Facebook is undergoing a radical remake that sidelines its traditional friends and family social networking in favor of putting third-party creator videos and ecommerce front and center. The app’s default Home screen now features a vertical display of algorithmically-suggested public content — mostly short-form third-party videos — and provides easy access to Facebook’s Reels videos and its Stories content. Posts from family and friends are now relegated to a new “Feeds” tab located on the app’s shortcut bar.

Which leads to Axios’ conclusion: The leadership of Meta and Facebook now views the entire machine of Facebook's social network as a legacy operation. 

Let’s not forget: Visuals are essential for brands to sell their products. They provide brands with a justifiable ROI, meaning that brands are more than willing to pay Creators (for their visuals) and photo & video solution developers (for licensing their tools), which provides Creators and developers with compelling (additional) monetization opportunities. 

But the catch we’re learning from Instagram/Facebook: if you abandon your DNA in lieu of a quick buck, eventually the users who have put you on the map will declare you dead. Perhaps you’ll attract new users that replace them, and you might not care; perhaps it will kill your business.

Instagram’s and Facebook’s tribulations provide opportunities for long-tail or use case-specific applications. As was also the case when Gen Z-ers initially embraced what are now the mainstream social networks, this generation currently leads a move towards using an array of alternative smaller apps, each of which serves a distinct function: Twitch for live-streaming and gaming, Discord for private chat groups, BeReal for spontaneous visual updates, and Poparazzi for candid photos of friends.

[The sprawling ecommerce opportunities for many of us in the photo and video ecosystem, as well as the lingering dangers of going too far in chasing the big bucks in the world of ecommerce, will be the subject of our “Empowering shopping: Seizing emerging opportunities where visual content is king” panel at Visual 1st]

Snap. When users still like you but your stock is getting obliterated. No lack of anxiety in social media land these days. A different story from Meta's, but still: Ouch! The good news: Snap’s daily active users were up 18% YoY in Q2 and revenues were up 13%. You’re happy now, Wall Street? No way! Snap's stock price dropped 39% on Friday, and has dropped nearly 90% from its all-time high in September of last year. What spooked the investors on Friday? Snap missed revenue forecasts but declined to give guidance on future quarters due to “uncertainties related to the operating environment.” Snap also pointed at a challenging economy, slowing demand for its online ad platform, Apple’s 2021 iOS update, and competition from companies like TikTok.

Once Upon. From app-first to web-next. As Once Upon’s CEO Lina Anderson mentioned last year at Visual 1st, its photobook creation app focuses on making it easy for customers to start creating a photobook on the go and continue with it at a convenient time later on. The company announced this continuation can now also be done in Once Upon’s brand new web version, thus providing seamless app and web authoring integration. The company also announced it made around $9M in revenues last year.

Snap. From app-first to web-next. Not to be left behind :-), Mobile-first Snap announces Snapchat for Web, which lets you send messages and snaps, as well as chat via video and regular calls. Snapchat for Web also allows users to take advantage of messaging features available on mobile, including chat reactions. Snap says it plans to bring its Lenses feature to video calls in the future.

Announcing the first 3 speakers of our Visual 1st panel, Fighting back: Enforcing visual content rights in the age of deepfakes and rip-off NFTs:

Google Photos. Geo-expanding photo prints and canvas. Google has offered printed photo books in the U.S. since 2017, a service that started rolling out in Europe the following year. And then in 2019, Google started offering photo prints and canvas prints in the U.S. Starting today, these two additional printing services are available to Google Photos users in 28 European countries — basically, the entire European Union plus the U.K. — and in Canada. (Cody Bratt, Product Manager of Google Photos Printing, spoke at Visual 1st 2020).

Sony. Shotgun mic. In our last issue I mentioned a passionate perspective piece on the need for camera vendors to beef up their audio capture features (Camera makers, can you hear me? It's time to take audio seriously.) Well, Sony listened and introduced the ECM-G1 microphone for high-quality sound collection for vloggers and other video content creators. SRP is around $150.

Beamr. Going public. Alumni Visual 1st presenter and video and image compression technology provider Beamr has filed proposed terms for a $15M IPO. Assuming a successful IPO at the midpoint of the proposed price range, the company’s enterprise value at IPO would be around $115M. Last year the company booked $3.3M in revenues.