Krystal Wan, Business of Media Spring '23: Social Media

  Recently, I nstagram Reels introduced several updates for creators. According to  Meta’s announcement , these features include a dedicated destination for finding inspiration through trending audio and hashtags, a unified editing screen for easier reel editing, new metrics for Reels insights, and expanded gift features to more countries. Instagram aims to empower creators to grow and succeed on the platform by providing them with better tools and insights. Reel Trends By clicking on ‘Check Today’s Reel Trends’, creators will see top trending songs on Reels, how frequently the audio is used, trending topics, and hashtags. According to  TechCrunch,  Meta announced its purpose as assisting creators in gaining more knowledge about current trends, thereby enabling them to create more informed content and stay up-to-date with trends. Editing Tools By consolidating video clips, audio, stickers, and text into a single editing screen , the app now provides a more intuitive ...

  On April 6th, writers on Substack could not embed tweets in their posts anymore. This was because Twitter blocked likes, retweets, and comments on tweets with Substack newsletter links. Moreover, users could not pin tweets with a Substack link to their profile. As reported by Mashable , after writer Matt Taibbi announcing to leave Twitter and only using Substack, Elon Musk unfollowed him.  Matt Taibbi was the editor for 'Twitter Files', that Musk believed would be a shocking exposé of former leadership, but now they are not on great terms. Intentional Or Not? Why Block Substack? At first, it was uncertain whether Twitter's action was intentional because Twitter did not officially make an announcement. However, as reported by The Verge , Taibbi mentioned that he was informed that Twitter's reaction to Substack's posts was due to the launch of a feature similar to Twitter called "Notes" by the newsletter platform.  Substack’s Notes Why Did Writers Quit? T...

Twitter made their code that selected which tweets appear on users’ timelines available on GitHub . After March 31st, everyone in the world had access to the codes. It also published a blog post clarifying this move. The blog post explained several considerations and steps of the algorithm. What did they post? walk you through their algorithm’s steps According to The Verge , Twitter’s blog post listed three recommendation stages. First, it gathered Tweets from different sources. Second, it ranked tweets by using a machine learning model. After that, it deleted the parts users had seen, blocked, and considered dangerous for work.  interesting portion of the code: tracking metrics Twitter explicitly tracks metrics for users divided into four categories:  "power_user" "republican" "democrat" and "elon" Twitter was tracking Elon Musk’s tweets! Musk responded to it during the Twitter Spaces audio chat after the release of codes. As reported by Mashabl...