SOCIAL
Social media frenzy fuels bank busting panic

Copyright ANP/AFP Sem van der Wal
Juliette MICHEL
Fearful Twitter posts and anxious WhatsApp exchanges coupled with online banking ease are seen as helping power an internet-age run on a pair of now-collapsed American lending institutions.
Both Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank were hit with massive withdrawals by customers fearful of losing their money, but the speed was dizzying in an age when rumors spread like wildfire on social media and apps make moving funds with the click of a button simple.
Congressman Patrick McHenry, chairman of the US House Financial Services Committee, referred to the recent turmoil as “the first Twitter fueled bank run.”
Some messages that caused cold sweats among financial customers proved to be misleading, prompting calls to focus on facts not speculation.
Gone is the time when a “run on the bank” meant mobs of customers banging on bolted doors and demanding deposits back.
Now, as rumors of dwindling bank reserves ricochets about social media, customers can make them real by tapping into online accounts to transfer money.
Federal authorities took over Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) last week less than 48 hours after it first announced bad news.
The forced closure of Signature Bank came just two days later.
In between, high-profile entrepreneurs sounded an alarm and fired off advice on Twitter.
Investor Bill Ackman tweeted during the weekend that if federal regulators didn’t quickly step in and guarantee all deposits, runs on other banks would start Monday.
“You should be absolutely terrified right now,” investor Jason Calacanis tweeted, using all capital letters for emphasis.
“That is the proper reaction to a bank run and contagion.”
Meanwhile, startup founders shared bank trouble rumors in WhatsApp groups.
“The mix of technology and fast-moving rumors fueled a crisis of unprecedented speed,” researcher Jonathan Welburn of the Rand Corporation think tank told AFP.
Online banking was around during the 2008 financial crisis, but “the adoption of these technologies is definitely increasing,” he said.
– Circuit breakers? –
Banking regulators need to put in place “circuit breakers” that could quickly suspend banking transactions in the event of cyber attacks, weather disasters, or customer panic, said Hilary Allen, a specialist in financial technologies at American University in Washington.
This is a “very political” undertaking, Allen said.
“Banking regulators need to think about what this kind of technological circuit breaker would look like, and in which circumstances they would be ready to deploy it.”
Markets have seen the power of online platforms trigger surges in the prices of “meme stocks” like video game retail chain Game Stop and AMC Theaters due to endorsements in chat forums at Reddit.
“The flip side is that social media can also exacerbate panic and loss of confidence,” Allen said.
In the case of SVB, fears which spread on social media resonated loudly with the bank’s customers, who tended to be tech-savvy entrepreneurs keenly tuned in to online chatter.
The collapse of SVB was the second largest bank failure in the United States but played out in barely two days.
The largest bank failure in the country, that of Washington Mutual in 2008, took place over the course of eight months.
At that time, Twitter and iPhones were fledgling products; there were no WhatsApp groups, no Slack chat threads, Welburn noted.
“What happens when bankers are drowning their sorrows in the social media age?” Welburn wondered.
“Viral posts, retweets and shares could deprive regulators of precious time.”
SOCIAL
LinkedIn Adds AI-Generated Job Candidate Responses in Recruiter

LinkedIn continues to integrate generative AI elements, this time within its Recruiter platform, with AI-created messages that HR professionals can then send to potential candidates, which are customized and personalized based on InMail best practices.
As you can see in this example, the new process, built into LinkedIn Recruiter, will enable users to quickly and easily craft a message that they can then send to a potential candidate, simply by tapping the ‘Draft personalized message’ prompt at the bottom of the composer window.

As explained by LinkedIn:
“Using our own LinkedIn in-house generative AI model trained on successful InMails, we use the information from the candidate’s profile, job description, and the recruiter’s company to draft a highly personalized message to get the conversation started.”
Once the AI generated InMail is created, you’ll then be able to further customize the message by ticking the topic elements that you do or don’t want to include. You can then edit and send the message – which should help recruiters save time, while still maintaining personal outreach.
Though it also feels a little impersonal, like maybe this is an element that shouldn’t be automated?
I guess, when you’re dealing with such responses at scale, it’s not really personalized anyway. But as with some of LinkedIn’s other generative AI experiments, like AI created feed posts, it feels like this is taking some of the human interaction out of the platform, and removing the ‘social’ aspects out of ‘social media’.
Maybe that’s an idealistic viewpoint, and the time savings outweigh any overarching principles at play. But it seems like some of these things should be written by a human, in order to maintain that baseline of real connection within these apps – otherwise we’re headed to a future where it’s just bots talking to bots, and when you actually have to meet in person, you’ll never know what you’re going to get.
I mean, theoretically, the candidates could also have written their application via generative AI, and they could respond to these emails with their own generative replies. And if it’s a remote position, maybe you’ll never even meet in person, and it’ll all be just simulated engagement for simulated jobs.
Seems slightly off, but maybe these tools help in some cases, potentially a lot of cases – it just feels like LinkedIn is going to get a lot less genuine than it already is as a result.
Either way, it’s happening. LinkedIn says that it’s starting to roll out AI-assisted messages in Recruiter to ‘a handful of customers’ in the US and Europe, before an expanded launch beginning next month.
You can read more about LinkedIn’s latest Recruiter updates here.
SOCIAL
YouTube Ad Revenue Forecast To Rise 4%, Hit $30.4B, In 2023 05/30/2023

Advertising revenue across all
YouTube platforms, including YouTube TV, should see growth of 4% this year, to $30.4 billion and growth of 10.3% to $33.5 billion, in 2024, according to new WARC projections.
While relatively
modest, 2023’s growth will represent a turnaround from Q4 2022, when YouTube’s ad revenue dropped …
SOCIAL
LinkedIn Launches New ‘Find Your In’ Ad Campaign

LinkedIn’s launching a new promotional campaign, created by ad agency Droga5, which aims to highlight how you can use the platform to find your ideal career pathway.
The ‘Find Your In’ campaign looks to showcase how LinkedIn can unlock new possibilities, so you can be whatever you imagine, with the help of LinkedIn’s connectivity.
As explained by Droga5:
“It starts with a little girl who finds herself in a place that’s perfectly ordinary: the laundromat. But we quickly learn there’s more here than meets the eye. All it takes is a little bit of inspiration from a LinkedIn alert on a nearby phone to set off an unexpected and extravagant dance with her own potential. The future comes to life, teeming with opportunity and endless options to explore.”
Not sure that I felt inspired, as such, by the clip, but it is catchy, and it could prompt people to take another look at the app, and consider how they can utilize LinkedIn as a guide on their professional journey.
LinkedIn’s been working to maximize discovery, and capitalize on its record high levels of engagement, by better highlighting relevant influencers and niche creators, with a view to helping others discover new connections, and explore their passions in the app.
That, ideally, will help more people establish networks of likeminded professionals, which could indeed facilitate new career opportunities through the same.
The campaign could help to amplify this. The new push will run across TV, web and social media platforms over the coming months.
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