Digital Digest
July 8, 2022
The death from cancer last week of 23 year-old Minecraft YouTuber Technoblade commanded outsized social media attention. His final words — recorded in a 6-minute, 30-second video — were viewed more than 60 million times on YouTube, becoming the most popular upload of the week. Meanwhile, a new Wikipedia entry that sprung-up for the gamer was read 700,000 times within days of its creation, making it one of the most-read Wikipedia entries of the last week, while a memorial to Technoblade posted to Twitter by Wilbur Soot (the internet handle of Twitch streamer Will Gold) was the most-liked Tweet of June 30 and was retweeted more than 50,000 times. Finally, Minecraft players queued at a new digital space created by the Hypixel Network to leave condolence messages to Technoblade’s family, with the ensuing thread stretching on for more than 150 pages.
Top brands mentioned on Twitter among U.S. social media users last week included the San Antonio Spurs, Amazon, and Tesla, while the most mentioned non-politicians were Ghislaine Maxwell and R. Kelly. Tweets from leading U.S. Twitter users about the Independence Day holiday tended to originate from accounts interested in politics and pets. They were less likely to originate from accounts that primarily posted about music, sports, or food (see chart).
Twitter experiments with a new integration that provides a direct link between your Twitter and Snapchat profiles. This feature enables users to display their Bitmoji character as their Twitter profile image, giving another way to use your digital avatar as a representation of yourself.
Pre-pandemic marketing budgets are shifting as companies are now allocating more to influencer programs to match a growth in demand. 69% of marketers reported that their influencer budgets have increased, fueled in part by increased mobile device use during the pandemic. Though advertising has evolved to center around digital creators, consumers are still lamenting a lack of diversity from the brands that they follow.
Twitch introduced an update called “Guest Star” that allows creators to include up to five guests in their live streams. The program will be tested this summer with content creators that already incorporate talking into their livestreams and will employ safety measures to screen guests before adding them to a stream. As Twitch streaming and viewership continues to climb, Guest Star is expected to boost engagement for streamers.
TikTok Shop launched in the U.K. in 2021 with minimal success, and subsequent plans to expand to Western Europe and the U.S. have been set aside. Despite the idea to have influencers livestream on the app and sell products directly to consumers, many influencers in the U.K. opted out of the program due to lack of consumer awareness and interest.