What’s Hot?
What’s hot this week? Breaking records, celebrating friendships, ignoring Nigel Farage, visiting your local Indian restaurant, and creating longer Reels. Sounds like a big weekend!
TikTok breaks its own record
This week, TikTok announced that Ed Sheeran broke the record for the biggest ever live music performance on the app, with a staggering 5.5 million unique users tuning in for the live stream on June 25th and the two replays the next day.
The UEFA EURO 2020 show starring Ed was filmed in Ipswich and solely streamed via the social channel, with the set designed specifically for vertical filming, and even featuring a single mobile phone so that Ed could speak directly to the audience. To explain why they attempted this record, TikTok described the event as “encapsulating both intimacy and scale” to create a unique moment fans wouldn’t forget.
Friendship Day on Snapchat
To celebrate Friendship Day (today in case you were wondering) Snapchat released an infographic showing how Snapchatters are making up for lost time with friends this summer. Now we don’t always love a ‘Day’ but who can be down on a day about friendship…
Key findings include:
- Snapchatters agreed that Snapchat was their favourite app to connect with friends (lol)
- Over 70% of Snapchatters say exchanging photos and video on the app helps them stay connected with their crew (Sorry, are 30% of Snapchatters just using it to message? Why?!)
- Nearly half of Snapchatters globally say the pandemic has made friendships feel more important (<3)
RNLI gets the support it deserves
This week the RNLI received ridiculous and absurd backlash from the likes of Nigel Farage, after posting a video of rescuing migrants on social media. The RNLI responded with a considered response making it clear what they stand for: “All decent people will see this as humanitarian work of the highest order.”
Since the video was posted, they have received over £200,000 in donations in 24 hours and a 270% increase in people viewing volunteering opportunities – reminding us that there are still some decent people around.
Memes from your local
We all follow meme accounts, right? Though the definition of a meme account can feel blurry these days. Sure, you get classics like Archbishop of Banterbury on Instagram, but also you could argue that the Love Island Twitter is a meme account mocking its own contestants (who knew Toby would give us not one, not two, but FOUR memes in as many weeks?)
Our new favourite kind of meme account is much smaller. It’s the Rajshahi Indian restaurant in Wyoming. The restaurant makes its own memes using Family Guy clips to tempt people inside, and frankly, it’s brilliant. You can find its highlight reel here.
Reels scurries after TikTok
It feels like Reels is always one step behind TikTok, and up until this week, it’s been 2.5 minutes behind. While TikTok recently announced 3-minute clips, Reels were still only 30 seconds (after doubling their duration last September from 15 seconds). Unsurprisingly, Reels has done it again, doubling video time to one minute overall. it’s a bit of a weird one, since in-feed videos were already one minute, Stories can go on seemingly forever in 15 second bursts, and an IGTV can be a whole hour.
The move seems to be a way to allow creators to re-distribute their TikTok content onto Instagram, sharing the same content twice to gain two audiences. However, Instagram has also been punishing content directly downloaded from TikTok (with the giveaway watermark) by de-prioritising it for explore and home feeds. Pick a lane, Instagram. You either want that sweet TikTok content or you don’t!
