SOCIAL
TikTok’s Experimenting with New Video Avatar Tools, Audio-Only Live-Streams
TikTok’s testing a new avatar feature that will enable users to create a digital character avatar based on a selfie, with facial expressions that will match your actual look.
As you can see in this example, posted by social media expert Matt Navarra, TikTok’s in-testing avatar feature would enable you to choose a face template, which you would then be able to edit in-app. You would then be able to further customize your avatar’s expressions based on your actual face, providing new ways to share emotion and response in the app.
The avatar process looks similar to Apple’s ‘Memoji’, which enables you to use your chosen Memoji character as essentially a digital puppet, with the capacity to make the character move in response to your actions when looking at the camera.
TikTok’s avatars look to follow a similar model, which would provide all-new ways to engage in the app, while they could also help TikTok lean into the coming metaverse shift, if it’s able to facilitate character depictions that align with how users want to represent themselves.
If TikTok can help you build characters that become part of your digital identity, maybe users will then want to take those characters to other platforms. And while the schema requirements for metaverse avatars are not established yet (nor, indeed, is the metaverse itself), maybe, by giving users more ways to build identity in its apps, TikTok will be able to better align with this trend.
In addition to video avatars, TikTok’s also working on a new group chats option, a new process for screen-sharing within live-streams and creator subscriptions, which could be coming soon, given Instagram just launched its next phase of creator subscription tools. The Information reported that TikTok is developing paid subscription tools last week.
TikTok’s also looking to provide more user safety options, with keyword filters, which would enable users to censor content that includes their own chosen terms in either the description or stickers applied in the clip.
TikTok also appears to be experimenting with audio-only live-streams, tapping into the Clubhouse-style audio chats that were all the rage a year ago.
The audio social boom has died down since then, but there are indications that it remains popular, with Clubhouse downloads rebounding in the last two months. Maybe, TikTok could also glean user benefits from audio-only streams. And even if the popularity of the medium has lessened somewhat, there could still be value in TikTok providing more options for creators, which could help to increase user engagement.
None of these features are in live testing as yet. We’ve asked TikTok for more info on these tests, and we’ll update this post if/when we hear back, but right now, they appear to be only in the early experimental phase, with the base code being the first indicator of each in the app.
Maybe they make it, maybe they don’t, but it’s interesting to see where TikTok’s looking to develop, and the tools that it’s currently working on as an indicator of where it sees potential moving forward.
UPDATE: TikTok has provided the following statement on these new tests:
“We’re always thinking about new ways to bring value to our community and enrich the TikTok experience. Currently, we’re experimenting with ways to give creators tools to express themselves on TikTok.”
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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