This week’s edition of In The News will highlight some of the biggest takeaways from the 2019 South by Southwest (SXSW) conference. The conference is well known for being a hub of some of the world’s greatest creatives and innovators – a place where social media trends and future aspirations are often debuts.
This year’s SXSW boasts of some exciting changes in communications, journalism, marketing, and social media. Here are a few takeaways from the first days of the conference.
Photo by Amanda Zantal-Wiener for News & Trends by HubSpot
The Current State of Social Media
The week opened up with BuzzFeed’s CEO and co-founder, Jonah Peretti, covering the current state of social media and content. Peretti seemed to take a supportive stance on Facebook, adding a sobering thought to the audience: behind every social media platforms are humans just like you and me, that are not exempt from error. His challenge to all current social media platforms is to focus on quality content getting more engagement in efforts to lessen the exposure of harmful content that rises to the surface.
Is TV Coverage on Twitter The Same?
From CNN, we heard correspondent Brian Stelter acknowledge the ease of getting news from sources like Twitter, but commenting that still, only TV coverage can clearly communicate the weight and priority of breaking news – not just the news that catches or becomes most popular on Twitter. The bottom line: we still need TV coverage just as much as ever.
Coming Up Next: Quibi
Have you heard of Quibi? You’re not alone, but you may hear about it soon. Quibi is a video streaming service on the horizon, looking to deliver more bite-size video content compared to other larger streaming services, like Netflix. Will it stick? Only time will tell.
No Longer A One-Media Stop
“CNN isn’t a TV company anymore,” said CNN’s Andrew Morse “We’re a worldwide broadcast company, just like New York Times isn’t a newspaper, and BuzzFeed isn’t a website.” During a group discussion, Morse was joined by Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith and New York Times Meredith Kopkit, and together they discussed the need to rethink your media always to be multimedia as the assets are so readily available to each type of media.
Twitter’s Camera Gets An Update
Twitter is redesigning its camera to look more like Snapchat/Instagram Stories, after falling behind in this area. Although Twitter does have a good bit of media, the majority of photos/videos are added to the tweet rather than taken from within the app. Twitter is hopeful this update will drive users to stay within the app as they tell their bite-sized stories.
Did you know of the 75,098 people attending the SXSW Conference in 2018, 4,035 were those in media?
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