What's inside

• 💥 Merci fir däi Bäitrag:
  • Wishing you all the best for 2021
• 👓 Our latest blog post:
  • What is next for Social Media?
• 🛠 Mapping the Creator Economy
  • "Do you even scale, bro?"
•  🗞️ Social media news:
  • TikTok and Walmart started collaborating with a first pilot test
  • Facebook and Apple clash over iOS 14 privacy updates
  • Reddit acquired Dubsmash
  • LinkedIn begins testing ads in its stories
• 📩 Past newsletters:
  • Check out what you might have missed!

💥 Wishing you all the best for 2021

👓 What's next for Social Media?

🛠 "Do you even scale, bro?"

In our November newsletter, we shared the "The Definition of a Creator" by Hugo Amsellem (ex-Director at The Family, Founder of Atitlan).

This month, Hugo took it a step further by curating a list of 150+ companies helping creators to "scale without permission".

The result: A comprehensive map of the Creator Economy.

📲 TikTok and Walmart started collaborating with a first pilot test

Do you remember the seemingly endless 'TikTok saga' from earlier this year? Well, neither a sale nor a US ban of the most downloaded app of 2020 has happened so far. 

Walmart was supposed to acquire a stake in TikTok's global business and establish its legal headquarters in the US together with Oracle after the companies reached a tentative agreement back in September. But as of now, the only noteworthy update between two of the three companies is that...

Walmart recently tested live streaming 'shoppable videos' on TikTok - which allows users to buy products from Walmart without leaving the social app. TechCrunch has more details.

⚡️ Facebook and Apple clash over iOS14 privacy updates

Things have heated up between Facebook and Apple this month. While Tim Cook and his team want to tighten privacy rules on Apple devices, Mark Zuckerberg and a number of small business owners argue the planned iOS 14 updates would harm them as Facebook's ad tracking can't be used like in the past.

In fact, Facebook recently launched a two-day newspaper ad campaign over the issue and said it is backing developers (like 'Fortnite' makers Epic Games) in a lawsuit against Apple's app store policies. Read all about it here and here.

💰 Reddit acquired Dubsmash

Dubsmash got acquired by Reddit for an undisclosed amount in mid-December. While the announcement came somewhat unexpected, buying the TikTok rival does make sense for a variety of reasons. 

The short-form video social platform is especially popular among Black Americans and women. This makes the acquisition even more so interesting with regard to the continuous debate about the lack of diversity and representation in tech and social media. CNBC has more insights.

👔 LinkedIn begins testing ads in its 'Stories'

LinkedIn announced it has started testing Stories Ads with a beta group of advertisers after making its own version of the popular feature available for all its users a few months ago. 

With LinkedIn having more than 722 million members, this new option can surely help brands to grow their reach with video and image ads targeted at users in a professional context. The company plans to launch Stories Ads more broadly in 2021. More in this article by Social Media Today.

ICYMI - we did a deep dive into "How to use LinkedIn for your Online Marketing" in our blogpost in June this year.

📩 Check out what you might have missed

In case you missed a newsletter or want to look up articles, blog posts, and news from the past, we created a collection of our newsletters on a neon.link page. You can find all the links and recent content on neon.link/newsletter.

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