Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Digital Snapshot, bringing you all the latest digital news, ideas, tips and guidance for the arts, culture, museums and heritage world.
On 12 April (i.e. tomorrow) during our TEA Break event we'll be sharing what we found when we asked people why they follow arts, culture and heritage organisations on social media. It's from 2:15pm-3pm, and the insights should be useful for anyone who needs a bit of real data to back up their strategic hunches about audiences.
Latest News
- Substack is launching a Twitter-esque feature called Notes. In contrast to Twitter (which is struggling to wring money out of users) Substack is putting the horse before the cart and already has 2 million paid subscriptions to its newsletters and podcasts.
- Speaking of Twitter, Elon Musk recently threatened to take away legacy verified ticks unless you paid $1000 per month. Your tick may still exist, however, because apparently removing it is a manual process and it will take ages because Musk fired a lot of people. Also the Twitter logo was changed to doge for a bit.
- The Digital Culture Awards have been announced, and I'm really glad the Crab Museum won the Being Social Category.
Useful / bookmarkable
- Georgina Brooke from OneFurther wrote up their insights on a YouTube strategy project with The National Archives. The short summary is: YouTube is powerful, but you need to work harder to make content relevant to who's on it and play by YouTube's rules.
- You can now create custom channel groups in Google Analytics 4, which will be useful for tracking specific campaigns across multiple sources.
- The NLHF has published a Digitisation project planner, including a handbook and examples. (H/T to Alec Ward's newsletter)
Distracting / entertaining / inspiring
- The Barbie movie's second trailer was a perfect opportunity for some reactive memes. My favourites were The Mary Rose Museum, National Gallery and Classical Studies Memes for Hellenistic Teens.
- If you enjoyed the Balenciaga-inspired AI-generated image of the Pope, then you'll really enjoy this animated one of the Harry Potter cast.
- Screen Time is "a sketch show for people who can’t get off their phones to watch on their phones so they can have a laugh about phones." It usually takes a lot to crack my mirthless face but this did the job.
Good Reads
- A load of people wrote an open letter calling on AI labs to pause development of systems more powerful than Chat GPT-4 for six months to allow policymakers time to catch up and develop some governance. Considering how slow governments have been to adapt to and regulate social media, it's not that bad an idea.
And that’s all for this edition. If you come across any interesting or noteworthy content or have any of your own projects to share please send it my way. Don't forget we're here to support you with training, research and consultancy, so please do get in touch. You can find all past editions of the Digital Snapshot here.
You can also post your thoughts on digital and data-related topics to us and a wider community through our Community forum.
You can find me or The Audience Agency on Twitter. See you soon.
Adam Koszary
Head of Digital, The Audience Agency
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In the Digital Snapshot, our Head of Digital Adam Koszary offers a comprehensive round-up of the latest news, innovation and interesting ideas in the world of digital, as relevant to the arts, culture, museums and heritage sectors.
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