to pay short-lived creators, but YouTube’s system is far more advanced than others. Implementing a more sustainable advertising process is another step in this evolution.

After years of internal testing and experimenting with downvote options in social apps, we’re now seeing more platforms actually testing them, though not exactly in the way that many would have assumed, based on previous discussions.

TikTok is the latest platform to test a downvote option, and some users now see downvote messages that allow them to flag video responses they don’t want to see.

As TikTok explains it:

“We have started testing a way to allow people to identify comments that they think are irrelevant or inappropriate. This community feedback will add to the range of factors we already use to help keep the comments section consistently relevant and a place for genuine engagement. To avoid creating bad feelings among community members or demoralizing creators, only the person who registered a comment that I don’t like will be able to see that they did so.”

As you can see from the example above (posted by a social media expert matthew navarra), some users now see a “like” icon to the right of video responses, allowing them to signal their disinterest or dissatisfaction with the comment. TikTok first started experimenting with the option in 2020, but is now expanding the option to a broader group of users.

TikTok hasn’t explained how this will affect comment ranking, and whether this will lead to a change in how it displays comments for individual users or in general, but the idea is that this will give you more comments on what you don’t. users like. , allowing you to further hone your systems to prioritize the most relevant and engaging feedback.

So it’s not exactly a downvote option like you see on Reddit, where the community dictates the ranking of answers. But it could be, eventually, depending on how TikTok decides to go with those ideas.

As noted, several platforms are running similar tests, with Facebook also testing downvotes for answers and Twitter also working on the same thing. Maybe that leads to a variable ranking of responses, or maybe it helps platforms spot more trends and patterns in negative responses to better take action on them. By being vague about how response data is used, they leave the door open for different approaches, but it would be assumed that eventually this will allow for better ranking of comments, which could help improve engagement.

Really, it might be better to follow a Reddit model, where users can see the full data about the replies that prompt their comments, so they can then better understand the community’s response to their comments, which could be a better cycle educational feedback to encourage more civil interaction. But at the same time, there’s some hesitation in adding potentially negative comments like this, and with so few Twitter users already posting comments (10% of Twitter users create 80% of tweet content, according to research), that’s probably not the best way to encourage wider interaction in each app.

For context, the above analysis has suggested that Over 98% of Reddit’s monthly active users never post or comment on the app.

In addition to downvotes, TikTok is also experimenting with new reminders that will guide creators to their comment filtering and bulk blocking and removal options.

“Reminders will be shown to creators whose videos appear to receive a high proportion of negative comments. We will continue to remove comments that violate our Community Guidelines, and creators can continue to report comments or accounts individually or collectively for our review.”

TikTok will now also allow users create in-app reports via videoadding another way to provide more context in your reports, while also better aligning with app usage behavior.

Combined, the new tools will improve the feedback cycle for TikTok users and provide more information for TikTok to refine and further improve its systems, which could help make the app experience safer, more welcoming, and more attractive.