Social Media Memberships?

Tik Tok, Twitch, and Instagram creators woke up to some good news last Thursday. After three years of research and discussion, SAG-AFTRA is opening up membership to social media influencers who sell sponsorships on those platforms. The most meaningful thing about this change: access to health insurance and other union benefits. This feels like long-overdue validation for creatives who are part of a huge—and rapidly growing—industry. Don’t believe me? Check this: brands will spend up to $15 billion on influencer marketing in 2022 according to a 2019 study by Business Insider. 

Speaking of influence and the people who have it, David Dobrik dropped a new image-sharing app, Dispo, this past weekend. What makes the app different from Instagram, VSCO, and Twitter? After you take a photo, it disappears for 24 hours, meant to mimic a disposable camera. And in keeping with that theme, the photos also have an OG disposable camera filter applied to them when they’re shared. The app’s invites are exclusive, with only 10,000 testers currently using it Sadly, my invite got lost in the spam filters somewhere, but by the looks of the photos Twitter users have been sharing, the treatment looks a bit like the heavily filtered Instagram photos from the early days of the app. Let’s see if near-term nostalgia sticks in a social landscape that’s clearly hungry for change. 

And of course, my favorite TikToks from this week: this nostalgia-inducing take on iconic movie and TV lines, and this creator’s envisioning of how food would walk if it had legs.

—Darlene Kenney, Marketing Assistant