šļø Links & Thinks from 2023.02.26
On Creating A Pop Hit
Itās available to all of us, but thereās no guarantee that you can make a living at it.
What Caused This Inflation?
Consumers!
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented shift of consumption from services to goods.
Which makes sense, given the whole quarantine and lockdown thing.
The demand reallocation shock explains a large portion of the rise in U.S. inflation in the aftermath of the pandemic.
Demand reallocation shock + supply chain shock = nothing good
Hereās the paper if you want to get nerdy.
The Next Podcast Metric?
Bumper (a āpodcast growth agencyā) is pushing for a new podcast metric: listen time. Which makes a lot of sense.
The current North Star metric for the medium is downloads, which is kind of like a social media ālikeāārather pointless since it doesnāt indicate a valuable action. Episodes can be auto downloaded never to be listened to, so whatās that metric mean?
If this gains traction, then itād be pulling a YouTube for the medium.
Metaās Dark Forest
The number of people posting to Meta feeds is dropping, so the megalith is focusing on its messaging features since thatās where the user action is.
I recently included just a headline about Instagram copying a Telegram feature to allow one-to-many broadcasts via DM. Initially I saw it as just another copy-and-hope attempt in Zuckās continued war against any platform that may steal even a few minutes of screen time from his apps, but this take made me revisit:
This is a way bigger deal than most are making it out to be! Itās essentially Instagramās version of Linkedinās internal newsletter feature. The more opportunities us marketers take advantage to send push notifications and get in front of our target audience, the more successful we will be! This is a huge one
Given that Iām high on LinkedIn newsletters I should be all in on this, but I want to see how things play out for a bit first. Each day a new headline is raising my hype meter.
Speaking of newsletters, WhatsApp is reportedly experimenting with private newsletters. Details are sketchy at best for now since this discovery was made in the code, but it sounds like it could be very similar to LinkedInās version.
Meta Tests Product Promotions in IG Group Chats. Iām skeptical of social commerce still (at least of the direct shopping versionā”) but I can think of some ways to use this to create a VIP experience without asking users to give up their email address. Flash sales, early access, sneak peeks, low stock warnings, etc.
Digital dark forests (newsletters, podcasts, encrypted messaging) are a threat to social platforms. Embracing messaging and newsletters turns these forests into monetization and data-collection opportunities to help those balance sheets. The downside for businesses is youāre still tending to a walled garden and donāt own the relationship.
Just The Headlines
Musk gave engineers one week to make Twitterās ad targeting work like Google (This is interesting since the ad platform already has keyword targeting options, but it also tells you it will handle all the targeting automagically based off the ad tweet.)
ā” Social Commerce Is Here
Just not in the way the platforms are pushing for.
Social is commerce in the form of attention and trust. Rewarding the former builds the latter and can create revenue.
But it may not be as directly measurable as we all desire in this era of digital analytics. Of course, itās that attribution platforms need to prove ROI in order to rake in ad dollars.