Welcome to This Week in Digital – a week in which Instagram came out with a TikTok clone, single shoppers broke a record on Alibaba and Wikipedia’s founder launched ad-free social network WT:Social.
Headlines
- Facebook has released Facebook Pay, for payment within their family of apps, alongside charity donation updates and increased ad personalisation.
- Elsewhere in the Facebook family, Instagram has spawned a TikTok clone called Reels and is testing a new meme generating app called Whale.
- Wikipedia founder is taking on Facebook with a new, ad-free social platform WT:Social. Is 160K users in a week an early sign of success?
- Snapchat introduces extended-play commercials.
- TikTok has started testing a social commerce functionality.
Insights
- Alibaba’s Singles Day, the biggest shopping day on the planet, broke another record with $38 billion in sales.
- Nike has pulled out of Amazon to focus on “elevating consumer experiences” through direct sales channels.
- Here’s how Condé Nast is hoping to make money from IGTV.
- Once you’ve read this roundup of pros and cons of using influencers, follow with an op-ed that predicts that the future of social is organic.
Cool
- There’s now a t-shirt that makes you invisible to AI. Next step: Invisibility Cloak?
- Dive inside the world’s biggest YouTube channel.
- Disney+ now offers an AR experience to send you straight into Lady and the Tramp.
Deep Reads
- Pinterest has expanded its well-being and self-help options.
- Here are the full details on the Twitter political ad ban, including exclusions and rules.
- Take a first look at Stadia, Google’s new cloud gaming service.
