The First Fortnite Presidential Candidate
The First Fortnite Presidential Candidate
With lots of messaging about… affordable housing?
This week’s Social Signals was written to REWORKED (Philip Glass Remixes) on repeat, as one does.
Last week I had the BEST time at Mixing Board’s annual in-person summit in Austin, Texas. 🤠 I shared a keynote presentation about digital-first marketing and integrated strategies, met nearly 150 brilliant marcomm leaders, and oh yeah, managed to enjoy tacos for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. 🌮🌮🌮 I got these sweet photos from the Mixing Board photog and thought I would share a couple.
And I have to say, it’s moments like these — where you have so many thought leaders and power players gathered in one spot asking questions, helping each other, and probing the future — that give me a lot of hope for what’s to come in our industry. And that’s what it’s all about. -Greg
🗳️ The First Fortnite Presidential Candidate
The Kamala Harris 2024 campaign has jumped into Fortnite (!!!) with a custom-built Freedom Town, USA map, what seems an ambitious play to tap into the gaming audience in an entirely new way.
Welcome to Freedom Town, USA!
Team up with friends and help Kamala Harris build a brighter future for our city. From clean energy to epic landmarks, it's time to create a New Way Forward together! Gather resources, unlock challenges, and shape the future—your choices matter. Let’s get building!This map is full of campaign-themed challenges—from clean energy building quests to branded landmark exploration—all meant to get players (and young voters) connecting with Harris’s platform in a familiar, interactive space. With lots of messaging about… affordable housing?
While the core strategy is compelling — and what I think is the first metaverse outpost a Presidential candidate has launched (although Biden/Harris did do some work in Animal Crossing) — the early reception is telling; Freedom Town peaked with only around 383 players on launch day, which pales in comparison to popular Fortnite maps that regularly see tens of thousands.
And if the strategy was less about players and more about PR, there have been some stories but lots of mixed sentiment. Mainstream press still views metaverse platforms as more of a toy and fad than the next generation of social media (which it is, btw).
Anecdotally I’ll share that I asked my 14 and 15 year-olds about campaigning coming to the metaverse, and they hadn’t heard about it at all. In fact, I think their eyes were going to roll out their heads when asked. I asked my 18 year-old (and first-time voter), and they hadn’t heard about it, either. Sample of 3.
Even more buzzworthy here is the decision to make the map gun-free in a combat-heavy game, sparking mixed reactions that were surely expected because you absolutely cannot open yourself up to guns in a branded experience running for office. Obviously.
Just watch this trailer…
And yeah, this was probably expensive. But it’s absolutely a milestone in election media and social media strategy. We’ll see more of this in the future, with varying success.
Ultimately, does Fortnite—a platform known for its fast-paced, action-driven gameplay—translate well for political messaging and getting out the vote? Or is it a good place to park some campaign funds when you have so much money you can try a lot of things? I guess we’ll see.
📲 I’m Reinstalling BlueSky (Again)
I’m still very bullish on Threads (reminder, paid subscribers to Social Signals can read the full archives), but my signals are showing lots of folks leaving Twitter for BlueSky and lots of Threads folks referencing what’s happening over there.
Some key things in my feeds about Bluesky, too…
From TechCrunch: Bluesky surges into the top 5 as X changes blocks, permits AI training on its data
Social networking startup Bluesky, which just reported a gain of half a million users over the past day, has now soared into the top five apps on the U.S. App Store and has become the No. 2 app in the Social Networking category, up from No. 181 a week ago, according to data from app intelligence firm Appfigures. The growth is entirely organic, we understand, as Appfigures confirmed the company is not running any App Store Search Ads…
On X, users are understandably upset over the company’s decision to change how the block function operates. …
In addition, X updated its Terms of Service and Privacy policy this week, giving it the right to share X user data with third parties, including those companies developing AI models…
X may also still be feeling the effects from the earlier Brazil ban, though lifted, which saw some active users from that region making the shift to Bluesky, possibly pulling their followers with them…
Plus, Bluesky could be benefiting from the moderation issues plaguing Threads, which saw users getting their accounts banned or their posts downranked for no reason…
From Julia Angwin in the NYT (Bad News: We’ve Lost Control of Our Social Media Feeds. Good News: Courts Are Noticing):
I’ve already moved most of my social networking to Bluesky, a platform that allows me to manage my content moderation settings.
And from Casey Newton on Garbage Day:
In fact, I think it’s these genuinely interesting differences between Bluesky and all the other Twitter-likes out there that the platform and its developer community need to focus on more than anything else. Every text-first platform on the web right now is running up against an internet-wide literacy wall.
Unless something truly miraculous happens, it is reasonable to assume that every day there will be fewer people reading words on the internet than there were the day before. Bluesky has around six million monthly active users. Threads has 150 million gas leak victims — though its algorithm will never let you see them all. X has 250 million. But TikTok has over a billion.
We are experiencing a shift in communication as existential as climate change with ripple effects just as varied and unpredictable. But what is already very apparent is that nostalgia will not fix this.
Bluesky has built a better version of what Twitter used to be, but if it wants to actually build a better version of what Twitter could be, it needs to evolve into something else entirely.
So I re-downloaded the app, busted out my BlueSky password, and booted it up again this week. More soon. Follow me over there at @gregswan.
⚡️ Social Signals
Instagram’s recent confirmation that it downgrades the quality of less popular videos has stirred some discontent among creators. Adam Mosseri revealed that videos not getting traction within the first wave of views are re-encoded at lower quality to save resources. This sliding scale, which biases higher quality for videos that drive engagement, has raised concerns from smaller creators who feel disadvantaged. While Mosseri argues viewers focus more on content than quality, the practice certainly seems to favor established influencers, sparking debate on platform fairness and reach. (h/t Lindsey Gamble)
Instagram announced that photos and carousels *with* music are now eligible to appear in the Reels tab—extending the reach of that post format. (h/t
)Speaking of Instagram, they launched an in-app tool to build AI agents. I made one called Meowzer that is a cat who replies to all of your questions and prompts with “Meow.” That’s it. That’s what it does. Hooray. Try it here: Meow.
Threads now has almost 275M monthly actives and more than 1M daily sign-ups says Zuck this week.
X/Twitter continues to devolve, as we expected. From the Washington Post this week:
The top political accounts on X have seen their audiences crumble in the months before the election, a signal of the platform’s diminishing influence and usefulness to political discourse under billionaire owner Elon Musk, a Washington Post analysis found… But some of their tweets are still going mega-viral — virtually all of them from Republicans, the analysis shows. The Republicans have also seen huge spikes in follower counts over the Democrats, and their tweets have collectively received billions more views.Advanced Voice is now available in the macOS and Windows desktop apps for ChatGPT. If you haven’t tried the desktop app yet, you really should. And web search has also been pulled into the primary app now!
“With the addition of search in ChatGPT, OpenAI has begun to abstract away the search engine — the economic foundation of the entire web — into a modular component of the thing that will ultimately replace it.” - Casey Newton
With iOS 18.1, iPhone users can now record phone calls and get a transcription. Here's how.
The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), a division of the Department of Defense, is working to create AI-powered impersonators that are so realistic neither algorithms nor humans can detect they are not real. Their intent, outlined in a 2024 wish list, is to create deepfake “people” that engage on social media, share posts and even make selfie videos, all while fitting in seamlessly with real users.
Thread of the Week: I’m sad my children will never know the feeling of having 100’s of your loosest associates wishing you happy birthday every year on Facebook wall.
Chart of the Week: New longitudinal GenAI adoption survey by Wharton, surveying 800 senior managers at big firms, finds usage doubled in a year: 72% use at least once a week. More here. (h/t
)
Long Read of the Week: The Virtue of Being Forgotten
LinkedIn Post of the Week: “How I organized the Timothée Chalamet lookalike competition”
Roblox World of the Week: Wicked launched a Roblox World where players can roleplay as students, attend classes, decorate dorms, and interact with NPCs modeled after the film’s iconic characters, such as Glinda, Elphaba, and Madame Morrible. As always, I strongly encourage you to go spend time in Roblox brand experiences.
Video of the Week: “I would rather have a hundred emails than a million TikTok followers” - Rand Fishkin
Tweet of the Week: Nike’s ad congratulating the Dodgers on winning the World Series is SO GOOD.
See you in the future! 🚀
Greg