Engage-a-thon 2023

The recent trend for social/content platforms has been expansion; free money fueled growth mode. But the Great Tech Reckoning of 2022 has reversed that.

The clearest example is Meta. A long, long time ago, Zuck split out Messenger from Facebook in an effort to capture more real estate on users’ screens (I think, the reasoning is hazy now and never made much sense to me). But now it’s getting rolled back in. More signals in one platform and less incentive to go back to the home screen and get distracted by another colorful digital dopamine drug app.

So consolidate and complement.

LinkedIn, social’s surprise Hansel, is continuing its run of feature additions geared at enticing users to spend more time on-platform. The newest push is (drum roll…) TikTok’s For You algorithm (algorithmically suggested content)! Which makes sense since the overlap of the Venn diagram of your connections and content related to your interests is almost certainly much smaller than it could be (at least that’s the case for me, so many bankers from a past career life).

Elsewhere, Spotify is shutting down its Clubhouse clone.

The company says it will continue to explore live features on its main platform.

There’s no time to try spinning up a new revenue stream generator for these companies. It’s time to try turning the money dial up to 11.

The plan for 2023: more eyes for more time in the flagship app.

Of course, ByteDance is (once again) zagging while the others zig and pushing to make Lemon8 happen. The grand ban plan b.

That Ban Plan

Congresscritters aren’t the only ones fine with banning TikTok. Survey says half of Americans are cool with it.

Unsurprisingly, the older you are the better you think the ban idea is. Same goes the more conservative you are. Ditto for knowing about the China ties and not using the app.

The Cookie Continues to Crumble

Publishers and ad tech tools are facing off once again. This time it’s all about context.

As contextual advertising continues to take the post-cookie lead, publishers are positioning themselves as custodians of attractive data. And ad tech tools are scraping the content to build their own context buckets.

Super blood moons, Mercury in retrograde, and scraping being at the heart of a digital content ownership issue, some things are like clockwork.