Issue #12 - Platforms at the Gate
How major platforms are slowly threatening the link-in-bio players
A few months ago we did a deep dive into Link-in-Bio tools like Linktree, Koji and Snipfeed. Since then the industry has heated up even more and is turning into one of the most interesting categories in the creator economy. Beacons announced a $6M round including a16z, all major players have introduced various forms of monetization products for creators and Koji has delivered the first few partnerships in their vision of becoming the next generation App Store using the LIB page as the new iPhone home screen.
While all of this is fascinating to watch, what’s always struck us as odd is that the major platform companies have stayed tight lipped about this category of creator economy products. As they come charging into the creator economy with a host of monetization features, their silence on LIB is increasingly notable.
In the last couple of weeks a few announcements highlight a shifting LIB landscape and how major platforms may quickly become more of a threat to LIB tools than anticipated.
First, Twitter announced that Twitter members could add a link to their Revue newsletter signups into their profile (Revue is owned by Twitter for those that missed that acquisition).
Substack is a massive beneficiary from both LIB tools as well as folks adding their Substack URLs into their bios. Many users, including ourselves (indirectly via a link to the broader story in this case), have their pinned tweet be a link to their Substack:
Then TikTok announced their Jump product which allows creators to add custom links to their content. Albeit this is from a select group of 3rd party integrations right now but they recently clarified their plan to make this brain dead for anyone to add their own:
“As we take the next steps in the evolution of TikTok Jump, we’re now opening the program to new providers who can offer exciting experiences for our community. With HTML5 compatibility and minimal technical integration, Jumps are easy for providers to build and deploy. The use cases for TikTok Jumps are almost limitless, and we look forward to working with selected providers to build innovative Jumps that help fuel the instructive and entertaining content our community craves.”
And lastly, our friends at Facebook got into the game with two subtle but important announcements. On Facebook, you can now add podcast episodes right to your page. This is not much of a technical feat as podcasts work off of RSS feeds which are a common standard, but including this “on platform” is a big change. On Instagram you can also now add affiliate links to posts. We’ll write something more on this topic as there is a coming tsunami of affiliate infrastructure into the creator economy but in the context of LIB tools its very important as LIB tools have been becoming an affiliate marketer’s best friend in terms of harnessing influencers’ audience on non-ephemeral content (e.g. Insta stories with swipe up affiliate links go away in 24 hours while LIB affiliate links do not).
While this may seem like a piecemeal collection of releases to sew into a trend it’s important to remember the three important basics of why LIB tools are useful: cross platform visibility into a creator’s world, reducing the number of clicks to get what you need (content or a purchase from a creator) and monetization. All of these moves above serve one or more of these masters. Twitter’s integration of a Revue signup button into your profile neatly serves all three.
It’s worth noting that TikTok is actually being the most progressive, perhaps seeing the opportunity to become the next generation App Store ala Koji and is skating ahead of the puck a bit.
Regardless, all of this is leading to the inevitable structural showdown which is coming - will platforms integrate custom LIB links and will they support BYOM (bring your own monetization) or try to offer best of breed? Platform 3.0 is coming and a belief (or not) in co-opetition is what it’s going to all be about. Stay tuned for more thoughts on that.