BeReal’s Copycats, Zuckerberg’s Hypocrisy and Twitter’s Anticipated Edit Button with Jag Sharma, Jen Campbell, Jason Kapadia and Felina Tan - Episode 29

No original idea remains original for long in the tech world…

The once novel idea of BeReal’s dual camera platform is being copied by Snap and Instagram, so with a new platform on the rise - Poparazzi - how long will it last before its imitators emerge?

As we dive into the latest news in social media technology on this week’s episode of Disconnected, find out more on the rise of social media subscription models, Twitter’s long-awaited edit button, Mark Zuckerberg’s dismay at our scrolling habits, and much more.

This episode of Disconnected covers:

Twitter’s long-awaited, highly requested edit button
The oversaturation of social media platform subscription services
Snapchat’s Web3 struggles and BeReal clones
Mark Zuckerberg’s take on the social media landscape he’s created
A new, rising social media platform with a twist - Poparazzi

Episode Highlights:

“Twitter Blue subscribers have complained previously about not being able to edit. Twitter recently put up the price of the subscription rates, and they wanted more features, so they're launching the edit button as a bit of a test.” - 3:50 - Jen Campbell

“Do they want the potential fireworks that could come of this? They seem to embrace chaos, Twitter, and is this feature enabling the heavy users that think it's worth $5 a month to allow this chaos to ensue?” - 8:00 - Jag Sharma

“They have to add some kind of value to their Twitter Blue subscription. It didn't seem to be something that was very appealing, but maybe just adding on these extra features makes it more appealing. But I wouldn't pay $4.99 a month just for an edit button.” - 11:40 - Jason Kapadia

“The idea behind Poparazzi is that all this content can be put up against your profile, but none of it comes from you. I’m interested to see whether it's just me that feels really old, or if you guys also feel like this is not a platform for you?” - 17:20 - Jen Campbell

“If you’re the poparazzi for one friend, your other friend might not like it or might get jealous, because you did a lot for that one friend, then you have to go do it for another friend. So the pressure on the actual paparazzi is tough. It could create a lot of friendship politics.” - 21:45 - Jag Sharma

“Snap have released their new dual camera feature, where it combines both the front and back camera to capture content at the same time. So if you're doing or looking at something cool, you can capture that and your facial expression at the same time. It's a nice feature. But if you think you’ve heard about this dual camera stuff before, you'd be right - it's copied it from the up-and-coming social app BeReal.” - 24:30 - Jason Kapadia

“Can BeReal lose you your job? If you take a picture of your computer screen, and there's something private or something that's under NDA, there's a lot of ways that can get you into trouble.” - 32:40 - Jen Campbell

“I’m baffled by Mark Zuckerberg’s comments. His sentiment of building and engaging relationships is very nice, and we can all relate to that, but can we first acknowledge the fact that his platforms are doing the total opposite.” - 35:45 - Felina Tan

“Zuckerberg really put all his cards down and tried to bet Facebook's future on the Metaverse, and it doesn't seem like that has actually panned out in the way he and the whole of Facebook wanted. If Zuckerberg is not thinking that running Facebook is fun anymore, what's the future of the platform?” - 40:25 - Jason Kapadia

Links & references:

Twitter Edit Button

https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/01/twitter-is-finally-rolling-out-an-edit-button-later-this-month-first-to-twitter-blue-subscribers/

Twitter Blue

https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/28/twitter-is-increasing-the-price-of-twitter-blue-from-2-99-to-4-99-per-month/

Snapchat BeReal copy

https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/29/23326795/snapchat-dual-camera-mode-bereal

Snapchat Web3

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-01/snap-s-web3-ambitions-fall-prey-to-company-layoffs

Poparazzi new social network

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/30/following-its-series-a-poparazzis-team-is-readying-a-new-social-app-that-goes-beyond-photos/

Zuckerberg comments on how social media should be