Chasing Eyeballs and How The Turntables: Part 2

Today’s Rabbbits Weeekly newsletter was so chock full of images that I ran out of space for some of the usual sections, so I’m putting them here for curious minds who don’t want to miss out.

You can read the first part of Chasing Eyeballs and How The Turntables here.

Now, onto the rest.

Algorithms

Reels are pretty popular. Users spend 17.6M hours watching them every day.

TikTok is pretty popular too. Users spend 197.8M on it. Every day.

1/3 of Reels are content from other apps (I’ll give you one guess which one). These numbers are from internal Meta research, research that also says things like “most Reels users have no engagement whatsoever”, a steep drop in number of users who think Instagram cares about them, Meta’s best days are in the rearview (probably, they didn’t actually share the results of this question). Of course a spokesperson has since said that those numbers are outdated and things are looking much better, but, no, I don’t happen to have updated numbers in front of me to share.

Going all in on InstaTok (InsTok?) isn’t paying off. The question now is, will Zuck own up and back off? The head of Insta has already come out and said they went too far into video.

Meta is merging its content moderation teams from the user and ads sides into one unit to rule them all (in an effort to cut costs). They also aren’t laying anyone off, but they aren’t replacing anyone that leaves. I’m sure this is fine. This is fine, right? Yeah, this is probably fine.

Even their own Oversight Board thinks their automated moderation systems are broken.

Here’s a totally unrelated fact, user side content moderators get a whooping 8 seconds per post to make a moderation decision.

Instagram appears to be developing Media Kit functionality for influencers directly on the platform. This could help streamline a process that, I know, can be time consuming and hazy. Much like podcast ads before ad networks started popping up (or for host read ads still). (Of course, they may have stolen this idea from YouTube.)

Amazon is further building out their marketing ecosystem with more audiences for sellers to email via the Customer Engagement tool: repeat customers, recent customers, and high-spend customers. These new audiences (in addition to the existing “brand followers” audience) are pretty standard remarketing groups, but it likely means way more email in our inboxes. What could go wrong?

Canva is coming for your docs and your websites and your data viz (but not competing with Microsoft and Google, according to them (while also taking a few shots and definitely just trying to slip under the radar until launch)). Originally, I was going to say I think Canva is an underrated tool when it comes to content and marketing, but then I read this:

According to Canva, 85% of Fortune 500 companies, including FedEx, L’Oréal and Salesforce use Canva’s design tools.

Æconomy

Dow? More like Down. The drop was as rough as that joke attempt.

The (seasonally adjusted) Consumer Price Index increased ever so slightly in August. Gas dropped, but increases in shelter, food, and medical care costs offset any consumer gains there. Areas related to households, vehicles, and education also rose. Overall, the meta-consumer is probably doing ok, but the breakdown of index shifts means some consumer groups will feel the heat more than others.

FedEx’s numbers aren’t looking great, which has the CEO predicting a global recession. While I don’t disagree, a lot of the quotes in this article really feel like he’s trying to shift the blame for missing estimates off the company and onto the ::waves hands:: macroeconomy.

Attack Vectors

Twitter experienced why a Ready Player One scenario doesn’t mean we move to the VR utopia of Zuck’s dreams, the Big Blue Bird data center in Sacramento, CA was knocked off line due to extreme heat. We can argue about climate change all we want on the internet, until it knocks all the servers offline and none of the platforms will load.

Uber got hacked real bad. Guess how it started. That’s right, social engineering a human. (Uber blames a contractor.)

Using Facebook lead ads for phishing and scamming. Turns out, Facebook links are generally on email platforms' allow lists, so hackers are sending lead form links in phishing emails to harvest credentials. Pro tip: a Facebook rep is not going to email you from an @outlook.com email.

The Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) gravy train may be coming to an end. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is looking to start regulating the industry, meaning it could become yet another financial product like the rest.

California is hitting Amazon with an antitrust suit, over a well known practice of theirs that I know merchants don’t love: you can’t undercut the Amazon price anywhere else (your own site may be exempt, can’t remember). I don’t think Amazon has a leg to stand on with this one, but we’ll see what happens.

Google got the Microsoft treatment by the EU, receiving a fine of $4.13B for bundling Search and Chrome with Android. I’m not sure how this is bad for users who might otherwise get no browser by default or whatever solution their mobile provider cobbled together, but I can’t say the ruling’s main reason was wrong.

Alternates & Assorteds

China is going to the moon. Three times. (Not people, just space drones.) Why? Because they may have discovered a mineral there that could be a future energy source. Cold War 2.0 is heating up.