There's noplace like home

noplace, YouTube, Snapchat, and more

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Backlog
July 07, 2024

We hope our American friends recovered from their boozy weekend. It’s been a busy week in the product world. No rest for the wicked, as they say.

In this issue: noplace, Snapchat, YouTube, and more.

Let’s get it.

noplace like home

Noplace / thenoplace.com

GenZers are trying to bring social back to social media. Or, at least, that is Tiffany Zhong’s goal with noplace; a ‘global group chat’ aimed at reviving what it was like to browse Facebook 10 years ago.

Under its funky designs, noplace is attempting to revive the feeling of ‘now’. What are your friends doing right now?

Facebook 10 years ago — or Facebook when I was using it in middle school — was all around cool, life updates. We don’t get that anymore, right? You can follow [friends] on Instagram, but it’s still highlights, less updates.

Tiffany Zhong, noplace CEO

noplace feels like Twitter meets BeReal with a hint of MySpace. And GenZers seem to love it. noplace hit #1 in the app store on July 3.

Your Snapchat house just got more personal

Snapchat house / snapchat.com

Snapchat continue to innovate. This time, Snapchat focus on your Snap Map presence; allowing you to create a unique and personalised design for your house.

Interestingly, the team that pioneered ephemeral content back 2013 is doubling down with their latest release. Users can now post lightning Snaps that last a mere 0.50, 0.25, or even 0.10 seconds!

Releasing this kind of ‘random’ features has made Snapchat what it is today:

  • 400m+ DAU worldwide, from 71m in 2014.

  • $1.195bn revenue in Q1 24, a 20% YoY increase.

  • 9th most used social media platform.

What else is up?

  • YouTube continue to crack down on IP infringement, this time with the help of an AI-powered algorithm capable of muting copyrighted music.

  • X may be adding a downvote button. Believe it or not, kids, this used to be a thing back in the day. The downvote button could help X identify ‘negative signal’. This comes 3 years after YouTube removed their Dislike button. Is the trend reversing?

  • Figma’s post-Config mellow was quickly harshed when users started reporting their fancy new ‘Make Design’ AI tool was producing designs eerily similar to… Apple. Oops. Figma CEO took to X to announce the disabling of the feature while they figure their stuff out.

  • Threads celebrated its first anniversary with over 175 million active users. Not bad.

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