TikTok became the latest big platform to respond to BeReal’s surge, announcing a new feature called TikTok Now that will give users daily prompts to share impromptu photos or short videos, using the phone’s front and rear cameras.

To keep things friend-exclusive, TikTok is limiting engagement on people’s Now posts. Only mutual followers—that, is someone who follows you and you also follow them—can comment on each other’s posts. Users can also choose whether only their mutual followers can see their posts, or if everyone “in your area” can see them.

⚠️Is it time for social media companies to stop copying BeReal?⚠️

Earlier this month, Creative Boom hosted a poll on Twitter which asked its followers: “How have you seen social media change since you started using it, engagement-wise?" And a massive 82.1% of you replied ‘It’s got worse’, with just 7.8% saying ‘It’s got better’ and 10.1% seeing no change.

Following this result, a second poll then asked; “Does this mean you’re thinking of leaving social media altogether?” Unhappily, 47.2% of you replied: ‘Yes, but feel I can’t’. Meanwhile, 3.3% say you’re definitely quitting, and 10% are just not sure. Only 39.5% are staying – which is hardly a vote of confidence in the current state of social media.

Besides the constant push for short form video and thus neglect for traditional photo posts, what’s gone wrong and how can we, as creatives, recover from this sudden baffling change?

Continue reading

All businesses will need to increase their prices at some stage or other. Many business owners spend far too little time on their pricing, considering its importance to profitability. Well, that's changing fast.

How to… approach a price increase

• Think about your current standing. Consider the strength of your business' position. Are you confident that customers are satisfied with your current offering? Are you receiving positive feedback?
• Check out your competitors. Time for a deep dive into what others are doing. This is a super useful gauge to know where you can go with pricing and to understand customers' alternatives.
• Itemize your products or services. With the help of an accountant, dig into the numbers on the products you sell and work out the profit margins for each. Think about price sensitivity across your portfolio.
• Think about ways you might add value. Any price increase will be softened if you're able to offer additional value.
• Consider timing. When and how you increase your pricing is super important. You'll need to decide if you'll do it incrementally or make the change all at once.
• Create a communication plan. Outline a plan for how you'll communicate the changes to your customers.
• Track it. Any price increase needs to be carefully tracked to see if it's working for your business' profitability.

• YouTube Ads are testing out 5 unskippable ads in a single break, instead of 2 - read here
• Will the future of music sound a lot like the past? - read here
• New trend: Long attention spans for long-form videos - read here