When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand last week at the US congressional hearing into the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, we all watched and waited to see what would happen. But mostly, we were horrified by the questions that sounded more like a two-day tech support call.
The memes have been funny, I’ll admit, but when much of your business is reliant upon the outcomes of such hearings you take it quite seriously. It’s fair to say the game is on for the social industry especially for companies who make money either from providing analytical tools for social media or accessing social media content. We simply don’t know what will happen next, or how fast.
The effect of the Cambridge Analytica data breach continues to ripple through the industry when on the April 4, Facebook unexpectedly updated its plans to restrict data access and accelerate depreciations in its APIs. The Instagram and Facebook APIs are the gateway to accessing vast data for connected applications. Some of these had been slated for future depreciations but others were a surprise.
The main thrust of the changes are around the speed companies can access data and limiting personally identifiable data. There is no doubt the latest Facebook and Instagram data restrictions have the social media and influencer marketing industry in a social scramble.
Facebook initially announced locking down any third-party data access and relationships on its ad platform and the accelerated API depreciations are the latest wave to hit the industry. There must be a few business models going haywire as I write this piece. Good business advisers will tell you not to make your business reliant on another platform you don’t control. But what if your entire business is based on the platform and until now it has been relatively stable?
So what does this mean for the influencer marketing industry? Put simply, we need to evolve and be ready to adapt quickly. We need to run many scenarios and plan for all of them. There is a new Instagram Graph API and influencers are migrating to business accounts in droves potentially lowing their precious engagement rates just so businesses can get access to their data at scale.
At Social Soup we’ve learnt a thing or two about adaptation in the past 10 years to not only maintain, but grow our business. With this latest upheaval in the landscape, I put my team on notice that we need to radically change and diversify our business to not just respond to these changes and more to come in the future. As the landscape of social media data continues to undergo ongoing disruption it is important for influencer platforms to continue to find new ways to drive scale for businesses who want to integrate influencers as a cornerstone of their marketing strategy.
And what does this mean for Facebook? Official comments suggest it is becoming a “people-first” platform as it moves to focus on its vast reach and less on hyper targeting. It seems there will be less impact from the this data scandal on Facebook than there will be on the huge range of companies that have enjoyed the benefits of Facebook’s previously more liberal data policies.
Sharyn Smith is the founder and CEO of Social Soup