With two months already in the books of 2021, many of us can’t decipher between thinking we’re just living in an add-on of 2020 or a whole new era of question. What can be certain is that when it comes to the tech world, it doesn’t matter what year it feels like it more matters what update is next to be pushed out.
Within the social media world it feels like a constant environment switch as we see new apps break headlines, others climb charts, and the ones we know and love change before our eyes.
It is by no means easy to keep up with what is going on in social media between the influx of influencers, new trends being created while you sleep, and tech updates coming at you left and right. Nowadays, we don’t even know what comes in a new update. We often just press download and let the game run its’ course. We wanted to point out four big updates that happened this week with a high level breakdown to keep you in the influencer world loop.
Celebrity-Influencer David Dobrik Launches ‘Dispo’ App to Public
Once Vine star turned Youtuber and social philanthropist David Dobrik has assembled a dream tech team online in the previous months to create the new photo sharing app ‘Dispo’. Following suit to the explosive growth of Clubhouse, Dispo has reached chart highs this week as buzz circulated due to its’ invite-only user base.
Many influencers have been a part of the Dispo beta for months now, and we’ve even had quite the fun photographing our experience working on this startup in our own Dispo channel. The only way to see the channel is if you get your hands on an invite from a friend to be on the app. Luckily, each user gets 20 invites. We are certainly seeing a trend in pre-launch hype generation in the field with the invite only method.
As the beta moved into the App Store for the public, the soft launch of Dispo has landed it as the #5 Photo Sharing App, ranking above Google Photos. At this point you’re probably thinking ‘oh, another Instagram?’, right? On a high level, it’s similar, but what Dispo does differently is sticks to its’ brand name and identity. Dispo is short for disposable and what many millennials don’t know is that disposable cameras used to actually take time to process photos. In an ode to that, Dispo only lets you see the photos you take once they develop… which is at 9am the following morning.
The app itself continues growing their team and is looking to expand and grow tremendously in the next months to come. If you’re not on the app, start asking around for an invite before all of the good @ names get taken and the invitations no longer exist!
Instagram Introduces ‘Live Rooms’
Remember all those times you accidentally pressed the banner notification saying someone you follow is now live on Instagram and you happen to be the only one in the live. Well, that may be happening now and instead of getting a shoutout from that one friend acknowledging you for showing support, it can come from three people.
Sunday night, Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri tweeted the following thought:
Check in at 8am California time tomorrow for an Instagram announcement…
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) February 28, 2021
Many speculated that Instagram was going to be making audio rooms, remove likes for good, or integrate FaceBook/WhatsApp messenger ability into the Direct Message tab. But, to many people’s surprise it was just the announcement that now you can have up to 4 users in one Instagram Live. Welcome all to the world of ‘Live Rooms’
Instagram has been attempting to make a bigger push towards creator monetization, and one way they are looking to increase this via Live Rooms is by making it more user friendly to purchase and send badges to creators you are watching on live. I’m expecting to see a whole new world of live podcasting, at-home events, and interviews done with the ability to have four different people in one virtual space.
In the influencer world, we are already thinking of how this is going to change the way larger creators can collaborate and work with smaller creators. We are going to see a lot more people joining in on lives with their favorite creators now that it’s less of a one-on-one situation and more of a group discussion.
We’re excited to see where things go from here with Instagram Live. It’s already fun to watch your favorite creator and really get a feel for who they are beyond just their overly staged photos and posts their team probably wrote the copy for. Now we can see how whole groups of creators can connect and collaborate to bring content to Instagram.
NFT Art Continues Gaining Traction
How about we just start by addressing the elephant in the room. What in the world is an NFT and how did this form of art get such a weird acronym? Well, NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token. As if that cleared up anything, right. Basically, an NFT is a unique coded sequence that is created through the Ethereum blockchain. The Gif below has even been created and sold as an NFT for hundreds, thousands, and even millions of dollars…
NFT art has grown wildly popular in the visual arts world in social over the past few weeks, picking up a steady trend line this week. With more and more digital artists turning to different NFT buying and selling platforms like Bitski to sell their art comes more notifiitiety for the NFT community.
Many people are asking the same question we first asked “why would anyone pay thousands of dollars for art that you can just right click and press download?”. Well, that is a great point and it took us quite some digging and research to find the answer to. On a high level, the purpose for buying this art is the true blockchain ownership of it. Downloading an NFT offline and onto your own desktop is as easy as it looks…
Once pieces are bought for thousands of dollars, the owner is the sole owner of the blockchain code associated with the piece. While owning it, they can put it back on the market for skyrocketing asking prices, all in Ethereum (abbreviated ETH).
To make your head hurt even more, just know that someone paid $6.6 Million for a video by Beeple. We are honestly very excited to follow this newly emerging trend and see how influencers and artists with big followings begin to jump on this and begin auctioning off their digital art to ETH wagers worldwide.
Clubhouse Creators Begin to Rise
If I got a dollar for every time I’ve heard, read, or typed the word ‘Clubhouse’ in the past few weeks I could buy them out of their $1 Billion evaluation. But, that’s because they revolutionized the way people look at audio apps.
Last May there was a Medium post published quoting how “Clubhouse broke 1500 users”, and under a year later they surpassed four million unique downloads. The invite-only system really did work to create buzz, generate unique hype, and prove to everyone that people want something more when they know there’s a chance they can’t have it. Furthermore, people love being a part of something exclusive. Clubhouse is the place for them.
But, the only person making money from the audio giant is the actual company itself. There is currently no way for any contributor to make money hosting rooms, inviting notable guests, or growing the Clubhouse brand. Though many big name industry leaders like the idea of coming on and being heard, many of them are questioning why everyone’s giving out all of this advice for free.
The age of the ‘Audio Influencer’ seems to be right in front of our eyes and we are going to start seeing these Clubhouse Creators making money off their ability to host rooms, contribute to the conversations, and keep the audio-only world still live.
There are new agencies out there that are creating primary focuses on managing these new ‘audio influencers’ in order to capitalize on the future monetization opportunities Clubhouse and other audio-only platforms bring within the industry. One of the more notable ones is AudioCollective and they are actually using Clubhouse to scout talent and find prospective users to sign and manage.
As the app continues to grow and become a household name we are going to see a revolution where creators are going to demand pay for their contribution or just move elsewhere to pay-to-view platforms. Until then, keep on talking up a storm!
Article by Christian Brown
