Today in Digital Marketing - “👍🏻” — This Emoji Costs $82,000

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's Monday, July 10th. Today, Twitter traffic keeps declining while Meta's Challenger hits 100 million users. Why almost half of shoppers unsubscribe from your brand's emails, Google Analytics is still collecting UA data for some reason, and the court case over whether an emoji can indicate acceptance of a contract. I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in digital marketing. While Twitter keeps losing its flock, Meta's threads took flight over the weekend, surpassing 100 million users. This even dethroned ChatGPT

Starting point is 00:00:36 as the fastest growing online platform to hit that milestone. It took the AI chatbot two months to pass that mark. It took threads five days. CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed the achievement this morning, adding that the growth was mostly organic. Twitter's traffic, on the other hand, is tanking, according to data from CloudFare, amid signs users are turning to other platforms like Threads, Blue Sky, and Mastodon. Data ranking of the world's most popular websites

Starting point is 00:01:05 shows Twitter has been declining since the start of 2023, shortly after Elon Musk's takeover. The decline in Cloudflare's domain server ranking for Twitter in mid-2023 aligns with Musk's most recent changes to the site and the launch of Threads. Mastodon, one of Twitter's OG competitors, has also seen a slight increase in monthly active users this month after a period of stagnation earlier in the year. The Guardian reports it has almost returned to 2 million monthly active users.

Starting point is 00:01:36 Blue Sky is still in beta. New users can only join by invitation. The platform experienced such high demand after Twitter enforced rate limit changes that it had to temporarily pause new signups to manage the demand. New research has confirmed a longstanding rule that consumers are more willing to share all types of information with brands in exchange for personalized interactions and special incentives. The survey found consumers are most willing to share their email addresses, followed by their interests relevant to the brand, their name, their communications preferences,

Starting point is 00:02:13 and browsing history on that brand's site or app. But in spite of their willingness to share email addresses, the report also found that 80% of consumers ignore or delete marketing emails from their favorite brands at least half the time or more, while a third of consumers mark emails for deletion by scanning who it's from or from the subject lines. Younger generations, particularly Gen Z, tend to employ non-traditional methods to avoid commercial emails like not checking their email that often, using secondary email accounts, or using anonymous or fake email addresses. Regarding app-based messaging, when asked about their preferred frequency, most consumers indicated a desire

Starting point is 00:02:56 to receive messages immediately and as often as it happens. The survey also saw a decline in the number of respondents who do not want to receive these types of messages year over year. The data comes from Airship's survey of more than 11,000 global consumers. So this is weird. Google's Universal Analytics 3, which was supposed to stop collecting data more than a week ago on July 1st, is still gathering data for most UA3 profiles. Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable reporting today that all properly set up UA3 profiles that he has access to are still actively collecting data. Google previously said that the transition from UA to GA4 would not happen immediately,

Starting point is 00:03:43 and some UA3 properties, yes, might continue processing data. But all properties have now been added to the queue, and the upgrade process will occur on a rolling basis. In other words, regardless of what you see in your UA3 dashboard right now, eventually, it will come to an end. Links are no longer exclusive on Snapchat. The platform's rolling out an integration with the LinkedIn bio tool Linktree today that lets all creators showcase their work and other profiles on the app. Previously, only brands and what Snapchat calls Snapstars could include links in their profiles. Now, anyone with a public profile can add links to their Linktree profile.

Starting point is 00:04:27 Snapchat users can head to their public profile, choose website or Linktree, and include their Linktree URL or any other URL. Linktree is also giving Snapchat profiles better visibility on its service. They'll let Snapchat users display their profile on their Linktree page with a social icon and a button that says, add me on Snapchat. And finally, that thumbs up emoji you sent to your

Starting point is 00:04:56 client may have bound you to a costly contract. A Canadian farmer has been ordered to pay $82,000 in damages for breaching a contract by using a thumbs up emoji in a text message. The case involved the grain purchaser and this farmer negotiating a deal for the sale and delivery of flax. After drafting a contract and sending it to the farmer, along with the message, please confirm flax contract, the grain purchaser received a response with a thumbs up emoji. But despite this response, the farmer never delivered the flax, according to court documents. The farmer argued that the emoji only indicated he received the contract, not that he agreed with it.

Starting point is 00:05:42 The court, though, disagreed and ruled that the emoji constituted approval of the contract, not that he agreed with it. The court, though, disagreed and ruled that the emoji constituted approval of the contract. The farmer failed to deliver the flax and, as a result, was held responsible for the agreed-upon damages of $82,000, along with interest and costs. If only he had responded with a middle finger emoji. You know, when the whole Twitter thing started to blow up, I decided to try finger emoji. All my youth disappeared but it's what brought me here. You know, when the whole Twitter thing started to blow up, I decided to try every alternative. I had

Starting point is 00:06:11 Mastodon Blue Sky and a bunch more. Well, I ditched a lot of the bunch mores. T2, spoutable, sub-stack notes. I just don't see them growing as fast. So I'm on Mastodon and Blue Sky for the most part. I'm experimenting with threads. Who knows, eh? It's all kind of a bit of a pod shoot at this point. I'm Todd Mastodon and Blue Sky for the most part. I'm experimenting with threads. Who knows, eh? It's all kind of a bit of a pod shoot at this point.

Starting point is 00:06:28 I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. ... ...... All the same. All the same. There's nothing out there we can't do.

Today in Digital Marketing - “👍🏻” — This Emoji Costs $82,000

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