X, formerly Twitter, added context to a dropshipping ad on its platform revealing an Aliexpress supplier that sells the product cheaper.

Community Notes, which are written by X users and rated by users as helpful, stated under an ad for a strap-bag: “This is a dropshipping ad, this consists of reselling a product at a very high price when it was purchased at a lower price, here on Aliexpress a.aliexpress.com/_EwNY8Bd.”

?"It is the most comfortable bag I've ever owned. I wear it daily not just for travel. It holds all I need no matter the situation" – ꜱᴀʀᴀ ᴊᴀɴᴇ✨✨
GET IT?https://t.co/8Nu7NZVcxp pic.twitter.com/uUZ0W6rd3b

— Space Speaker (@spacespeaker_co) July 13, 2023

The product page appears to have been removed, and the Aliexpress link shows the product selling for $3.39.

This could limit Aliexpress dropshippers from advertising on X.

This year, video will make up 56.4% of all daily social network time in the US, according to a prediction by Insider Intelligence/eMarketer.

Even though that share will keep increasing, future gains will be less substantial as it nears a plateau.

Time spent on social video has increased dramatically over the previous six years, with TikTok playing a significant role. According to Insider Intelligence, TikTok will be the largest social network in the United States in total daily minutes by 2025.

TikTok’s social video competitors, such as Snap Originals and Instagram’s IGTV, have not attracted substantial user interest, and Reels has not bridged the time spent gap with TikTok.

Time spent on social video is slowing, implying that there may be a limit to how much video people can view daily.

YouTube released a new video to answer questions from creators about its short-form video platform, YouTube Shorts.

It answered concerns ranging from how the Shorts algorithm differs from long-form YouTube to what counts as a view and those that addressed additional best practices for creators who want to optimize their potential on Shorts.

According to Todd Sherman, the product lead for Shorts, the Shorts algorithm differs from the long-form algorithm in that people tap on videos to watch — basically making a specific choice that generates more recommendations. On Shorts, though, users scroll through content without knowing what will happen next.

Sherman also pointed out that not every appearance in Shorts counts as a view, unlike certain other platforms, where watching the initial frame counts as a view. A report by TechCrunch notes that it has been said that TikTok counts views as soon as a video begins to play. On Shorts, however, the view indicates that the viewer intended to watch the view.

However, YouTube does not reveal its view threshold because it is subject to change and does not want anyone to try to trick the system.

“There are parts of the algorithm that try and find people, find creators an audience. And sometimes those algorithms will go and effectively find like a seed audience, find a set of people that may enjoy your video. And depending on how that goes, it may get a lot more traffic or it may taper off,” he said.

Elon Musk is attempting to change how news links show on his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, in a move that might weaken news publishers’ ability to attract audiences.

Musk said in an X post late Monday that headlines and text from links will be removed for news stories shared on the platform, leaving only the primary image.

“But with the shortened links, users might end up writing some text along with their posts and eventually they could consider X’s premium service that allows a single post of up to 25,000 characters,” noted Reuters.

“With the changes, Musk is pitching X as a more relevant platform for content creators,” the article stated.

Instagram and Facebook users in Europe now have more alternatives to opt out of Meta’s recommendation algorithms, according to a blog post published today by the company.

The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), one of the most extensive pieces of internet regulation, will begin to completely apply to Facebook, Instagram, and other online platforms and services later this month.

According to the post written by Meta’s head of global relations, Nick Clegg, European users could use Facebook and Instagram services like Reels, Stories, and Search without seeing content ranked by Meta’s recommendation algorithms.

“We’re now giving our European community the option to view and discover content on Reels, Stories, Search and other parts of Facebook and Instagram that is not ranked by Meta using these systems,” wrote Clegg.

“For example, on Facebook and Instagram, users will have the option to view Stories and Reels only from people they follow, ranked in chronological order, newest to oldest.”

In a time of enormous growth for buy now, pay later (BNPL) providers, Klarna will surpass Affirm by 2027, generating $33.38 billion in US BNPL payment value.

To entice more customers, Klarna has continued to expand its BNPL services, including new cooperation with Airbnb.

According to Insider Intelligence/eMarketer, Gen Z will dominate BNPL growth, although Gen X and baby boomers will still account for 37.5 million customers by 2027.

Following Klarna and Affirm are Afterpay in the third spot and then Zip in the fourth.

Gen Z will be critical in shifting BNPL payments from online to in-store.

When calculating the return on investment (ROI) for their efforts in social media, video, search, and display marketing, more than half of global advertisers are either highly confident or very confident, per data from Nielsen.

Third-party cookie deprecation will make measurement more challenging, according to an Insider Intelligence/eMarketer analysis.

A better measurement would enable increased ad spend across channels, but marketers and publishers are still trying to determine which identity solutions are ideal.

Podcasts and streaming audio ranked particularly low because these services continue to rely on untrustworthy download-based metrics.

Marketers are most confident about the ROI of Social media, video, search, and display ads. These are followed by email marketing.

New York City banned TikTok on government-owned smartphones on Wednesday, citing security concerns, following several other cities and states in restricting the short video-sharing software.

TikTok “posed a security threat to the city’s technical networks,” stated the administration of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, reported Reuters.

TikTok, used by over 150 million Americans and owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance, has received increasing calls from US lawmakers for a statewide ban because of worries about Chinese government involvement.

According to the report, employees will lose access to the app and its website on city-owned devices and networks if the app is not removed within 30 days. TikTok was already prohibited on state-issued mobile devices in New York.

Meanwhile, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that nearly half of American adults support a ban on TikTok.

Insider Intelligence/eMarketer predicts that by 2027, there will be 135.5 million Gen Z and millennial social network users in the US. This is more than half of all US social network users.

The number of millennial and Gen Z social network users in the United States will continue to rise through 2027, while Gen X and baby boomer users will fall, according to the report.

According to the US Social Network Usage by Generation research report, TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram are the most popular social media platforms for Gen Zers. However, only Snapchat attracts a more significant number of Gen Z kids than Gen Z adults.

Millennials dominate Reddit, accounting for roughly 40% of the user base. They are also on TikTok, though not as prominently as Gen Z. In the meantime, Facebook and X will lose young users this year.

Google’s John Mueller said regarding domain names and SEO on Mastodon that it is not a critical factor in ranking your website.

“Your domain name is never going to make or break your SEO,” he said, reported the Search Engine Journal on Monday.

On the subject of having a dash (-) in the domain name, Mueller responded that it is OK and slightly better in URLs than underscores. “Don’t change your URLs for them tho. Don’t use spaces, commas, colons, etc in URLs.”

He added that having a keyword in the domain is good for branding, but there is no extra SEO benefit.