{"id":21629,"date":"2016-09-19T10:35:19","date_gmt":"2016-09-19T14:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=21629"},"modified":"2018-12-14T04:40:18","modified_gmt":"2018-12-14T08:40:18","slug":"a-few-shifts-in-the-influencer-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2016\/09\/19\/a-few-shifts-in-the-influencer-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"A few shifts in the Influencer industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"kitty<\/a><\/p>\n

Last month, Instagram decided to introduce \u201cStories<\/a>\u201c. Admittedly <\/a>a copy of Snapchat\u2019s\u00a0Stories<\/a>, Instagram writes:<\/p>\n

With Instagram Stories, you don\u2019t have to worry about overposting. Instead, you can share as much as you want throughout the day \u2014 with as much creativity as you want. [\u2026]<\/p>\n

Instagram has always been a place to share the moments you want to remember. Now you can share your highlights and everything in between, too.<\/p>\n

This signals two things to me:<\/p>\n

1) The curation rhetoric of Instagram as a regulated repository with optimum posting times and frequencies to maximize viewer perception is being acknowledged. Instagram wants us to break out of this normative practice popularized by its top Influencer Instagrammers so that more content will be shared more frequently.<\/p>\n

2) The curation rhetoric of Instagram as a highlight reel for only one\u2019s \u201cbest images\u201d is being acknowledged. Instagram wants us to contentdump on its platform instead of cross-platforming (over to Snapchat!) to post our mass of \u201cnon-Insta worthy\u201d frivolous content.<\/p>\n

I have some thoughts.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

From Archive Culture to Streaming Culture<\/h3>\n

We\u2019re moving from a culture of pristine archiving to one of haphazard streaming. While tasteful, luxurious feeds (Bourdieu 1979<\/a>,\u00a0Veblen 1899<\/a>) peaked on \u201crepository\u00a0format\u201d social media such as blogs and Instagram, the aesthetic of spontaneous snippets on-the-go or unfiltered continuous webcasting has taken over on \u201ctransient\u00a0format\u201d social media such as Snapchat, Periscope, and Twitch.<\/p>\n

This is largely motivated by followers\u2019 cultivation of perpetual FOMO<\/a>, or the fear of missing out. The attention economy (Goldhaber 1997<\/a>) is a system in which content is in abundance but consumers\u2019 attention spans are limited. In other words, attention becomes a scarce resource for which to be competed in a \u201cwar of eyeballs\u201d (Abidin 2014<\/a>).<\/p>\n

While repository social media is more permanent and allow followers to return to the material at their own pace and time, transient social media is ephemeral and demand that followers assign it full attention in the narrow window during which it is available for view. Thus, the attention invested by followers is increasingly \u201cvoluntary\u201d, \u201cfront-of-mind\u201d and \u201cattractive\u201d as opposed to \u201ccaptive\u201d, \u201cback-of-mind\u201d, and \u201caversive\u201d (Davenport & Beck 2011<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

From Tasteful Consumption to Amateur Aesthetic<\/h3>\n

In the wake of conscientiously maintained luxury feeds, the accessibility once promised by the rise of microcelebrities is being eroded as their practice and persona appear more unattainable due to barriers of entry such as cost, social capital, or cultural capital.<\/p>\n

The live moving image affordance of Periscope and Twitch that allow for little modification and \u201cphotoshopping\u201d, or the basic editing affordance of Snapchat that restricts modification\u00a0to pre-set filters, stickers, and scribbles (pre-Stories) has privileged an \u201camateur aesthetic\u201d over the previous peak of \u201ctasteful consumption\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a paper currently under review, I coin \u201ccalibrated amateurism\u201d to describe \u201ca practice and aesthetic in which an attention economy focuses specifically on crafting contrived authenticity that portrays the raw aesthetic of an amateur, by relying on the performance ecology of appropriate platforms, affordances, tools, cultural vernacular, and social capital. When orchestrated conscientiously, calibrated amateurism may give the impression of spontaneity and unfilteredness despite the contrary reality\u201d.<\/p>\n

The aesthetic of calibrated amateurism has a leveling effect because Influencers appear less constructed, less filtered, more spontaneous, and more raw. This fosters feelings of \u201crelatability\u201d, and specifically notions of \u201cauthenticity\u201d. I\u2019d previously described the \u201crelatability\u201d framework here <\/a>and made mentions of\u00a0it in an articlehere<\/a>.\u00a0In brief, among other mechanisms of assessment,\u00a0\u201cauthenticity\u201d is gauged by \u201chow genuine an\u00a0Influencer marketing agency<\/a> actual<\/em> lifestyle and sentiment is\u201d. The amateur aesthetic thus gives the impression that followers are able to enter the \u201cbackstage\u201d (Goffman 1956<\/a>), behind contrived performances (MacCannell 1973<\/a>), to evaluate Influencers for themselves.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

From Platform Microcelebrity to Cross-platform Influencer<\/h3>\n

Microcelebrities used to dominate on specific platforms, whether they started out on blogs (most often OpenDiary, LiveJournal, and Blogger)<\/em>, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or Vine. As various social media peak and trough in various economies, most microcelebrities ended up maintaining several digital estates in which each\u00a0social media may be curated for specific content and reasons.<\/p>\n

Advertisers have also contributed to the rise of cross-platforming in a bid to capture a larger audience via digital media more generally. Social media companies who manage Influencers and pitch them to clients have also been marketing \u201cpackages\u201d in which one campaign is marketed across various platforms to \u201ccross-traffic\u201d and for higher audience circulation. (See how this is done on Instagram here<\/a>).<\/em> Generally, advertisers still prefer to be able to track metrics from archivable content in repository social media, but understand the need to capture audiences emerging on transient social media. As a result, cross-platforming Influencers are becoming a norm, requiring Influencers to manage the distinct platform affordances and the cultural norms of each space, their respective dominant Influencers, and their mass of followers.<\/p>\n

In a paper on commercial selfies, I described how Influencers curated and published different types of selfies for various social media. For instance, Instagram selfies are the most tasteful and carefully curated to represent one\u2019s ideal persona and \u201cbest face\u201d; Twitter selfies are other carefully curated shots that did not make the cut for Instagram; while Snapchat selfies are intentionally ugly faces, posed outtakes, and humorous captures to interact more casually with followers and to give the impression of fun. In other words, followers who loyally track Influencers across platforms will be able to consume three versions of one selfie, which hopefully paint three corroborative facets of an Influencer\u2019s relatable persona for consumption\u00a0(Abidin 2016<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

From Attention Economy to Affection Economy<\/h3>\n

When Twitter turned<\/a> its \u201cstars\u201d into \u201chearts\u201d and \u201cfavs\u201d into \u201clikes\u201d, I wanted to pen two posts:<\/p>\n

1) Semiotics, symbolism, and sanity: Why seeing the heart emoji next to particular Twitter handles when they like my Tweets is ruining me.<\/em><\/p>\n

2) Assemblage, affect, and anxiety: Why reading freakouts on Twitter over said heart emoji brings comfort because <\/em>camaraderie.<\/i><\/p>\n

Well those\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0eventuate because of reasons, but some of the ideas from then are still stuck with me. In its formal announcement, Twitter writes:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe heart, in contrast, is a universal symbol that resonates across languages, cultures, and time zones. The heart is more expressive, enabling you to convey a range of emotions and easily connect with people. And in our tests, we found that people loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just as Twitter attempted the Stars -> Hearts,\u00a0Favs -> Likes, I feel the Influencer industry is changing from an\u00a0Attention Economy to an Affection Economy. Mainstream, traditional (Hollywood?)<\/em> celebrities are meant to personify a product endorsement (when I think of George Clooney, I think of Nespresso, and vice versa. You too, right? Right?! How successful has this been? Well, do not steal!<\/a>).\u00a0<\/em>For Influencers, advertised products are malleable and packaged to personify their microcelebrity persona (i.e. I love this Influencer and will buy all the things she markets)<\/em>. In other words, the personal brand of the Influencer takes precedence over the corporate brands of the products and services they sell. This is crucial.<\/p>\n

Unlike traditional celebrity with their occasional million-dollar endorsements, Influencers depend on a constant stream of smaller sponsored posts, appearances, and endorsements for income. Unlike traditional celebrity who have the capital to commit to just one brand in their lifetime, Influencers have to be savvy and malleable enough to take on several brands\u00a0consecutively, after they have waited out\u00a0their \u201ccompetitor ban\u201d time period (most brands will contractually not allow Influencers to advertise for competitors for a 6-12 month window)<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As a result, it pays to cultivate the self as brand and market products through the lens of one\u2019s persona, rather than promote products via a corporation\u2019s philosophy.(Kevin Roberts, CEO of the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, has written about endearing to corporation brands as \u201cLovemarks<\/a>\u201c).<\/em>\u00a0This is why it is important that clients allow Influencers to personalize and write their own advertorials in their own voice. This is also why such forms of advertorials are especially successful among Influencers in the lifestyle genre, for whom their everyday activities and practices form the backbone of their published content. In other words, it is their lifestyles that are out there on display, for sale, and for emulation. What Influencers are peddling, then, is an economy of affect alongside one of attention.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

From Transparent Metrics to Mystified Impact<\/h3>\n

Finally, with the obscurity of user metrics on Snapchat, I reckon we will shift from transparent metrics to mystified impact. Pre-Snapchat and pre-analytics fromGoogle<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>, Influencers\u2019 metrics were self-reported and difficult to verify, apart from one\u2019s follower\/following measure displayed on a public profile.<\/p>\n

When platform analytics were made freely available, these numbers could be verified privately on the back-end and presented to clients during pitches. As Influencers saturated\u00a0the industry and clients experienced choice paralysis, Influencers and their managers began to publicize these back-end metrics on their social media profiles or databases.<\/p>\n

However, with the obscurity of Snapchat metrics (some third party tools<\/a>notwithstanding)<\/em>, Influencers now seem to be grappling with quantifiable impact again. Many Influencers on Snapchat have taken to posting screengrabs of how many times each of their stories has been viewed or screenshot. This is a laborious endeavour considering that stories and their attached metrics are only available for 24 hours, and that Influencers publish multiple stories, several times a day, around the clock. This could be an effort to visibilize their impact and quantify their standing on a platform that is still relatively new for advertisers.<\/p>\n

Yet, other Influencers have returned to mystifying their impact, shunning quantifiable data for qualitative anecdotes. Alongside Influencers removing quantified stats on their profiles, I have observed several Influencers posting screengrabs of conversations or feedback with their clients and managers. Some of these are as informal as WhatsApp text messages or Direct Messages on various platforms, while others are ad verbatim testimonials on reports churned out by Influencer management companies. We now seem to be\u00a0reiterating\u00a0\u201cnetworked narratives\u201d and \u201cword-of-mouth\u201d selling (Kozinets et al. 2010<\/a>). Perhaps as the industry has saturated and professionalized so quickly since it first began in 2005 in Singapore, a group of Influencers is beginning to opt out of quantitative data cultures and reverting yardsticks to the informal testimonials that garnered them microcelebrity in the first place.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

Any thoughts?<\/p>\n

PS: I used the kitty cat as the header image because everyone knows the internet is made of cats<\/a>. And because cute clickbait.<\/p>\n

Dr Crystal Abidin is an anthropologist and an ethnographer. Reach her at wishcrys.com and @wishcrys. A version of this post was first published on wishcrys.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month, Instagram decided to introduce \u201cStories\u201c. Admittedly a copy of Snapchat\u2019s\u00a0Stories, Instagram writes: With Instagram Stories, you don\u2019t have to worry about overposting. Instead, you can share as much as you want throughout the day \u2014 with as much creativity as you want. [\u2026] Instagram has always been a place to share the moments […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2067,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[36505,10671,19828,36518],"class_list":["post-21629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","tag-influencers","tag-instagram","tag-snapchat","tag-stories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2067"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21629"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23642,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21629\/revisions\/23642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}