April wasn’t a terribly busy marketing news month, but there were still a few nuggets of news that will make a difference for keen CMOs. And, of course, one huge story that everyone is talking about.

What’s that big story? Well, we’re talking about Elon Musk buying Twitter for an incredible $44 billion. There have been whisperings about what this will mean for the platform and even rumors that Musk may ban advertising on the platform, but all of those whisperings are unconfirmed. I’m sure our May newsletter will be packed with updates about this dramatic shift for Twitter.

Snapchat and TikTok are the other two platforms in the news this month, both for outdoing their competition yet again. Snapchat is now reported to be growing faster than Facebook and Twitter, and TikTok’s ad revenues are up an astonishing 175%. These aren’t the shy, little apps we used to know. Snapchat and TikTok are rapidly becoming the two most important social media platforms in the world. Let’s get into it! Here are the top marketing stories for April.

#1 Elon Musk Buys Twitter for $44 Billion

Tesla CEO Elon Musk purchased a 9.2% stake in Twitter earlier this month, despite being openly critical of the social media platform’s track record on free speech. It’s being reported that the billionaire decided to buy 73,486,938 shares on a whim. When the purchase became public, Twitter’s share price skyrocketed by 27%. Musk says that once he is in control he will begin to introduce more attractive features, and it is even being rumored that he may ban advertising on the platform.

#2 Twitter Now Accepting Crypto, Adds New Features

Twitter will now allow cryptocurrency payouts for all content creators. The new feature will be powered by technology from the U.S. financial services company, Stripe. The company will lend its platform for stablecoin transactions between content authors and users within the network, aiming to use the USDC token on Twitter for that purpose. The USDC token would have a value equal to the U.S. dollar. Content authors can offer premium content under the new payout system. Elon Musk has begun hinting that Dogecoin may be accepted as payment for purchasing premium Twitter subscriptions. Those hints are in line with his commitment to introduce more attractive features once he has bought the platform. Twitter has released a new feature that will let users remove themselves from conversations. The ‘unmentioning’ feature is limited to some users and only on the web version right now, but it should be useful to clean up mentions. The “leave the conversation” option will appear on the menu that pops out of the corner of a tweet on the web version of Twitter. When a user leaves a conversation they will be untagged and notifications will be stopped. The platform is also hoping to improve the relevance and timeliness of its notifications and reduce the impacts of Apple’s ATT update by acquiring the Dublin-based app enhancement platform OpenBack. OpenBack’s system utilizes a range of on-device signals and machine learning processes to determine the best time to deliver push notifications and it will provide Twitter with more capacity to customize and personalize its app notifications for every user.

#3 Snapchat Growing Faster Than Facebook and Twitter

Snap has released its first-quarter financial results and they show that it is growing faster than its fellow U.S.-based competitors, Facebook and Twitter. Snap has grown its daily active users by 18% year over year, but for the past five quarters, its user growth has exceeded 20%. The company has also said that it is on track to hit 44% growth since Q1 2021. Snap will be betting big on augmented reality experiences in the coming quarters.

#4 TikTok’s Ad Revenue is Huge – and Growing

TikTok’s worldwide ad business grew 175% in 2021 to $3.88B. Growth is expected to soar to 200% this year, propelling revenues to $11.64B. That would make its ad business greater than Twitter’s ($5.58B) and Snapchat’s ($4.86B) combined. By 2024, TikTok’s ad revenues will swell to $23.58B, essentially equivalent to that of YouTube ($23.65B). By then, each company’s share of the worldwide digital ad market will be 3.1%. “TikTok’s user base has exploded in the past couple of years, and the amount of time users spend on the app is extraordinary,” said Insider Intelligence principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson. “It has moved well beyond its roots as a lip-syncing and dancing app; it creates trends and fosters deep connections with creators that keep users engaged, video after video. Advertisers want to reach a passionate, dedicated audience, and TikTok can deliver that. Another factor that will drive growth in ad spending is TikTok’s unique take on social commerce. It pairs marketers with creators to help content go viral, and that can drive enormous demand for products that advertisers want to promote.”

#5 Restaurant Opens Virtual Storefront to Reach Gen Zers

Chipotle Mexican Grill has announced the launch of its “Chipotle Burrito Builder” in the gaming platform Roblox, letting consumers exchange in-game “Burrito Bucks” for real restaurant purchases. The restaurant company first entered the Roblox space in October 2021 but this is the first time that users will be able to pay for their meals with the game’s currency. The brand stressed that moves like these are meant to make Chipotle appeal to Millenials and Gen Z’ers.

#6 Faster Payment Methods Coming Soon

Many consumers are now turning to their smartphones to pay their bills. A recent survey by PayNearMe found that 45% of adults in the U.S. would have an easier time paying bills on time if they got a text alert. Consumers are increasingly abandoning paper checks and other manual payment methods and quicker payment solutions are becoming more familiar as a growing number of banks and merchants in the U.S. adopt the new methods.

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