Trying to piece together what culture looks like in 2025, and it's an unexpected journey. In short: it looks a lot different for marketers looking for colour pallets, and another for audiences living in the thick of it... Full blog here: www.midiaresearch.com/blog/the-lif...

Every time someone posts on LI about "oh AI will just make the best humans stand out!" i remember this guy from Race Across the World who they run into in India and they ask why he doesn't automate his farm work and he goes: "Machines kill labour. People need jobs." (icon)

Every few months Drake goes out of his way to do something weird and a bit obscure, and I end up down the rabbit hole trying to puzzle out whether it matters and, if so, what it means www.bbc.com/news/article...

Consumers *like* ease and convenience. But it's the chase; the mystery; the time spent in anticipatory speculation, desperately craving the next episode or song or clue, that makes us really *care* Sometimes building fandom requires the opposite of "innovating" www.midiaresearch.com/blog/buildin...

"If creators, and the industries around them, want a long-term future, they should not take this change in perception lightly. Yesterday it was OpenAI denigrating the value of paying creators; today it is Budweiser." Who will it be tomorrow? www.midiaresearch.com/blog/budweis...

Despite the naysayers, live music is thriving – if you know where to find it. And increasingly it's rooted in places that are far more gate-kept than TikTok www.midiaresearch.com/blog/live-is...

The future might be tabards, not space lasers: barcore raves point to a new underground that is the answer to the entertainment industry's cultural crisis. www.midiaresearch.com/blog/culture...

"[AI] cannot reach toward the other and their otherness in order to affirm and nurture our own. And without that, there is no art – only the sterile echo of an absent maker serving vampiric billionaires consumed by a need for power in place of connection." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Uncertainty over time becomes a certainty. What Trump *can* tariff, and what companies will bend over backwards in the meantime to potentially avoid, are two very different things... www.midiaresearch.com/blog/what-ma...

Generative AI is improving, and its use is increasing. Here's the problem: AI makes it *so* easy for fans to bring ideas to life, it itself cannot actually tell the difference between fan fiction and reality. Take Pirates of the Caribbean Six... 🧵👇

Everyone in tech wants to get in on AI – especially social platforms, like X and Meta. So what does it mean when OpenAI decides it wants to get into social?? www.theverge.com/openai/64813...

hyped to have joined the White Lotus bandwagon just in time for season 3; terrified of spoilers because I haven't finished it yet. TV's really lost the art of the cultural moment... except HBO, which seems to just hand out banger after banger

Have you noticed TikTok seems a bit... dead, recently? Ban or no ban, the vibes are off, and user attention is drifting elsewhere. TikTok was the central hub of online culture, in a way no other app can really stand in for. So what happens now? www.midiaresearch.com/blog/if-the-...

OpenAI saying they value creativity, crying when DeepSeek comes out, and then launching an update with Studio Gibli's work is just... priceless. It's play nice for the press and the courtroom, but when the doors are closed they build a resounding middle finger to creators youtu.be/4OiMOHRDs14?...

There are loads of new features coming to Instagram's DMs, from Broadcast Channels (brands, rejoice) to themed chat backgrounds (the rest of us, rejoice). Why are they doing this, and what does it mean? 👇🧵

It feels an odd time to celebrate International Women's Day, with Zuckerberg saying too much "female energy" has "neutered" business, and Trump's administration is doing away with diversity policies. www.midiaresearch.com/blog/meritoc...

Digital entertainment in the west is a complicated patchwork of rights, platforms, formats, features, and devices. Legacy strategies clash with tech insurgents, and meanwhile audiences are at attention saturation. (1/2)

Study sponsored by TikTok says that TikTok is the best way to do music. *surprised pikachu face* There IS definitely something to this... but it's not the full picture. 🧠🧵 (1/) newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/tiktok...

On Monday, Chinese start-up DeepSeek delivered a consumer-facing GenAI model that 1. Works better than ChatGPT 2. Costs a fraction of the price and 3. Is open-source, causing OpenAI (and others) to publicly crash out over intellectual property. (Not lost: the irony.) 👇 (1/?)

I would argue it is too soon to see the impacts. These announcements were followed immediately by Trump's inauguration and a hailstorm of executive orders. People are still on Meta, because they still rely on it for news, and there's a *lot* of that right now. As things normalise, this could change.

TikTok is banned! Now it’s not banned! But it could still be banned! The rollercoaster is exhausting. So I took a step back and a deep breath and laid out the options 👇 (1/)

"Business, not politics." A CEO has all but bought entry to the White House and just did two nazi salutes during inauguration. Another – in one of the most male-dominated industries – has said business isn't "masculine" enough, and has gotten rid of content controls*. Business IS politics.

the creators have left for YouTube. The audiences have found a new Chinese app with worse security concerns and stricter content guidelines. Everyone's braced for TikTok to end. They can't just *extend the deadline NOW*. Have they no sense of narrative pacing??? www.theverge.com/2025/1/14/24...

i swear the speed and stress of covering this news cycle is bad for my neural pathways

Weeee're back to #ESNS25 this year! Check out the @midiaresearch.bsky.social lineup 👇

🔴 The creator economy is booming, so why are we spending less time creating? The average weekly hours consumers spend creating of producing content fell for the first time since 2021 during Q2 2024. Analysis here 👇 midiaresearch.com/blog/the-cre... #creators #creatoreconomy

Perhaps you have - and perhaps you haven’t - seen Elon Musk’s recent poll about the ‘tyrannical’ UK government. But there’s more going on here than political meddling, and it has to do with the future of X (a 🧵, 1/)

Nine days before the deadline. The uncertainty continues - but I agree with this post: such speed points to a quick dismissal of the case by a government that has so far been rather unfriendly towards the platform

Ofcom (the UK communications regulator) has basically just announced that social platforms are not adequately meeting the Online Safety Act guidelines. So... what next? A 🧵 (1/) www.theguardian.com/media/2024/d...

The TikTok ban has been held up in court, with the January 19th deadline fast approaching. So… is the app getting banned? And if so, what then? 🧵 (1/)

Do you create content for social media? Doesn't matter if its professionally, personally, or for a pet meme page - we want you for our survey! There's a free report in it for you - and we'll be releasing a full report of the results early next year! www.surveymonkey.com/r/CreationIn...

SXSW is coming to London... And of course we'll be there 🎉 Please vote for my presentation, Not all creators are created equal: Understanding the ‘creator economy’. As usual, we'll pull from MIDiA data & big-brain thinking to deliver a hit 😎 sxswlondon.awardsplatform.com/entry/vote/l...

Our big webinar of the year is this afternoon... last chance to sign up!!

If we never bothered to ban anything just because people could get around it, we wouldn't have minimum ages for anything (e.g., drinking), right? There definitely should be ongoing discussions about the practicalities of a ban. But even the extra hurdles of VPNs will have dampening effects.

Australia has banned social media for under-16s, with the world looking on and prepared to follow suit if successful. With big targets like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and X, this raises even bigger questions for the future of social. A 🧵 (1/?) www.midiaresearch.com/blog/austral...

🔴 A message to the entertainment industry: nurture fandom or risk losing control of your IP My latest blog on the risk IP holders run if they don't nurture their fanbase. To make my point, I use Dino Crisis, Capcom’s revered survival horror game www.midiaresearch.com/blog/a-messa...

🔴 NEW BLOG: Are social platforms losing the next generation to Roblox and Fortnite? www.midiaresearch.com/blog/are-soc...

TikTok’s future hangs in the balance, with its January deadline to find a new owner fast approaching beneath the oversight of a new, and unpredictable, US administration.  The timing is pertinent, with Australia and the UK considering under-16 bans for social media...

Cosmetic changes do little to disrupt platforms – but existential ones have the power to. For X, it was politics. But other social media platforms are not immune, and this could open the door to new competitors who, like BlueSky, are ideally positioned to benefit when they slip up...

Social platforms have redefined how entertainment is created, shared, and monetised. But in 2025, the second-order effects will play out against the backdrop of attention saturation, content commodification, and an increased focus on profit... www.midiaresearch.com/events/2025-...

Market research but the research is closing my eyes, holding my breath, and googling "Elon Musk" to see what the regulatory weather is looking like today

The 2024 US election was shocking to many – not (just) because of the results, but because those results looked nothing like what their social media feeds showed them in the lead-up. I wanted to explore this... www.midiaresearch.com/blog/info-ta...