TUESDAY TUNE-UP #441

Nick Carolan


TikTok launches TikTok For Business
TikTok has announced that it’s officially introducing a new brand platform called TikTok For Business, which will serve as the home for all its current and future marketing solutions for brands. The site will include access to TikTok ad formats – including its marquee product, TopView – along with a new e-learning centre aimed at helping marketers learn about TikTok and its ad offerings.



Instagram expands Shopping to more businesses 
Instagram has said that it’s opening Instagram Shopping up to more businesses, including creators who want to sell their own merchandise. As part of the expansion, Instagram has introduced some new ‘Commerce Eligibility Requirements’, outlining a set of guidelines that interested businesses must adhere to in order to sell on the platform. These requirements will go into effect on July 9th in all the markets where Instagram Shopping is supported.




Facebook responds to #StopHateForProfit campaign
Last week, Ben & Jerry’s joined the likes of Patagonia, REI and The North Face in their public boycott of Facebook, as part of a collective #StopHateForProfit campaign. In response, Mark Zuckerberg attended a client council meeting with brands including Anheuser-Busch InBev, Nestlé and Unilever, during which he is reported to have acknowledged advertisers’ concerns and insisted that Facebook is reviewing its policies and decision-making processes.



Following this meeting, on Friday evening, Zuckerberg took to his own platform to announce that the social network would begin labelling content from elected officials that it deems newsworthy, but that would otherwise violate its policies.  During his live stream, Zuckerberg said, “We’re going to take that content down, no matter who says it. There are no exceptions for politicians in any of the policies I’m announcing here today.”



Twitch and Reddit make moves against presidential hate speech
Overnight, both Twitch and Reddit made moves against President Trump’s divisive political rhetoric, citing violations of their terms of service. Twitch confirmed today that it has temporarily suspended the president’s account for comments made at two past political rallies broadcast on stream, and the offending content has been removed. Furthermore, Reddit confirmed that it has banned some 2000 subreddits, including the The_Donald subreddit with some 790,000 users, largely devoted to sharing content about Trump.



Facebook kills off its cheapest VR headset
Just two years after it first launched, Facebook has announced that it’s discontinuing the Oculus Go. Alongside the announcement of the Go’s discontinuation, Oculus also shared that it’s working on a way to open up the app’s ecosystem to give developers an easier path toward distributing apps.



TikTok kicks off #MyPride celebrations 
TikTok kicked off its week-long Pride celebrations last week, and named its 2020 LGBTQ+ TikTok Trailblazers – a list of 25 up-and-coming creators using its platform to make a positive impact on the LGBTQ+ community. As part of the celebrations, the platform announced that it will be donating $3 million to several LGBTQ+ organizations and, along with a number of other activations, hosting #MyPride – a virtual event on June 25th, which was due to see over 500 LGBTQ+ creators join online sessions, panels and digital celebrations. However, the platform was forced to abruptly call off its event when uninvited intruders flooded the Zoom event with hateful comments.



Social media users share more and show off less during COVID-19
A new piece of research, conducted by We Are Social in partnership with GlobalWebIndex, has found that – as a result of lockdown and the global pandemic – less than a quarter (23%) of social media users still feel the need to post content that portrays a more “polished” version of their life. Nearly half (46%) of males also said that they have been more open on their public social channels about the struggles they are facing, compared with just under a third (31%) of women. Check out the full write-up in Campaign magazine for more info.



Ones to watch
Instagram is expanding its TikTok competitor, Reels, to users in France and Germany; Facebook tests Forecast, an app for making predictions about world events (such as Covid-19), and has also added a new notification screen that alerts users who are about to share articles that are over 90 days old.




This edition of the Tuesday Tune-Up was prepared by Matt Pearce.