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Instagram Blackout: Global Wake Up Call To Social Media Influencers, Small Businesses – Forbes

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3 years ago

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It’s time to diversify away from Facebook products and any legacy social media app where you’re making money on content, or using it as a shingle to your business. Last week’s Facebook blackout serves as yet another reminder. It doesn’t matter where you are. These things go down, if you’re reliant on them for revenue, it’s a day off without pay.

It is unclear exactly how Facebook social media platforms went dark for around six (glorious) hours last week, but people from around the world lost money, not just billionaire Mark Zuckerberg.

In India, small online businesses and re-sellers were amongst the worst affected, according to Judy Morris, a travel and lifestyle blogger quoted by India Express.

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Neha Puri, CEO and founder of Vavo Digital, an influencer marketing company, said that businesses and social media influencers rely too much on single social media platforms.

“When a store is shut down for a particular period, the shopkeeper incurs losses, (just like) when a major social media platform going down,” Puri said. “Small businesses lost potential customers.”

Instagram is more famously known for its influencers. The risk associated with dependency on a single system that can either demonetize you, or cut your pay drastically at a moments notice, is risky business.

“I’ve always been very aware, especially since the collapse of Vine, that holding your business name and brand on an external social media platform is a risk,” Victoria MacGrath, fashion influencer at In The Frow, warned over a year ago. “To base your livelihood, income and brand on platforms you don’t own, is a huge gamble.”

There are at at least 500 million daily active Stories users on Instagram. Sixty per cent of them seek out and discover new products on Instagram. Brand collaborations have grown 44% between 2018 and 2019, according to Vuelio, a data solutions company serving the public relations and marketing industries.

Instagram’s ‘Creator’ accounts are where short, content creators do their thing as influencers. This is a huge business for some, worldwide. Creator accounts and influencer access to Instagram’s Checkout – in simple terms, Insta’s e-commerce solution — are aimed at keeping creators happy everywhere.

In 2019, even before Instagram’s blackout, influencer marketing expert Scott Guthrie, was saying that as growth flattens at Facebook, the company has been forced to look elsewhere for advertising revenue to prop up the business. “Eyes are now focused squarely on Instagram. The photo-sharing app contributed less than $5 billion to Facebook in 2017. Income nearly doubled in 2018. eMarketer has forecast revenue will exceed $25 billion in 2021,” he says.

“Creator accounts and branded content ads appear, on the surface, to be putting community first but it is surely more about cash than community. The next step will be to kill off organic reach,” Guthrie warns. “Just as Instagram’s parent, Facebook, did with brand pages. If branded content ads currently provide brands with an opportunity to boost influencer content to their pages, what if that opportunity becomes an obligation? What if the only way to reach your audience is by paying to boost your content?”

This sounds like evil genius level business planning. And should be a good reason why those making money off these platforms need to diversify.

“I think creators have many reasons to move over to new platforms,” says Melanie Mohr, Founder & CEO of BULLZ in Singapore. “One reason might be due to certain content restrictions, another reason one might be more innovative creator tools or content approaches. But the driving reason for most creators is going to be better monetization model.”

Regular content creators provide social media platforms with the most value.

Whether they have their own equivalent of a talk show on YouTube, and make money that way, or are selling their fashion sense on Instagram, thousands of creators worldwide are worried about their reliance on Instagram and YouTube.

“It is impossible to monetize solely from those platforms. You have to look out for brand deals or sponsored content to make a living,” says Mohr.

BULLZ is an app that allows for content creators to diversity into crypto, though it is geared to the true crypto gear heads to talk about crypto and new crypto-related startups in short videos. Users share videos of themselves, or others, talking about crypto and blockchain. BULLZ is in the Promote-To-Earn space, where users can find trending projects, discuss them together with other crypto enthusiasts and experts and get rewarded in crypto for their shares.

“Some crypto savvy YouTube creators call it a new TikTok for crypto,” Mohr says. “We have more platforms lined up to integrate the protocol.” They work with two I have never heard of. One is called YEAY. The other protocol is the WOM Authenticator. It’s for branded content promotion. BULLZ pays in WOM tokens.

Rofkin is arguably the pioneer social media platform that came with a crypto component. Content creators on Rofkin earn in the RAE token. Rofkin is for the long-content creator.

Another key alternative to YouTube is the Locals platform. That one pays in fiat. Greg Gutfield is on Locals. And Scott Adams has some of his shows on Locals in order to diversify away from YouTube and reduce demonetization risks for running afoul of the Google

GOOG
wrong-think police.

This summer, Twitter

TWTR
chief Jack Dorsey said cryptocurrencies would be “a big part” of the company’s future. Last month, they announced they will roll out a tipping feature in crypto (and fiat), which is another way to diversify income streams for influencers.

“We want everyone on Twitter to have access to avenues to get paid,” staff product manager Esther Crawford posted on September 23.

People can tip with Bitcoin using Strike – a payments application built on the Bitcoin Lightning Network that allows Twitter users to send and receive Bitcoin. Strike is extremely limited. Only El Salvador and the U.S. have it, and not all 50 states. (Hawaii and New York do not have it). People in the eligible markets will have to sign up for a Strike account and add their Strike username to receive Bitcoin tips over the Lightning Network. And Twitter users will need a Bitcoin Lightning wallet to send tips to someone’s Strike account, which might be more of a headache than it is worth.

Twitter’s foray is just another example of crypto becoming a payment alternative for creators.

And BULLZ’s foray is a crypto-centric solution for those looking to diversify income streams and escape the mainstream platforms. Maybe if they are crazy lucky, they become the Twitch of crypto videos. If you’re a fashion influencer, though, better get into fashion NFTs, if that’s a thing. It’s probably a thing. (Oh, God, I was right.)

“You are free to create any kind of content but based on blockchain projects that got you excited or wallets you use to store your assets or crypto exchanges you like,” says Mohr. “The only thing that matters is that the content is authentic, and has value to the audience.”

Instagram wants people piped in all the time, and wants its influencers to be more dependent on it. Last week’s blackout shows what that kind of centralization means.

Still, people are lazy, and idle when it comes to these things. Instagram blackouts would probably have to be a regular occurrence before people really diversified in large numbers.

“We think it is crucial that influencers diversify,” digital legal specialists TLT Solicitor’s head of digital future law, James Touzel, says. There’s just one major caveat. He added that content creators should keeping “using Instagram to their full advantage.”

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DJT Stock Rises. Trump Media CEO Alleges Potential Market Manipulation. – Barron's

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52 mins ago

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April 19, 2024

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DJT Stock Rises. Trump Media CEO Alleges Potential Market Manipulation.  Barron’s

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Three drones downed after explosions heard in Iran’s Isfahan: State media – Al Jazeera English

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2 hours ago

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April 19, 2024

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Iran’s air defences have brought down three small drones over the central city of Isfahan, state media reported, hours after United States broadcasters, quoting senior US officials, said Israeli missiles had hit an Iranian site.

Iranian state television reported explosions in Isfahan as air defences were activated and flights across several areas, including the capital, Tehran, and Isfahan, were suspended.

Airspace was reopened about four and a half hours after the incident and there were no reports of casualties.

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Second Brigadier General Siavash Mihandoust, the top military official in Isfahan, told state media that air defence batteries hit “a suspicious object” and there was no damage.

ABC News and CBS News had reported earlier that Israel had carried out a military operation in Iran.

Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said the US told the Group of Seven (G7) foreign ministers that it had been “informed at the last minute” by Israel about an attack on Iran.

“But there was no sharing of the attack by the US. It was a mere information,” Tajani told reporters in Capri, Italy, where the G7 ministers met.

However, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken refused to confirm reports about the Israeli attack, during a news conference in Capri.

“I’m not going to speak to that, except to say that the United States has not been involved in any offensive operation,” Blinken said.

The top US diplomat said the G7’s focus is on de-escalation. Asked to describe the current US-Israel relationship, Blinken noted that Israel makes its own decisions, but the US is committed to its security.

Iranian media said no strikes were launched on Iran from outside the country, and the attack was believed to have been carried out using small quadcopters that would have to have been launched from inside Iran.

Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari said Iranian media were downplaying the incident.

“The location in Isfahan province is an Iranian military airbase that belongs to the country’s army, and not the Revolutionary Guards [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC]. I think it’s important to highlight that,” she said. “This base houses multiple squadrons of F-14 Tomcat fighter aircraft.”

“We also understand that the air defence systems over the city of Tabriz in the northwestern part of Iran were also activated,” Jabbari reported.

A military factory belonging to the Iranian army in Isfahan was attacked by multiple quadcopters in January 2023, failing to damage the facility that was protected by air defence batteries and mesh wiring on its roof to counter small unmanned aerial vehicles.

Iran blamed Israel for that attack and arrested four people, executing one of them in January 2024, for operating on behalf of Mossad, the Israeli spy agency.

Israel had promised to respond after Iran launched a barrage of drones and missiles on the country on April 13, after a suspected Israeli attack on Iran’s consulate compound in Damascus killed 16 people, including two IRGC senior generals.

Governments around the world urged restraint and a push to de-escalate tensions across the region.

Isfahan is considered a strategically important city and one that is host to several important sites, including military research and development facilities, as well as bases. The nearby city of Natanz is the location of one of Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites.

In a speech in Damghan, in central Iran, Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi made no mention of Isfahan but praised the Iranian attacks on Israel, saying they gave the country strength and unity.

Kioumars Heydari, the commander-in-chief of the ground forces of the Iranian army, said Iran remains vigilant to confront any other potential aerial threats.

“If suspicious flying objects appear in the sky of the country, they will be targeted by our powerful air defence,” he was quoted as saying by the state-run IRNA  news agency ahead of Friday prayers in Tehran.

‘No damage’ to nuclear facilities

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that “there is no damage” to Iranian nuclear sites as the United Nations nuclear watchdog’s chief Rafael Grossi called for restraint and said nuclear facilities should never be targeted in military conflicts.

The reported attack “was far more limited than many expected”, Iranian arms control expert Ali Ahmadi told Al Jazeera, adding that Israel “has much more limitations in its operational range” than many think.

“Certainly, after Iran’s retaliatory capacity was criticised, it benefits from advertising how ineffective what Israel did was as well. Iran also needs to prepare the public for a much softer reaction than it has talked about in the last couple of days,” he pointed out.

Ahmadi said that prior to today’s incident, Iran was preparing several options for a massive retaliation, including getting allies involved.

But considering the limited scope and impact of the alleged attack, which he described as a “security sabotage” rather than a “military assault”, it would be a mistake to carry out a significant response, he stressed.

There were also reports of explosions in Iraq and Syria, with Iranian state media saying there were explosions at multiple military-linked sites in Syria.

Syria’s official news agency SANA quoted a military source as saying that missile strikes in the early hours of the morning caused material damage to air defence sites in the country’s southern region. The report did not specify the exact location and the extent of the damage but blamed Israel.

The US and a number of European countries had been calling on Israel not to respond to Iran’s attack.

On Thursday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres painted a dark picture of the situation in the Middle East, warning that spiralling tensions over Israel’s war on Gaza and Iran’s attack on Israel could descend into a “full-scale regional conflict”.

“The Middle East is on a precipice. Recent days have seen a perilous escalation – in words and deeds,” Guterres told the UN Security Council.

“One miscalculation, one miscommunication, one mistake, could lead to the unthinkable – a full-scale regional conflict that would be devastating for all involved,” he said, calling on all parties to exercise “maximum restraint”.

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Trump Media alerts Nasdaq to potential market manipulation from 'naked' short selling of DJT stock – CNBC

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3 hours ago

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April 19, 2024

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In this article

Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Trump Media has warned the CEO of the Nasdaq Stock Market of ‘potential market manipulation’ of the company’s stock by “naked” short selling of shares.

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The warning came as Trump Media has offered shareholders detailed instructions on how to avoid someone loaning out their DJT shares to short sellers, who then execute trades betting that the price of the stock will fall.

Trump Media disclosed the warning to Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman in a filing Friday morning with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

DJT’s share price has rallied in recent days, but is still sharply lower than the more than $70 per share it debuted with on March 26. Former President Donald Trump owns nearly 60% of Trump Media shares. The paper value of his stake has dropped by billions of dollars since DJT began public trading last month.

Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes in his letter to Friedman did not directly accuse anyone in particular of naked short selling, which is the sale of stocks without first having borrowed such sales for that purpose.

But Nunes noted that as of Wednesday “DJT appears on Nasdaq’s ‘Reg SHO threshold list,’ which is indicative of unlawful trading activity.”

“This is particularly troubling given that ‘naked’ short selling often entails sophisticated market participants profiting at the expense of retail investors,” Nunes said.

Nunes, who company owns the Truth Social app, pointed to circumstantial evidence, which included DJT being in early April the most expensive stock to short in the United States, which he said would give brokers “significant financial incentive to lend non-existent shares.” The letter links to a CNBC article detailing the sky-high premiums brokers were charging short sellers for loans of DJT shares to sell.

“I write to bring your attention to potential market manipulation of the stock of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp.” Nunes wrote.

“As you know, ‘naked’ short selling — selling shares of a stock without first borrowing the shares of stock deemed difficult to locate — is generally illegal pursuant to Securities and Exchange Commission (‘SEC’) Regulation SHO,” he wrote.

“Data made available to us indicate that just four market participants have been responsible for over 60% of the extraordinary volume of DJT shares traded: Citadel Securities, VIRTU Americas, G1 Execution Services, and Jane Street Capital,” Nunes wrote.

“In light of the foregoing, and Nasdaq’s obligation and commitment to protect the interests of retail investors, please advise what steps you can take to foster transparency and compliance by ensuring market makers are adhering to Reg SHO, requiring brokers to disclose their ‘Net Short” positions, and preventing the lending of shares that do not exist,” Nunes wrote.

“TMTG looks forward to assisting your efforts.”

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, currently is on trial in New York state court on criminal charges related to a 2016 hush money payment by his then-lawyer to the porn actor Stormy Daniels.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

Correction: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Adena Friedman’s name.

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