Has the Next Social Shift Started? It Never Stopped.

Brian Snyder at Axicom has a very long but extremely smart article up on the future of social media - more importantly framed around the perceived decline of Twitter . Here are my thoughts:

Twitter isn't dead - yet. Twitter's demise is likely greatly exaggerated and advertisers, such as Apple and Amazon, are already back. That said - Twitter was never a very good advertising platform and had a number of issues - from bots to brand safety issues (many of which plagued other platforms). I am still advising clients to wait and see where Twitter winds up going and if the advertising side of the house can recover.

But more importantly, this shift has been happening since 2017 when Facebook started having significant brand issues that plague them to this day and has seen significant damage to their bottom line and potential future. These issues spilled into Twitter (which was always contentious and had issues - from free speech to privacy), Snapchat (wounded because Facebook stole the sole unique proposition and had critical mass of connections), and Vine which couldn't be saved and was spun off by Twitter and no one since has figured out that short videos are entertaining. Wait. I think some Chinese company has figured out how to make short video work. Other than TikTok, the only other winner was YouTube which was able to leverage Google's market size to become the second largest search engine and TV/entertainment replacement for many. LinkedIn is a bit of an outlier but there were moments where LinkedIn was declared a hellsite or dead and it's now just as used as most other platforms.

Covid-19 then kicked everything into overdrive and ultimately resulted in Elon Musk thinking that there might be value in Twitter after all. The issue with that was

• Musk couched his acquisition around free speech rather than trying to turn Twitter around which brought the ire of activists;
• The entire tech sector has been significantly wounded by rising interest rates;
• Twitter was not run very well from the start (this is why Elliot and Associates was trying a hostile takeover a few years ago);
• Everyone freaked the hell out and Musk had to cut costs significantly and now is running a company that is 75% smaller

Now to the future of social media. It's the same as it's almost ever been. Just with more choices! In the end though, people gravitate to the platforms that offer the following elements:

a) Critical mass of personal connections - this is actually the most important element. Have you ever been to a party where you don't know anyone? It's awkward and you want to leave. But when you show up and there are friends with their friends you will be more likely to stay. Building a network effect is critical. It's unclear if any new platforms will achieve this and like Clubhouse, Meerkat, Foursquare, and Google Wave before them I'm not sure if Mastodon - a notoriously difficult and annoying platform - will be able to get enough critical mass. I believe the number is an average user needs 120 mutual friends/connections to be on platform to make it sticky and a user more likely to return. Don't quote me on that. Discord I think will have long term success because you can find...

b) Critical mass of shared interest/belonging - This is actually why Twitter became so important to begin with as it quickly became an archipelago of smallish interest groups (starting with the web 2.0 crowd) that sometimes would gravitate into larger ones or define the social/cultural conversation. From politics to journalists (which is why Twitter had a unique outlier status because journalists are addicted to the platform) to Black Twitter to various K-pop fandoms these groups built a reason for users to engage and return. Mastodon and Discord are actually designed for this and are just more niche - if anything Discord and Mastodon are really just re-skinned IRC chat rooms. What Twitter offered was all that and...

c) Simplicity - Twitter was really easy to use. You signed up, it gave you some recommended followers (mostly celebs that wouldn't engage 1:1), allowed you to connect your address book and you were on your own. Luckily, beyond building your network Twitter was easy to use - you typed 160/280 characters, maybe added a photo or video, threw in some hashtags and you were good. This is why Donald Trump loved the platform - he could just shout into the void and knew that he would get attention. Other platforms offered similar functions perhaps around different concepts - Facebook for family, Instagram for photos and then later stories (stolen from Snapchat which wound up essentially killing Snapchat), LinkedIn for work, YouTube for videos, Vine/TikTok for realllly short videos (also stolen by IG Reels), Foursquare for socialized check-in competitions. But these new platforms might not be the future because they are difficult to set up! Mastodon is an awful mess and has been around for five years and was never particularly well liked except for the tech crowd, Discord is awesome but is very much like a IRC server where you need to actively find your fellow community and then set it up to not be overwhelming. BeReal is super simple but there is no easy way for a brand to engage (brands aren't people!) and TikTok is also simple but has a host of issues I won't bother with here (contact me to get my full POV).

So what is the future of social? I still think that many of these platforms will continue to exist but we are going to have more and more fragmentation and user bases will decline but ultimately stabilize and have some growth over time. And there will be more platforms to choose from.

So the question for brands is the same question from 2012 and on - where is your audience? What do they need? What do they want? What do they care about? What makes them mad? What makes them glad? What product or value do you bring to them and how are you making that apparent in your external communications? The days of a monolithic social platform like Facebook is likely gone - and I think everyone benefits from it.

Answer those questions and understanding where your audience is will help your channel strategy significantly. For tech companies you may find more value being on #Mastodon or #Discord . For a fashion brand you may need to be on #BeReal , #Instagram and #TikTok . For a trade association in DC #Twitter and #LinkedIn may be your plays with a strong email and advocacy program working behind the scenes. Game developer? You're definitely on #Reddit and Discord.

I think what Brian Snyder has here is really smart and informative on the future of social but really it's the same it's always been - always changing just now with more choice.