Reading in Gmail? Gmail hides the best bits Fails, viral hits and weekend reads live at the bottom. Don't miss them.
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Sponsor Geekout Reach 30K social pros Read by social teams at Netflix, TikTok, Disney. Q4 discounts available.
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Hello, geeks! |
It’s been a week of me saying no to a lot of people. And some things were tough to turn down. |
First came an invite for a creator trip to Las Vegas. Then Adobe asked me to spend a week with them in Miami at Adobe MAX in November. |
Two trips most people would bite your arm off for. I had to say no to both, because work right now is immense. Plus my liver is still in recovery from Ibiza. |
So, what has been keeping me busy…? |
Amongst a long list of client work: rebuilding the Geekout Newsletter website. |
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New Geekout Newsletter homepage |
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Over the last few weeks, I've used Claude Design and Codex, connected to Beehiiv through its MCP, to rebuild every page on the site. |
I used a very detailed AI prompt, a lot of connectors, and got Claude to check Codex’s work, and vice versa. |
You can check it out here. Still needs a few fixes and edits. |
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New Geekout Newsletter advertise page |
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It's saved me thousands in web design costs. |
Are there design crimes in there a professional would spot instantly? Almost certainly. |
But at a cost of £0, just my time, it's wild what a geek like me, with no design skills, can now build with the help of AI. |
Coming up in this week's Geekout… |
🎬 Instagram's new AI assistant tells you what to post next. Is it coming for your job? 😬 Meta's AI invited a stranger over: the Muse Marketplace mix-up that shared a YouTuber's home address 🚫 Reddit kills RSS feeds and public API access, blaming AI bots 🎁 Free stuff: my LinkedIn viral post tool, a playbook to get ChatGPT recommending your brand, and your secret AI visibility score
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Busy, busy! Let's get into it. |
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4 cool things… |
📋 The BIG Q4 checklist for social teams → What to sort now, what can wait, what's already too late → Get the checklist*
- 😳 Your brand has a secret AI visibility score → Nobody's shown it to you yet. Mine is 19% → See your score*
- 🤖 How to get ChatGPT to recommend your brand → A free playbook from me. Get mentioned, not just indexed → Free download
- 🔥 Free LinkedIn viral post breakdown tool → A new FREE tool I built. Paste the post. Get the formula. Reverse-engineer it → Launch tool
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*sponsored messages from tools I’ve tried, tested, and can recommend. |
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SPONSORED ▶︎ FREE PLAYBOOK |
Social Media Managers — Your Q4 Plan Shouldn’t be in a Slack Thread. Here's a Real One 🙏 |
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Most Q4 playbooks tell you what to do. Very few tell you when, or how. |
By October, CPMs are already up 20–60%. |
The brands that nail it on Black Friday don't outspend everyone in November - they're already prepping with a clear strategic timeline. |
Insense mapped the whole thing in one playbook: |
✨ 4 shifts that have changed how Q4 is won this year ✨ How to source the right creators within 48 hours ✨ The Q4 timeline, mapped: when and how to run your organic + paid campaigns ✨ How Insense runs as your creator engine for this peak season
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👉 Grab the playbook |
P.S. Book a free strategy call by Oct 16 and get $200 towards your first campaign. Nice. |
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Reddit is killing RSS feeds and ending public API access because of AI bots [BLOCKING] Meta’s Muse hits 5 million downloads just weeks after launch [BOOMING] Meta cut nearly $4B from its tax bill by calling AI data centres ‘experimental’ [BLAGGING] UK teen social ban is just the start of new regulation, Culture Secretary says [BROWBEATING]
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SPONSORED ▶︎ WHERE DO YOU RANK? |
"Why doesn't our brand come up in ChatGPT?" 🫠 |
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You'll get asked this. Probably by your boss. |
And there's no good answer, because nobody owns it. It isn't pure social, it isn't just SEO, and most teams have no SEO person to ask. |
Brand Radar from Ahrefs is where you look. Type in your brand, then your competitors', and across 448M+ monthly prompts you'll see: |
🔍 How often you get mentioned: by ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI answers 💬 Which prompts you show up for: the questions your customers actually type 📰 Where the AI got that answer: usually Reddit, YouTube and a handful of blogs. Rarely your own site. 🥊 Who's winning your category: and whether that's you
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I ran Geekout through it. 19% share of voice against my rivals. So 81% of the time, AI cites someone else. Ooof! |
📊 Where does your brand rank? → Check it in Brand Radar |
👉 Just want the quick answer? → Ahrefs' free AI Visibility Checker… Takes seconds, no signup. |
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How much AI is too much AI?
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What is Instagram's Edits Assistant? It's a new AI assistant inside Instagram's Edits app. It analyses your Reels' views, retention, shares and follower growth, explains what worked or flopped, and suggests hooks, scripts, captions and trending audio for your next post. It's free with daily limits, and Meta One subscribers get more usage. |
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If there’s one thing social media companies want to do these days, it’s help us post better with the power of AI. |
For example, YouTube has extensive creator tools to advise you on content ideas and optimisation, and now Instagram is in on the game. |
As The Verge explains: |
“Using the new assistant, creators can ask open-ended questions about what’s trending on Instagram, why one video worked and another didn’t, or what piece of content resonated most with their audience… Creators can also ask for ideas for content, how to hook viewers, what captions to use, which audio tracks are trending, and how to script videos.” |
This is very handy, especially when creators can feel crushed by the weight of expectation to always have a new content idea ready, and to keep up their success rate to maintain their income. |
For social media managers, it's also a little unnerving. Spotting what worked, explaining what flopped and planning the next post is a big chunk of the job description. It won't replace you yet. But it is now doing part of your job, for free. |
But doesn’t this all risk things becoming more samey? We can all spot AI-generated writing these days. Why should AI-generated content ideas be any different? |
AI-generated content support at its worst can shave the rough edges off our work, add a bit too much polish, and remove the very reason we were compelling creators in the first place. |
Even if it’s just a slow, gradual creep into samey-ness, there will likely come a point where we’ll feel it; where ‘what works’ take priority over what’s fresh and surprising and interesting. |
I suspect, just as LinkedIn has pulled back on AI-generated content tools to focus on supporting human-created work, tools like these will be refined significantly over time. |
We all like a bit of AI help, but at some point, it kills the reason we’re on social media in the first place - human connection. |
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Meta  / Facebook  |
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[Credit: Meta] |
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Meta was found guilty of more than 43 million consumer-protection violations in Cambridge Analytica case Meta might have to pay up to $40 billion to New Mexico for misleading Facebook users Meta disputes claims its Muse AI secretly read a user’s private messages without permission, saying that’s impossible Meta’s Muse was reportedly a mess of an app just two weeks before launch Meta is offering $1m for apps that ditch VR controllers and put your hands first Mark Zuckerberg reportedly led the drafting of Trump’s new voluntary pact for Big Tech to police its own most powerful AI without new regulation Meta is working on a strap accessory for its VR Glasses, with active VR gaming in mind Facebook’s Forum app for Groups has added a new ‘Top Voice’ role, improved search, and topic labels Facebook now lets you add a phone number to posts on iOS Facebook has been spotted showing in real time the number of users typing a comment on a post Facebook has added a new ‘Canvas’ feature for Stories on iOS
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Instagram  |
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[Credit: @jonahmanzano] |
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Threads  / WhatsApp  |
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[Credit: Meta] |
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X / Twitter  |
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[Credit: X] |
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TikTok  / YouTube  |
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[Credit: Beehiiv AI] |
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TikTok will pay the US state of Alabama at least $100m and has agreed to major new teen restrictions including two-hour daily limits, to settle a teen safety case TikTok added new tools for creator-brand collabs, covering matchmaking and payments as it looks to own the whole collab stack TikTok is turning the release of single ‘Patient Zero’ into a week-long interactive Taylor Swift fan hunt TikTok says those ‘get paid to scroll’ ads are fake, and it’s removing them TikTok is introducing a VIP tier for agencies it considers its best performers TikTok has made sharing quick thoughts easier, with a thought bubble in your inbox TikTok now lets you add TikTok One Collabs directly to your profile, so brands and creators can see you’re open to collabs TikTok added a new ‘Live Giveaway’ feature for businesses. YouTube is cracking down on recycled Shorts, reducing distribution for aggregator accounts YouTube is rolling out two new filters for ads on iOS: ‘Seen too often’ and ‘Not too often’
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Snapchat  / LinkedIn  / Discord  |
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[Credit: Beehiiv AI] |
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Snap faces fines of up to €250,000 per breach over My AI chats used for ads in Germany Snapchat now lets creators add a WhatsApp number as a contact option for brands looking for collabs LinkedIn is testing smarter creator search to power brand campaigns Discord’s second attempt to roll out age verification is going badly Discord launched Ads Manager, putting campaign creation, targeting, bidding and measurement into one self-service platform Discord is testing a ‘Game Mode’ to stop itself hogging your PC while you’re gaming Discord is going big on Halloween with collectibles, Nitro rewards, and spooky app features Twitch also revealed a month-long Halloween discovery push for creators Twitch is working on a Recaps Feed that will offer short-form highlight reels derived from long-form streams. Linktree is getting DMs, turning your link-in-bio into an actual inbox
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Instagram has a new AI assistant that will tell you what to post. |
Edits Assistant analyses views, retention, likes, shares, comments and follower growth Creators can ask why Reels worked, what flopped and what to make next It suggests personalised hooks, scripts, captions and trending audio based on previous performance It’s free with daily limits, while Meta One subscribers will get more usage.
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Also spotted this week… |
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Earlier this week, I helped BBC News make sense of WhatsApp’s new parental controls for teens. |
Essentially, another bunch of tools most parents won’t use, and teens hope it stays that way. |
But Meta gets another bullet point to add to its ‘How we protect teen users’ list, when regulators come knocking asking for safety receipts.
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Also this week: |
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TikTok’s latest viral sound is a nine-year-old Family Guy joke about people blocking the street. |
The audio comes from a 2017 Family Guy gag featuring an obstructive marching band. TikTok users now soundtrack tourists, traffic jams, crowds and inconveniently positioned pets with it. More than 11,000 TikToks have already used the brilliantly irritating “blockin’ the street” audio. Viral examples include cats, sheep and dogs earning millions of views for simply being obstacles.
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Family Guy - We're All Just Blockin' The Street! |
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Also viral this week: |
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Big Food is paying influencers to fight back against RFK Jr’s MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement |
An industry-backed campaign is paying creators to counter claims about pesticides, seed oils and processed foods. At least six influencers have participated, collectively reaching audiences of more than 2.6 million. Internal guidance reportedly matches farmers, scientists and lifestyle creators to different audience types. The campaign says it generated 13.2M impressions and 1.1M engagements by August.
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More brand news and views: |
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Also quoted this week: |
“I was like, “Wow this [story] is a thing that has really impacted the course of my life, and I have done a wonderful job of being in denial about that.“ I hope if Mark watches the movie, he has the same experience.” |
- Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen on watching ‘The Social Reckoning’ for the first time |
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“He has many things with slight variations, and he looks at them and he sees them as incredibly different… I look at them, and I’m like, ‘There are 10 of the exact same thing in your closet.’” |
- Priscilla Chan on how she and her husband Mark Zuckerberg disagree about his clothing choices |
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“This is a staging post to what must be a very active interventionist state, policing and regulating the online space so that people are safe.” |
- UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy on why the country’s teen social ban is only the start |
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‘Mukbang’ is a South Korean trend for videos of people eating… just eating on camera. It’s literally a Korean portmanteau for "eating broadcast." |
The videos are massively popular and can be lucrative, but as YouTube cracks down on eating disorder content, creators are deleting hundreds of old mukbang videos for fear of having their channels penalised. |
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This is why Meta might be going big on AI agents a tad too soon… |
Tech YouTuber Matt Robb says Muse accepted a lowball offer on something he was selling on Facebook Marketplace without telling him. |
…Muse then shared his home address and told the buyer he was there! |
The buyer showed up, waited, and left angry while Robb remained completely unaware. |
The twist? Robb had given Muse his pickup address and tapped 'Allow Always', thinking it would still check with him first. It didn't. Meta told him accepting the lowball offer was its mistake. |
The news comes as analysts estimate just 11 of an average consumer's 47 monthly payments suit agents. |
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More fails spotted: |
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Sony Interactive Entertainment is looking for a Community Manager [Remote, USA] |
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More social media jobs: |
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How to Be a Good TikToker… according to TikTok |
Post “high-quality” content: strong hooks, core-audience engagement and videos longer than one minute. Treat your TikTok profile like a portfolio, showcasing your best work for potential brands. Activate at least two monetisation methods, rather than relying on one source of income. Embrace commerce, with TikTok increasingly pushing creators towards Shop and livestream selling.
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More here… |
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Also this week: |
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1.56 BILLION |
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| – The number of hours of livestreams Twitch users watched in August alone, up 7% year-over-year |
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More social stats: |
SCAM BAM: Meta says its anti-scam campaign has reached 303 million people across Asia-Pacific TOK OF THE POPS: 84% of marketers already advertise on TikTok, a survey championed by the company says BIG PR NUMBERS: TikTok says it supported $81 billion in US GDP and 410,000 jobs last year
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Australia’s social media ban might not be massively effective, but it’s certainly still popular…
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Also charted this week: |
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Newly released emails from Meta reveal the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen wrote to Facebook in 2016 pleading for them to better police fake news content… |
…which prompted an internal discussion about how the company needed to choose between being a “platform for good”, or a “platform for all”. |
We all know which direction it took…! |
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Also spotted this week… |
A Meta-led anti-terrorism group has faced mass resignation of expert advisers. [Wired $$$] Senate Democrats have demanded answers from Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft over billions in AI tax breaks. [CNBC] Marketing pros say Meta should go all in on its cuddly Muse mascot. [Business Insider $$$] YouTube thinks its creators are coming for Hollywood’s box office — and the Oscars. [The Hollywood Reporter] Snapchat launched its first B2B creator campaign to convince marketers to ‘Spend Smarter’. [Little Black Book]
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New features and tests: |
TikTok now lets you save photo posts on device after posting. [@oncescuradu] TikTok is encouraging creators to post videos about their LIVE experience, with a chance for rewards. [@oncescuradu] TikTok Shop is making returns more Amazon-like with box-free UPS drop-offs in the US. [Reuters $$$] TikTok LIVE has partnered with LACMA to turn museum visits into livestream entertainment for younger audiences. [Social Media Today] X has refreshed its DM settings interface. [@jonahmanzano] X is rolling out a new UI for the buttons on the post share sheet on iOS. [@oncescuradu] Tinder’s latest attempt to win back Gen Z is turning dating into a group thing with Group Hangouts. [TechCrunch]
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“TikTok and Instagram creators have effectively turned New York City into an unofficial soundstage for their short-form videos….” |
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Also worth a read: |
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This is a weird one… |
Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI bought the domain dot.com in July. |
It now goes straight to the Grok app download page. |
OpenAI launched its rival AI product Dots this week. |
Did Musk know about the name in advance and decide to troll Sam Altman…? |
The internet thinks that’s exactly what he did. What do you think? |
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That’s this week’s social media news briefing. Done. |
This weekend I'm preparing for battle with the Glastonbury Festival ticket site. |
For the uninitiated, it’s 2.5 million people furiously watching an online ticket queue progress bar not move, waiting for the inevitable on-screen message saying all 142,000 tickets are sold in under 20 minutes. |
Luck was on my side in 2023 and 2024, when I somehow managed to get tickets both years. |
I’m not feeling so confident this year.
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Wish me luck!
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Goodbye, geeks! |
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P.S. This newsletter is edited by Martin SFP Bryant |
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