Lemon, it’s Wednesday

What a week, huh?

This week has been oldy busy for me, so let’s just dive into it. 

Platform updates

Instagram 

• Instagram’s Updating its UI, with the Shop Tab to Disappear from the Main App Screen (if you’ve ever actually purchased or sold something via Instagram’s shopping features, I’d love to chat) 

The rest of Meta 

• Meta’s Shutting Down its ‘Creator Studio’ Page Management App

• Meta Expands Ad Targeting Restrictions for Teens, Adds New Ad Control Center for Young Users

TikTok

• TikTok’s testing sleep reminders

• TikTok Parent ByteDance’s E-Commerce Volume Surged in 2022, Internal Data Show 

• TikTok Adds New TV Show and Movie Tags, Powered by IMDb

• TikTok launches a Talent Manager Portal so managers can negotiate brand deals for clients

Twitter

• Twitter Adds ‘Hashfetti’ Effect to Branded Hashtag Campaigns

• Twitter defaults to a For You page now, just like TikTok 

• Twitter temporarily bans account for D.C.-area bus system without explanation

• Twitter Employees Escorted Out of Singapore Office (funny how people don’t like it when you don’t pay your office space rent) 

Mastodon 

• Elon Musk drove more than a million people to Mastodon – but many aren’t sticking around (I don’t think we are at a steady state on this trend yet)  

• Medium join’s Mastodon 

YouTube

• YouTube rolls out new Partner Program terms as Shorts revenue sharing begins on February 1

• YouTube Adds New Analytics Updates, with a Focus on Shorts Content

• YouTube Experiments with Suggested Hashtags for Shorts Clips

Pinterest (disclosure: I currently work at Pinterest) 

• Pinterest Announces New Partnership with LiveRamp on Data Clean Rooms for Ad Targeting 

Culture movers 

Misc tech

• CES 2023: all the news from the year’s biggest tech conference

Film & TV

• The Seven Most Memorable Moments From The Golden Globes

• 🎧 ‘M3GAN,’ and How to Market a Movie to Young People (I recently discovered The Town, and it’s quickly becoming one of my favorite podcasts for entertainment industry news) 

Gaming 

• Roblox’s debut on Meta Quest could be a game-changer for the metaverse

AI

• Microsoft Looks to Add OpenAI’s Chatbot Technology to Word, Email

• App Store and Play Store are flooded with dubious ChatGPT apps

• CNET Has Been Quietly Publishing AI-Written Articles for Months 

Scams

• Sam Bankman-Fried launches Substack: ‘I didn’t steal funds, and I certainly didn’t stash billions away’

This is a Michelle Yeoh stan account 

The Golden Globes were this Tuesday because we, as a culture, have forgiven HFPA enough to let their award show back on TV but not enough to give them a good night for airing it. I didn’t watch the ceremony live (sparing my partners from an early start to what we lovingly call “Cameron yells the names of actresses at the TV season”), but I was paying attention to the winners looking for early signs of meaningful Oscar buzz. Much like Jamie Lee Curtis, I was thrilled to see Michelle Yeoh take the prize for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy. 

I’d love to see Michelle Yeoh win the Oscar this year for her performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once. My other favorite performance of the year, Cate Blanchett in Tár, also won at the Globes for Best Actress in a Drama. I think both performers are doing career-best and field-leading work in these films, but I have a soft spot for genre films that often go under-recognized by The Oscars. So I think, at this moment, I’m rooting for Michelle over Cate. 

Drag Race is back 

Watching RuPaul’s Drag Race used to be appointment viewing for me. For a while, I’d even look for ways to view the east coast feed instead of waiting for the west coast time slot. If I couldn’t watch the east coast feed, I’d have to stay off Twitter to avoid spoilers as my feed joyfully live-tweeted every moment of the show. But things don’t feel as urgent with Season 15, which debuted last Friday. 

First, there’s my shifting relationship with Twitter. I’m barely using the service now, and spoilers don’t feel as instantaneous on other social sites, which thankfully don’t operate at the speed of Twitter. But even if I was still actively Tweeting, I’d probably feel similarly detached from the Drag Race hype machine. 

Over the past few years, the Drag Race franchise has ballooned from two annual seasons (one regular and one all stars) into an international juggernaut of content. In 2022, over 10 seasons of the show aired, including international franchises, all-stars seasons, and the celebrity fundraising version of the show. Even following just the English-language content has become a daunting task. I’m curious to see if the main US version of the show will hold the same cultural sway now. You used to need to at least be somewhat caught up on Drag Race to have a conversation with other gay people while it was airing. Like college football on an SEC campus, it was part of the social oxygen. Just one episode into Season 15, I’m not sure it’s still as essential as before. 

ALL that said, I did watch the premiere (albeit several days late), and I want to share a performance from my early frontrunner, Anetra.

On M3GAN

I haven’t seen it yet. The homophobic institution known as Alamo Drafthouse San Francisco isn’t screening it. And due to the disgusting weather in San Francisco, I have not wanted to venture to any other theaters that aren’t right by my apartment to see it yet. That will probably change this weekend, and I’ll likely have thoughts.