SOCIAL
LinkedIn’s up to 690 Million Members, Reports 26% Growth in User Sessions
As part of its broader Q3 2020 Performance report, Microsoft has reported that LinkedIn has seen ongoing growth in both total members and engagement. But there’s also been a slowdown in ad spend and job listings as the impacts of COVID-19 take effect.
In terms of users, LinkedIn is now up to 690 million total members, increasing from 675 million back in January. Total members, of course, are not active users, the more common stat used to reflect social platform performance, but as an indicative measure, it does show that LinkedIn is continuing to expand, and gain traction in more markets over time.
In regards to active usage, Microsoft says that Linkedin sessions have continued to rise, up 26% for the quarter.
Microsoft has reported ongoing sessions growth on LinkedIn, with the platform seeing “record levels of engagement“.
How you view that number will be relative – some businesses are seeing significantly more referral traffic from LinkedIn, and increased engagement on their posts, while others believe that much of that extra ‘engagement’ is actually being fueled by Facebook-like personal posts and gimmicky updates designed to draw clicks, as opposed to communicating professional information.
Your own experience will inform how you view such, but in overall terms, LinkedIn now has more users than ever before, and those users are more active on the platform than in times past. That could facilitate greater opportunity to connect.
Indeed, during the COVID-19 lockdowns, LinkedIn is seeing even higher levels of engagement
“Professionals watched nearly 4 million hours of content on LinkedIn Learning in March, a nearly fifty percent increase month-over-month. With LinkedIn Live […] streams are up 158% since February.”
Neither is a real surprise, though the increased interest in LinkedIn Live could also be worth noting in your approach to the platform. LinkedIn added LinkedIn Live to company pages back in January.
In terms of revenue, as you can see in the above snapshot, LinkedIn revenue increased 21% for the quarter, but it is seeing slowing demand in both its ads and job listings due to the impacts of COVID-19.
“We expect continued strong engagement on the platform. However, a material mix of revenue is driven by customer hiring needs and advertising, therefore we expect a significant slowdown to mid-single digit revenue growth.”
Given its correlating expansion in overall members and usage, LinkedIn looks set to limit the impacts of the lockdowns on its bottom line. But they will have an impact on performance – and that’ll likely be ongoing, depending on how long the COVID-19 mitigation processes remain in place.
Overall, LinkedIn continues to perform well, and deliver good results for parent company Microsoft. Again, personal experience will dictate your view of the platform, but the data shows that there are more people using the app, and with more tools to connect, like live-streaming and its recently expanded Events feature, it could be worthy of increased focus.
SOCIAL
TikTok spends $1.5B on Tokopedia JV to get around Jakarta social e-commerce ban
Just two months ago, ByteDance-owned TikTok abruptly closed its shopping platform in Indonesia to comply with surprise regulations from the Southeast Asian country’s government. Jakarta ordered social media companies like TikTok and Facebook to stop selling goods on their platforms, demanding a separation of social media and e-commerce services.
TikTok now seems to have found a way to revive its e-commerce dreams in Indonesia by spending billions to start a joint venture with Indonesian tech giant GoTo. On Monday, the two companies announced that TikTok Shop will now be available on GoTo’s Tokopedia platform.
“Tokopedia and TikTok Shop Indonesia’s businesses will be combined under the existing PT Tokopedia entity in which TikTok will take a controlling stake. The shopping features within the TikTok app in Indonesia will be operated and maintained by the enlarged entity,” TikTok said in a statement Monday.
TikTok will invest over $1.5 billion into Tokopedia, taking a 75% stake in the platform. GoTo will remain an ecosystem partner to Tokopedia and receive an “ongoing revenue stream from Tokopedia commensurate with its scale and growth,” but will not be required to continue funding the platform. Further funding from TikTok also won’t reduce GoTo’s remaining 25% stake.
Getting back into the Indonesian ecommerce market will be a win for TikTok. Indonesia, which is the platform’s largest market outside of the U.S., is key to Tiktok’s online shopping aspirations. In June, CEO Shou Zi Chew pledged to “invest billions in Indonesia and Southeast Asia over the next few years.”
ByteDance wants to replicate its Chinese e-commerce successaround the globe. Last year, consumers spent in China 1.41 trillion yuan ($196 billion) on products sold on Douyin, the version of TikTok for the Chinese market, The Information reported in January. ByteDance, through TikTok, is expanding its online shopping services in both Southeast Asia and the U.S. Yet the company is struggling to win over American consumers: The Information reported in August that U.S. shoppers are spending just $4 million a day, equivalent to $1.4 billion over a whole year, on goods sold on the social media platform. (TikTok officially launched TikTok Shop in the U.S. in September, though sellers have complained about a flood of low-quality products on the platform).
Before Indonesia imposed its ban in September, the country’s president, Joko Widodo, complained that social media platforms were threatening local micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises. Government officials also accused TikTok of engaging in predatory pricing.
GoTo’s deal with TikTok means the Indonesian tech giant is giving up its majority ownership of Tokopedia . Tokopedia started in 2008 and grew to be one of Indonesia’s largest e-commerce platforms. The company merged with ride-hailing startup GoJek in 2021, becoming GoTo Group. The company debuted on Jakarta’s stock exchange in April last year.
Yet the company has struggled to wow investors since then. GoTo has yet to make a profit since becoming a public company. The tech firm reported 2.4 trillion Indonesian rupiah ($147 million) in net losses last quarter, significantly less than the 6.7 trillion rupiah ($428 million) it lost this time last year.
Investors do not appear to be thrilled by the news of GoTo’s TikTok partnership. Shares fell by over 19% by 2:30pm Indonesia time on Monday, erasing gains made late last week as rumors began to build of the new partnership.
SOCIAL
How to Train ChatGPT to Write in Your Brand’s Tone of Voice [Infographic]
![How to Train ChatGPT to Write in Your Brand’s Tone of Voice [Infographic]](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1702266964_How-to-Train-ChatGPT-to-Write-in-Your-Brands-Tone.jpg "How to Train ChatGPT to Write in Your Brand’s Tone of Voice [Infographic]")
Are you looking for ways to improve your ChatGPT output? Want to train it to write in a more unique tone of voice, in order to better suit your branding?
The Creative Marketer shares his ChatGPT prompt tips in this infographic. To enact these, add “Write like [INSERT CHARACTER]” at the start of your ChatGPT instructions.
TCM breaks things down into the following categories:
- Innocent
- Sage
- Explorer
- Ruler
- Creator
- Caregiver
- Lover
- Hero
- Everyman
- Magician
- Jester
- Outlaw
Check out the infographic for more information.
A version of this post was first published on the Red Website Design blog.
SOCIAL
Elon Musk reinstates far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on X
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been reinstated on X, formerly known as Twitter, by company owner Elon Musk – Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File Joe Buglewicz
Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, on Sunday reinstated far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on the social media platform, a year after vowing never to let him return.
Jones, who claimed that a December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut that killed 20 children and six educators was a hoax, was banned from the platform — then still known as Twitter — in 2018 for violating its “abusive behavior policy.”
He was also sued by families of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting and ordered by a judge in the case to pay up more than a billion dollars in damages last year.
Musk had himself promised never to let the Infowars host back on the social media platform, which he bought last year for $44 billion.
But following a poll Musk conducted on X asking whether Jones should be reinstated, to which some two million users responded, he flipped that decision.
“I vehemently disagree with what he said about Sandy Hook, but are we a platform that believes in freedom of speech or are we not?” the SpaceX founder said on X.
But Shannon Watts, founder of the group Moms Demand Action group which pushes for tighter gun laws, said that “defamation is not free speech.”
Musk’s decision comes the same week that the Sandy Hook families commemorate the 11th anniversary of the December 14 shooting, which Jones alleged was staged to allow the government to crack down on gun rights.
Jones’ followers harassed the bereaved families for years, accusing parents of murdered children of being “crisis actors” whose children had never existed.
It also came a week after Musk had responded to advertisers pulling out of X because of far-right posts and hate speech, including an apparent endorsement by Musk himself of an anti-Semitic tweet.
Asked whether he would respond to the advertising exodus, Musk said in an interview with journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin that the advertisers could “go f*** yourself.”
Jones, who has a million followers on X, returned to the site with his first post re-tweeting Andrew Tate, the controversial former kickboxer facing rape and human trafficking charges in Romania, in which he hailed Jones’ “triumphant return”
US media reported that as of Sunday, the account of Jones’ controversial show Infowars was still banned.
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