Today in Digital Marketing - Your Current API Plan Does Not Include Access to This Podcast

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's Monday, March 6th. Today is Twitter on its last legs, a gloomy retail forecast ahead. Amazon is cleaning up in advertising, LinkedIn's new AI-based collabs, and a nasty bug plaguing some meta ad campaigns. I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in digital marketing. We now know what caused the huge outage at Twitter this morning. In the end, it came down to one person. For several hours this morning, every single link was broken. And for many users, the timeline was full of images and videos that wouldn't load. Trying to click a link led to an error message that said, your current API plan does not include access to this endpoint.

Starting point is 00:00:41 Which, of course, is kind of hilarious because it suggests that twitter's link service uses the same api that it licensed to third-party apps in the last few weeks it killed off hundreds of these apps and sites by telling developers they had to pay to use it is it possible twitter didn't realize that twitter itself used that api and so in some bizarre, magical world, somehow managed to cut Twitter off because Twitter wouldn't pay Twitter's API fees? Platformer News reported this afternoon that the crash came because one engineer

Starting point is 00:01:15 pushed out a code update that broke the API. You might wonder how a team of engineers could let that happen. According to Platformer, that's because there is no team. There is literally just that one engineer left responsible for the entire API architecture, quoting Platformer. The change had cascading consequences inside the company, bringing down much of Twitter's internal tools, along with the public-facing APIs. On Slack, engineers responded with variations of, crap, and, Twitter is down, the entire thing, as they scrambled to fix the problem. Elon Musk was furious. Inside Twitter's HQ, however, the mood was almost light. We're

Starting point is 00:02:00 laughing all the way down, said a current employee, unquote. This was the sixth major outage so far this year, the most recent less than a week ago, just days after Elon Musk laid off more employees. Some of those employees were apparently the people who updated its API status page because all through the outage, it read, all systems are operational. Elon Musk responded to the outage with a tweet that said, this platform is so brittle. They did, of course, manage to get it fixed later in the day. It might be tough for Elon to spend his way out of these outages. The company lost nearly 40% of its year-over-year revenue for December,

Starting point is 00:02:36 according to the Wall Street Journal. The report comes as many advertisers cut their spending on the platform following the takeover. This resulted in a 70% drop in ad spend on Twitter during the month, according to data from Standard Media Index. Recent quarterly earnings reports from major retailers have been stronger than expected, buoyed by shoppers who continue to spend despite high inflation. But that's about as optimistic The New York Times reporting today that several U.S. retail executives recently gave investors and analysts downbeat outlooks for the first quarter and the year to come. Forecasting sales growth could be much lower than in previous years. In calls with analysts, several retail executives said they experienced softness and headwinds and said they were planning prudently and conservatively. The report noted that many of these

Starting point is 00:03:35 assessments are influenced by the spending patterns of low-income shoppers who, squeezed by inflation, are being selective about what they buy and where they buy it. According to an executive at retail consultancy Global Data, investors are spooked because outlooks are soft and people are really talking down prospects. Quote, they're talking about sales declines, further crunch in profits, and that really sets the tone that 2023 is going to be a very muted year for retail. Unquote. Those retailers braced themselves for a gloomy year in terms of consumer spending.

Starting point is 00:04:16 It looks like they also have some stiff competition when it comes to fighting for ad dollars. A media radar analysis found that Amazon held a larger share of retail media ad spend than the major retailers combined last year. While major retailers like Walmart and Kroger ramped up their network investments in 2022, no competitor could come close to capturing Amazon's share of retail media dollars. According to the report, the e-commerce giant captured nearly 40% of the ad market share. The report found more than 14,000 companies advertised 17,000 plus brands on the e-commerce giant site. Among general mass retailers, Walmart and Target accounted for the second largest share of retail media dollars. Therefore, combined, Amazon and mass retailers captured nearly three-quarters of spending pointing to power consolidation.

Starting point is 00:05:08 But MediaRadar emphasized that Amazon operates in a category all its own, so rivals will need to continue working on differentiating themselves. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. It will match articles with relevant member experts who can contribute their lessons, extra information and advice based on their professional experience to the AI generated stories. Collaborative articles will be specified in the feed, along with the number of members who contributed.

Starting point is 00:06:16 Within the article, you'll be able to see contributor elements highlighted, as well as a button for adding your own commentary. To encourage professionals to contribute, LinkedIn is also adding a new community top voice badge in key skill areas. Each badge will be valid for only 60 days. To maintain that recognition, members must keep contributing to collaborative articles. A couple of updates from Meta to share with you. First, Facebook may be taking another step toward killing hashtags.

Starting point is 00:06:49 The platform is pulling the plug on hashtag topic tags for group posts on April 3rd. This means that starting next month, admins will no longer be able to add hashtags to other people's posts or manage the list of group hashtags. However, Meta says users can still add hashtags to other people's posts or manage the list of group hashtags. However, Meta says users can still add hashtags to their own group posts and selecting the hashtag will still show other Facebook posts that use it. Then on May 3rd, admins will no longer be able to download topics they've added to other people's group posts. As Social Media Today points out, it's not a huge change. it does reduce

Starting point is 00:07:25 group admin's ability to categorize different discussions in the app, which had originally been used to sort group conversations. And it's not just Twitter with link problems. Marketing pro Corey Dobbin reported today that a bug in Meta's ads manager appears to be resetting the call to action link in some ad campaign setups. Rather than the URL you want it to go to, like your website or store, somehow the ad is reset and now points to Facebook's homepage. So something you may want to pop in for and double check. And finally, China has banned women from modeling lingerie on online shopping live streams.

Starting point is 00:08:08 So now men are doing it. Brands that violate the ban are shut down and offenders can be charged with disseminating obscene content unless a man is wearing it. Yes, to bypass this rule, several companies' live streams now feature men wearing an assortment of looks, including push-up bras, corsets, and nightgowns. Busy day at the agency today, lots of client meetings and so on, so I will say goodbye. Thank you for listening. I'm Todd Maffin. See you tomorrow. Bye. Bye.

Today in Digital Marketing - Your Current API Plan Does Not Include Access to This Podcast

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