Five things worth sharing from the last week or so, brought to you by a different member of the Browser Media team every Friday.
This week’s My Five is by Vic.
1. Outage causes outrage
On Tuesday, you might have noticed that you were unable to access some of the biggest sites on the internet. But why, I hear you ask?
It was all down to a content delivery network (CDN) provider, Fastly, having a bit of a mare.
The internet infrastructure company was affected by a software bug that resulted in massive sites including Amazon, The Guardian, The Financial Times, and Reddit being unavailable for about an hour.
2. Toxic Workplace IPA
Ah, BrewDog. It’s not the first time you’ve featured in My Five for being awful, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.
Known for their attention grabbing marketing campaigns, the ‘punk’ bevvie business has come under fire this week for treating its staff like dog eggs. And after having a couple of beers in their Camden branch last Saturday, I was told I couldn’t tip their staff when paying by card, so it didn’t really come as much of a shock to me.
In an open letter, former staff called out their toxic workplace culture, and called BS on some of their marketing campaigns.
An excerpt from the letter reads:
In a post-truth world, you have allowed the ends to justify the means, time and time again. Lies, hypocrisy and deceit can be useful tools; PR campaigns repeated over and over on LinkedIn – until you actually believe them yourselves – is good for driving awareness, and if anyone questions the validity of your claims, you can simply move on to the next campaign. How many more times will we see the stories about sending protest beer to Russia (you didn’t), James and Martin changing their names to Elvis (they didn’t), awarding an Employee of the Month over a sweary can (which was not an accident and was actually approved for print by James), or offering Pawternity leave (which many staff are simply never permitted to take)? Worse, by placing personalities at the centre of your messaging, you have inflated egos and fostered a culture within craft beer that deifies founders, and gives weight to sexist and misogynistic brewers who claim to be standing up for free speech. You have become a lightning rod for some of the worst attitudes present on both the internet, and in real life.
Yikes.
3. Use the bird to spread the word
This is actually kind of a cool feature from Twitter and Revue that can help users and businesses grow, and monetise, their email marketing lists.
A new subscribe button will be made available to allow users to quickly and easily join mailing lists.
Once you sign up, the newsletter will be sent to the email address you signed up to Twitter with.
?Coming soon?
We’re currently building new ways to grow your newsletter audience, and we want to preview one that will live right on your Twitter profile ? pic.twitter.com/kmlkPTbeA7
— Revue (@revue) June 10, 2021
Find out more about the announcement here.
4. European kickball tournament
I’m not a football fan.
In fact, until today, when I saw that people on LinkedIn were getting all excited about their employers letting them watch the footie matches at work, I didn’t even know it was the start of the Euros.
What I do remember is some of the songs that have accompanied football tournaments over the years, one of them being New Order’s World in Motion for the 1990 World Cup, featuring John Barnes doing a wonderful rap.
The band had jumped on that sweet marketing bandwagon (despite their song being for the World Cup but whatever), whacking a load of 2021 #WorldInMotion themed merch up on their site.
5. Cash for creators?
Instagram has done a pretty good job of pissing off influencers of late, with many complaining of issues with the platform and its policies impacting their ability to rake in the moolah.
However, early this week, Instagram hosted its first ever ‘Creator Week’ where dead-eyed, soulless Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg took some time away from destroying democracy to announce some new money-making features.
According to Zuckerberg:
“The platform is starting to test a “native affiliate tool that will allow creators to earn commissions for the purchases they inspire people to make.
“Our goal is to be the best platform for creators like you to make a living. And if you have an idea that you want to share with the world, you should be able to create it and get it out there easily and simply — across Facebook and Instagram — and then earn money for your work.
“We’re adding more ways for creators to make extra money for hitting certain milestones when using Badges on Instagram Live and Stars on Facebook”
Whether or not these new tools will be enough to convince influencers to stay is yet to be seen, but monetising a social media following is getting more difficult, no matter which platform they use, primarily due to algorithm and policy changes.
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