TikTok’s future is anything but guaranteed: While the app remains king of video for now, Meta and Google are making strides to steal market share.

Facing signal loss and challenging macroeconomic conditions, advertisers are pumping the brakes on social network ad spending. But social video is shining through the gloom.

In this report, we look at the most important updates for social platforms in Q3 and how those changes will affect marketers. For the first time, we’re including updates for YouTube as well.

Beyond just advertising, Alphabet’s tech touches nearly everything. This report looks at 23 of its most important business areas, examining their maturity, disruption of the market, leverage over partners, integration with other products, and five-year outlook.

On today's episode, we discuss how Twitter could reinvent itself to become a new social network model, what its current to-do list looks like, and whether it would make sense to can some of its more recent initiatives. "In Other News," we talk about what Sheryl Sandberg leaving Meta means for the company and the significance of a YouTube Shorts milestone. Tune in to the discussion with our analyst Debra Aho Williamson.

The metaverse may be far away, but video is here and now on social media—and consumer usage patterns are changing fast.

Facebook Reels’ global rollout comes with fresh ad formats: The new banner and sticker ads both attract creators to the platform and offer marketers performance ad options for short-form video.

Creator funds see mixed success: Social platforms offer more monetization tools than ever, but many content providers still struggle to get paid.

YouTube Shorts is bringing its Shorts Fund to over 30 new countries: The platform is stressing the importance of original content as it goes up against TikTok for creators.

Attack of the clones: Now that most major social platforms have a TikTok-like feature, each is exploring different ways to use short-form video to further their longer-term goals.

BuzzFeed will pay up to $10K to creators: The program will award prizes for top-performing content. Though it will only last through the summer, it's likely a pilot program or a precursor to a more social BuzzFeed Community hub.

YouTube Shorts debuts in the US: The feature may just be another TikTok clone for now, but if YouTube can successfully harness its existing base of video content creators, it could set Shorts apart.

Social entertainment is here to stay. With the dramatic rise of TikTok, along with the growing number of traditional social platforms and standalone apps in this space, we are convinced that short, user-generated videos will be a lasting part of the social media landscape, particularly for organic and influencer marketing, paid advertising, and social commerce.