Could a separate Reels app fix Instagram?
This week's links: Moves that are reshaping creator economics (and your social media experience)
Hi, brand nerds ;-) Welcome to another edition of my weekly news roundup.
In this week’s curation, I follow the money in creator land and found these breadcrumbs: Substack launched video monetization, Meta offering $5,000 bribes to lure TikTokers, while Instagram appears to be considering spinning off Reels into a separate app.
Is this the start of the great social media unbundling?
Who knows.
The world is still burning, y’all—but capitalism soldiers on!—so here we go with this week’s industry links ;-)
Video Is Still Where The Money Is
Instagram may spin off Reels into a separate app (source: The Verge)
Instagram is reportedly working on "Project Ray" to create a standalone Reels app focused on three-minute videos. After years of cramming every possible format into a single feed and watching user complaints pile up, they're finally admitting the kitchen-sink approach might have been a mistake.
Source: Instagram Think about it: Instagram started as a photo app, then added Stories (stealing from Snapchat), then added Reels (stealing from TikTok), then launched Edits (a rip-off of CapCut) and now no one knows what the hell it's supposed to be anymore.
It’d be interesting to see how this unbundling plays out, but also... maybe just stick to one thing and do it well?
Substack will now let you monetize video (source: PetaPixel)
Substack just launched new video monetization tools, letting creators put videos behind a paywall, track viewership, and directly generate revenue. Yes, they’re out to bait the TikTokers, but I think they’re hoping to get a piece of YouTube, too.
Chicken or egg? (Image source: Carla Lalli Music’s Substack) I don’t know which is the chicken or the egg, but just a couple of weeks ago, food creator and Bon Appetit alum Carla Lalli Music posted a confessional Substack piece on why she’s quitting YouTube. In it, she shared very honest numbers:
“Until recently, I put out a video every week, costing me $14,000 per month, plus groceries. (My time is not included in that figure.)... If we roll with the average Adsense income, here’s the bottom line: $14k going out. $4k coming in. Net loss, month over month: TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS.”
This isn't Substack's first big play this year—they launched a $20 million fund to attract creators only a month ago.
Meta's "Breakthrough Bonus" program is luring TikTokers with cash (source: Social Media Today)
In an even more obvious play to lure TikTokers, Meta has quietly started offering TikTok creators up to $5,000 to post exclusively on Facebook and Instagram for 90 days. The requirements tell you everything:
Post at least 20 reels on Facebook, 10 on Instagram
Content must be original and not available elsewhere
The bigger your TikTok following, the more money Meta offers
This isn't subtle – it's Meta seeing TikTok's vulnerability and going for the jugular. TikTok is still active, but it's definitely not out of the woods yet. Eh… IDK about you, but lately Meta has been giving me The Ick.
Affiliate Marketing Is Still Growing
Walmart, Target, and Amazon doubling down on their creator networks (source: DigiDay)
If you've noticed way more influencers suddenly doing Target and Walmart hauls lately, you're not wrong. These retail networks are doubling down on working with more creators.
A Walmart Creator promoting… Walmart Creator. Screenshot via @acquired.style. From how I understand it, this is how it goes:
Let’s say an influencer in the Walmart Creator Program makes a TikTok about Cool Ranch Doritos from Walmart ⮕ Thanks to their mountains of first-party data, Walmart already knows exactly which customers buy snack foods most often (that's you, with the 2AM munchies). ⮕ Doritos then pays Walmart to show that influencer's content specifically to those snack shoppers.The creator gets their commission, Walmart gets paid for ad targeting, and Doritos potentially sells more chips. It's next-level affiliate marketing where retailers leverage both their product selection AND their precious first-party data to create a closed-loop ecosystem.
ShopMy raises $77.5M to make creator shopping links actually useful (source: Modern Retail)
Creator-affiliate platform ShopMy just closed a massive $77.5M Series B, a year after raising their Series A. Modern Retail does a great, thorough briefing on that move.
As marketing budgets tighten and customer acquisition costs rise, I think what this is signaling is that the days of "we'll pay you for vibes" are numbered. With platforms like ShopMy and LTK, brands can now expect the creator to prove their influence with hard numbers.
New Platforms: Keeping The Internet… Interesting?
SkySpace brings MySpace nostalgia to Bluesky (source: The Verge)
Game designer Ste Curran created SkySpace, a tool that transforms your Bluesky profile into a MySpace-style page complete with customizable backgrounds, Top 8 friends, and even a music player.
As algorithmic feeds become increasingly homogenized, there's growing appetite for digital spaces that feel personal again. It's less about the MySpace throwback and more about reclaiming digital identity when platforms have made everything look identical.
A recent Substack note of mine that says “make websites cool again” garnered over 4,000 likes (see below), so I think that’s a pretty fair assumption:
BuzzFeed seeks to counter right-wing vibe shift (source: Semafor)
*raises eyebrows* BuzzFeed announced plans to launch BF Island, a social platform designed as "an oasis from algorithm-driven doomscrolling." CEO Jonah Peretti called out what he terms "SNARF" content (Stakes, Novelty, Anger, Retention, Fear) that dominates today's feeds.
The ironic take: BuzzFeed, which built its empire on highly clickable content, now positioning itself as the antidote to addictive algorithms is…interesting. “It’s clear we can’t rely on the platforms to create a positive environment for content creators like us. I’m beginning to think we need to create our own social media platform to give our audience a place on the internet that reflects their values,” Peretti wrote to Semafor.
Escape.ai launches for higher-end creator content (source: Variety)
"The Matrix" VFX Oscar winner John Gaeta has launched Escape.ai, a platform for filmmakers, digital artists, and game creators to showcase and monetize AI-generated and game engine content.
While much of the creator economy focuses on dance trends and unboxings, there's a parallel universe of creators working with far more sophisticated tools. Escape.ai suggests there's untapped potential in the intersection of AI, cinema, and gaming that mainstream platforms haven't figured out how to serve.
Lastly, Some Fun Stuff:
Social Posts I Loved This Week
The Booker Prize announced its long list for The International Booker Prize 2025, and it’s beautiful. It makes me think of Rachel Karten’s latest post on the ‘Instagram Premium’ aesthetic, as well as the trend of book clubs as the new social clubs (via Emily Sundberg).
J.Crew with a New Yorker Mag collab. Again, with the Instagram Premium, high-production approach.
Influencer Elle Cordova is one of my faves, and this collab video from Patreon was a treat to watch. Again, with the book club trend! (For further reading: my post on 2025 trends, one of them being micro-communities)
Looking Forward:
The Big Questions for Brand & Marketing Teams
As this creator landscape gets weirder and more fractured, I'm left with some questions:
What happens when Instagram actually splits up? Will brands need separate strategies for each Meta app?!? (God help us all)
When will the "we'll pay you for vibes" influencer era officially end? Or will influencer virality/awareness/spectacle ALWAYS be a part of the marketing mix?
What if TikTok actually does get banned for real this time? What video horse are you betting on: Meta, Substack, YouTube, or something else?
The winners in this fragmented creator landscape hopefully aren’t just the ones with the biggest influencer budgets—I hope there’ll be rewards for brands that have the best radar for where authentic connection is happening and the courage to abandon platforms that no longer serve them.
I mean… one can dream, right?
See you again soon,
Arriane
P.S. New here? Check out the rest of my most read articles:
So glad I discovered this newsletter. These apps are rather bullish or desperate...? Something is off and I don't know how to put it in words. While I am enjoying this platform so much thanks to newsletters like this, the back to back emails of new features .. Idk .. The Meta vs. TikTok (they are def. in incahoots regardless lol) .... The moment Instagram copied Snapchat's stories years ago, I feel like that started this spiral we see today in "social" media. The globalized digital market has driven a "social" monotonous framework.. Idk I am still processing this as a sociologist yet lover of technological innovation. Great work!
"BF Island" sounds like a very bad singles reality show, if not a story from The Onion ;)