Bookmarked Becoming a Social Media Influencer by Jen Golbeck (Medium)
I teach a class in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland called “Becoming a Social Media Influencer”. It’s a hands-on class where students create social media accounts (or work with ones they already have) and learn how to make good content, to build a community, to gain insights into social media algorithms, and to develop strategies for growing their accounts. We do in-class critiques and offer feedback along with doing readings and trying out new tech.
This looks somewhat interesting…

 

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Read Move Over Influencers, Here Come Curators by Ana AndjelicAna Andjelic (andjelicaaa.substack.com)
Curation is the fuel of the modern aspiration economy
There’s a bookstore in Ginza that sells only one book. “A single room with a single book” is its tagline. Every week, the owner chooses the book, presents it in the center of the shop, and curates an exhibition with artworks, photographs, or related items around its subject matter

Tantek Çelik IndieWeb #chat channel ()
Bookmarked on March 03, 2020 at 05:04PM

Read Instagram Bloggers Gives Her Followers An Incredible Reality Check (comedy.com)
Rather interestingly, Instagram Blogger Rianne Meijer indulged in a meaningful and unique project. She put together some photos of herself that looked like something out of Vogue, and then placed a more natural picture right next to it, giving viewers a whole different perspective.
While written for the clicks, this article has an important message about social media.
Read Blogger Gets Slammed For Committing Ultimate Instagram Sin (comedy.com)
It’s no secret that bloggers, vloggers and pretty much anyone on social media tend to ‘bend the truth’ a little bit. There are countless apps you can download to turn your very average photo into what looks like photographic gold. With a little tweaking and cropping, a few saturation and contrast adjustments, you can fake just about anything. This may have become a trend that caught on a little too well. Johanna Olsson is one of the many bloggers who have photoshopped her images to suit the theme of her page. In an attempt to gain points for her reputation, her photo-shopping mishap caused her more publicity than she could have ever imagined. However, it was not for the reasons she was hoping.

👓 Millions of Instagram influencers had their private contact data scraped and exposed | TechCrunch

Read Millions of Instagram influencers had their private contact data scraped and exposed (TechCrunch)
A massive database containing contact information of millions of Instagram influencers, celebrities and brand accounts has been found online. The database, hosted by Amazon Web Services, was left exposed and without a password allowing anyone to look inside. At the time of writing, the database had…

👓 Instagram influencer cries at the prospect of getting a ‘normal’ job after account is deleted | The Independent

Read Instagram influencer cries at prospect of getting a 'normal' job (The Independent)
The influencer said she is 'nothing without my following'
Is this the “Leave Britney Alone” moment for why to own and control your own web presence?

👓 Hackers Are Stealing Influencer Instagram Accounts By Promising Lucrative Brand Deals | The Atlantic

Read How Hackers Are Stealing High-Profile Instagram Accounts (The Atlantic)
In the Wild West of “influencer” marketing, there are few protections and plenty of easy marks.
Of the multi-billion dollar business and the issues with needing to give away one’s password to be tracked within this field, the real loss here seems to be that Instagram isn’t building infrastructure for their users to take advantage of these opportunities. Even if they were only taking a small fraction of the income for facilitating the market, they’re missing out on hundreds of millions.

It’s not mentioned here, but the fact that there are businesses built around the idea of “link in bio” means that Instagram really isn’t innovating on their platform.

Is Instagram really so deaf to the needs of their userbase?

👓 Teachers Are Moonlighting As Instagram Influencers To Make Ends Meet | BuzzFeed

Read Meet The “Teacher Instagrammers” Who Moonlight As Influencers To Make Ends Meet (BuzzFeed News)
One teacher in Texas told BuzzFeed News she makes a $50,000 a year, but made over $200,000 in a year through Instagram.

👓 Instagram’s Wannabe-Stars Are Driving Luxury Hotels Crazy | The Atlantic

Read Instagram’s Wannabe-Stars Are Driving Luxury Hotels Crazy (The Atlantic)
Hotels are being forced to figure out how to work with a new class of brand-peddling marketers.
Just because you’ve got the desire to be a social media influencer doesn’t mean you don’t need to treat it like a serious business.

Social platforms have such huge scale now, I’m surprised they don’t crack down on bots and fake accounts so that it’s more transparent what kind of true value accounts actually bring to the table. They could even leave them in the system so they can show to investors that they’re getting the traffic and “engagement”, but they’re throwing away a lot of actual value by not disclosing actual accounts and real engagement by real people (aka potential customers). Bots are second class citizens because other than the veneer of value, they’re really not adding much to the conversation other than a weak form of tummeling.

This makes me wonder if anyone in the social networking space is doing research on bots as tummelers?

👓 Klout, the Mashable of Social Influence Measurement, Gets Acquired; What I Think This Means for Social Business | Marshall Kirkpatrick

Read Klout, the Mashable of Social Influence Measurement, Gets Acquired; What I Think This Means for Social Business by Marshall Kirkpatrick (marshallk.com)
Disclosure: I am the CEO of Little Bird, which is a more effective, interesting and genuine social business technology than Klout. That said, I use Klout every day, they paved the way for our customers to start thinking about us and I wish them nothing but the best in their new hard-earned home. The...

👓 PopSugar Stole Influencers’ Instagrams — Along With Their Profits | Racked

Read PopSugar Stole Influencers’ Instagrams — Along With Their Profits (Racked)
The lifestyle website stripped bloggers’ affiliate links from their posts and added the site’s own.
h/t Kimberly Hirsch

See also notes at stream.boffosocko.com.