The Social Media Report, by Drew Benvie

A look at the week's news at the intersection of social media and society

Oct 9, 2020

Welcome to the first edition of The Social Media Report, a review of the week’s key developments in technology, digital and social media, specifically in the area influence on society, business and culture.

My name is Drew Benvie, founder and CEO of Battenhall. Here I will explore the trends shaping the week’s global news in tech, digging into the impact of digital and social media on the world around us.

Subscribe here. Email me on db@battenhall.com.

Each week I will review what have been the prominent themes in social media and tech, then offer a run-down of the stories that caught my eye.

This week in review

POTUS: as the world’s gaze turns to the impact of social media on US presidential election, now less than four weeks away, we saw Donald Trump’s use of Twitter and Facebook while battling COVID-19 in the limelight. His barrage of 40 Tweets in a 2-hour period was followed by a Facebook post removed by the social network as it stated POTUS’s belief that regular flu is more lethal than COVID-19. Facebook has now announced that it will ban political ads immediately after the US presidential election vote closes, to prevent confusion, such as statements prematurely announcing victory. Strap yourselves in for a ride over the coming weeks.

Video: if you’re looking for examples of innovation in social media and the direction that technology evolution is heading, it’s always a good idea to look to eastwards. This week we saw Baidu has release Kankan, a new video search app aimed at helping people find short videos and live streams. This competes with Douyin, China’s version of TikTok. Video search is a hot area, and when you think about emerging video trends, where a user will dip in and out of short form and long form apps, across multiple devices and formats, and through both permanent and ephemeral video content, you can see see how important search for video will be.

My must-reads

One quarter of US adults get their news from YouTube, says Pew.
Mobile phone call time has surged on lockdown according to Ofcom.
Facebook responds to The Social Dilemma. Cringe.
Developers manage 100x more code than they did 10 years ago.
Slack is launching Stories.
Just wow. Look at Nvidia’s Omniverse. A virtual reality that’s pretty much indistinguishable from real life.
Pakistan’s telecoms authority has banned TikTok.
Qanon banned totally from Instagram.
MEPs have written to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to ask if Amazon is hiring intelligence agents to spy on politicians, trade unionists, and members of staff.
The ICO has released the findings of its three year investigation into Cambridge Analytica, finding the company did not have the influence it claimed.
Instagram plans e-commerce to Reels.
A look at how Stories won in 2020, including their potential on LinkedIn.
A major Apple event is happening next week on 13th October.

TikTok and Snapchat beat Instagram for teen time online, says report.
The 21 best science podcasts according to Mashable.
And finally… Love this: Spotify’s Daniel Ek has given an in-depth interview where he describes how he works, leadership, Swedish business management style and other things.

Send this to the internet. Thanks for sharing.

Drew