Last summer, a viral social media stunt claimed to show people withdrawing huge amounts of cash by exploiting a “glitch” at JPMorgan Chase bank ATMs. The unverified rumor claimed that anyone could deposit a large check to their own account using a mobile device and then withdraw “unlimited money” from an ATM before the bank cleared the check. Some people tried the stunt with varying levels of success. In one case in Houston, a man wearing a mask deposited a Continue reading
A few weeks ago, we examined TikTok’s uncanny ability to provide entrepreneurs with major marketing opportunities at the expense of brand control. The potential downsides of the latter became clear last week when President Biden signed a bill into law that could ban the social network in the U.S. Under the provisions of the bill, which passed both the House and Senate with considerable support, TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance has 270 days to sell the app to an American Continue reading
Founded in 1913, the Stanley company has sold steel-insulated mugs for more than a century, operating for much of that time as a niche brand with a small but loyal customer base. Over the last few years, however, Stanley tumblers have become ubiquitous products thanks to the company’s canny use of social media. Their brightest moment in the spotlight happened last November when a TikTok user posted a video showing how her Stanley mug survived a car fire with the Continue reading
When Airbnb launched in 2008, the short-term rental company marketed itself as an easy alternative to hotels that had supposedly become too restrictive for the modern traveler. 14 years after its founding, however, many guests are heading back to hotels because of extensive cleaning requirements from Airbnb hosts. For example, teacher Christina Marie recently booked a short-term rental house on Lake Tahoe with her family of six. She spent the last day of her vacation cleaning and ensuring that her Continue reading
Over the years, Instagram has attracted hundreds of millions of daily users by providing a platform for people to share pictures and videos of their family and friends. Starting in 2020, though, the social network launched Instagram Reels, a short-video feature made to rival TikTok. Although Instagram’s parent company Meta has staked much of its future on Reels, internal company documents show that the feature is not very popular with users both large and small.
For example, Instagram users Continue reading
Like other social networks, TikTok users share almost everything about their lives on the app, from their favorite music and TV shows to their anxieties about work. In fact, talk about the latter has increased significantly in recent weeks as videos about “quiet quitting” generate millions of views among young professionals. The phrase is meant to convey the opposite idea of “hustle culture,” another popular work-related topic on TikTok that encourages people to devote themselves entirely to their careers. Quiet Continue reading
With more than 1 billion users worldwide, TikTok has become a commercial powerhouse as companies fight for the attention of this enormous user base. Products that go viral on the short video platform are almost guaranteed to see sales skyrocket, leading some stores to create “As Seen On TikTok” sections to corral all these in-demand items together. For example, the New York-based candy store It’Sugar started stocking a brand of fruit-shaped gummies after they appeared in untold thousands of videos Continue reading