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The Week In Social: Venue, Copyrights, and State Media

08 Jun 2020 Bradley Walker

The week in social

Venue: Facebook’s live event companion

Watching sports has become a solo activity. We’re human, we’re flexible, and many of us have adapted to cheering on our favorite competitors in pantsless seclusion. But, if you’re like me, you still yearn for the camaraderie of the crowd. Facebook hopes to provide an answer for sports-oriented second screeners. Venue will connect fans with experts, commentators, and other fans on an event-by-event basis. All the sense of crowd, pants still optional.

Ads From Home

Pandemic response ads are an exercise in hyper-accelerated evolution. Companies first leaned hard into the message, “we’re in this together” to which many consumers asked critically, “are we?” As a result, brands shifted tone to match the seriousness of the global circumstances. In response, consumers struggling through real-world pressures asked brands to lighten up. Blending relevance practicality, Skoda produced three ads that may represent a new multi-week trend in advertising: Ads From Home (#AFH).

Integrating Messengers

Established hares like Skype are waking up to realize that tortoises like Zoom have won the race for connecting users. The rest of the field is not ignoring those results. Google is unifying its six messaging apps. Meanwhile, Facebook has suggested making a similar move for more than a year. For the latter, early tests are appearing that would merge Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and a meetup scheduling tool.

Instagram adopts permission requirement

Instagram has a long history of what could politely be called inappropriate appropriation. It began with a healthy amount of copying and pasting from Instagram to the real world. Later, edgy, visionary artists ripped off Instagram creators without alteration, notice, consent, or payment. Most recently, a popular website was denied permission to reprint an artist’s work, and then used the Instagram embed feature to get around the refusal. Thanks to a NY District Court, Instagram finally updated their copyright policy that gives creators the exclusive right to grant and deny permission for their work to be used.

Some basic copyright reminders

Speaking of copyright, now is a great time to recall that ye olde Digital Millennium Copyright Act strongly suggests that organizations who use original materials are expected to have permission to do so. That can include using music over a PA at an event, taking a clip from a music video, using a person’s image or a logo, and even footage posted on social media.

FB labels state controlled media

Amidst controversy about what labels should be applied to what content, Facebook is making a move in categorization. The social platform will label more than 200 pages as ‘state run media’. For most users, this will not change much. The label is meant to convey that those pages do not enjoy editorial independence from their respective states and governments. No U.S. media pages will receive the label, and no paid placements from any of those pages can be targeted at U.S. users.