Meta Platforms’ earnings call last week was a clear indication of what the owner of Facebook and Instagram is focused on this year: Reels. In the earnings call for the fourth quarter, executives mentioned Reels 34 times and analysts used it another six, according to a transcript of the call. Combined, the 40 instances amount to a mention of the short-form video app once every minute-and-a-half during the hour-long call.

We went back through transcripts of Meta’s earnings calls for the last six quarters to see how the company’s messaging has changed over that period. As the chart above shows, the only buzzword to rival Reels was metaverse, the immersive virtual reality CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been championing. Meta executives had mentioned the word metaverse for the first time in its second quarter earnings call in July, and Meta executives and analysts on the call used the term 20 times. Since then talk of the metaverse has fallen—and Reels chatter has picked up.

After Instagram rolled out Reels in August 2020, around the time former President Donald Trump was threatening to block TikTok from operating in the U.S., chatter about Reels has slowly picked up steam. In the second quarter of last year, Meta executives and analysts mentioned Reels 17 times. 

TikTok was in the limelight in the most recent earnings call, too. Meta executives and Wall Street analysts mentioned their fast-growing rival six times. That’s a bump from the past. They used the term only three times, combined, over the prior five quarters. The correlation between rising TikTok and Reels mentions makes sense: as Zuckerberg noted, “the thing that is somewhat unique here is that TikTok is so big as a competitor already.”

The Information’s updated Meta Platforms Org Chartshows recent changes in leadership roles following moves in the partnerships group, which leads discussions and deals with other companies. The team reports to Chief Business Officer MarneLevine. Under the new structure, the partnerships teams which had previously worked separately for Instagram and Facebook, will now work on issues for both apps. The team will be organized around areas of focus that include interacting with content creators and influencers, media and news publishers. 

Sibyl Goldman, currently vice president of global entertainment partnerships, will lead the newly formed U.S. creator partnerships team. CharlesPorch, who is currently vice president of global partnerships at Instagram, will become vice president of creative curation and programs. DanReed, who previously worked for the National Basketball Association and until recently oversaw sports partnerships, is now leading the global media team, my colleague Sylvia Varnham O’Regan reported. (Read more on Meta’s team changes here).

TikTok said in an update to community guidelines that it is working to prevent hoaxes from spreading on its platform. Last year, schools across the country shut down after hoaxes about school shooting threats they said spread on TikTok. TikTok denied that the threats originated on its app. 

Linktree, a link-in-bio startup, announced new partnerships for artists and musicians who use its tool. It now allows artists to display merchandise through a Shopify integration, embed music from streaming app Audiomack and SoundCloud and add tour dates in Bandsintown, a concert discovery platform. 

The Oversight Board, an independent board that makes decisions about content moderation on Facebook and Instagram, hosted its first policy-advisory opinion meeting on Tuesday. 

In the livestream, which it hosted on Twitter Spaces, members of the board said that users should not be allowed to share anyone’s private residential information on Meta’s platforms, even if that information is available publicly. 

That’s how much marketers pay for a single post on YouTube, on average, according to data from Izea, a provider of influencer marketing data, in a report published on Tuesday.

The report compares costs across platforms. TikTokcame in second with $3,514 per post and Pinterestwas in third with $2,114 per post.

Meta Platform’s Facebook and Instagram lagged behind. Instagram photos were marginally more expensive than Instagram Stories. Twitter posts came in last, at only $284 per paid post.

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