Peach Social Network - How Social Media Fails
Michael Spencer
A.I. Writer, researcher and curator - full-time Newsletter publication manager.
Peach went viral recently with a trending #hashtag on Twitter. In an age where people are craving a more authentic experience that's more human (Facebook and LinkedIn can be quite dehumanizing, let's face it). The trend towards SMS and micro blogging is depictive of humanity craving a more "real" social media experience. In an age where loneliness is the silent killer, it's been shown some networks are healthier than others.
Peach is an IoS only app, a bit like a morph between:
- Tumblr
- Slack
- Snapchat/Vine/with Drawing
Made by the creator of Vine, Peach is has gone viral with people wondering what the heck it is and what it's for and going to evolve into.
While Twitter has had trouble growing its user base, and Facebook is no longer relevant, while LinkedIn remains for older folk at work, SMS that is linked to direct messaging and actual communication did very well in 2015.
The success of snapchat in a sense, was depictive of the kind of channel more appropriate to today's reality. Mobile, with micro video and stories that were as time-urgent and flashed before our eyes as the pace of our contemporary lives.
Social media now has a great proliferation of channels, and those what will hold our attention will be those that are more intimate, most educational and most valuable with our peers. It's a fine line between Instagram's entertainment value (engagement in early 2015) and the fake glamour party it is becoming, much in the way Facebook became fake with the loss of organic reach.
So in 2016, there is room for more, more Tinder-esque experiences, more Snapchat clones and more newness of channels and experiences that give and contribute towards being a shared pleasure and not a bore.
Peach has slack-esque on-boarding with GIF capabilities. This is important for a visual channel tool that can be a bit perplexing. Some older folk just don't get Tumblr, and I can see why. For those of us for whom selfies, quotes and taking videos are foreign, micro blogging is pretty hard to fathom.
Already, big news outlets are on Peach, so the new social channel has to be a place for us to get instant notifications on news topics we're interested in.
So what can Peach become? And why does it matter? Every social channel adds to the spectrum and diversity of apps and online experiences we have. All to contribute to our actual social reality, and not just our time spent online.
As Facebook was once fresh and helpful for us to keep in touch, it's less so in 2016 as more tools and options exist as compared with its messenger service. Myself, in particular I like Line. I prefer the interface, the emoticons, the branding, everything.
What's clear is this, Peach, is a social signal that what we have now is not enough. It's not meeting our needs for variety, for creativity and for interactivity. I keep getting more spam on LinkedIn messaging, to the point where I'm far more reachable on a Twitter direct message, than I am on here.
Peach has a visual interface mode that's learned from the trials of Vine, and has integrated some of the important insights of slack. Social channels have to keep progressing not just in terms of numbers (what VC likes hear), but about the actual user experience. This is the reason why Twitter will never die, it provides a user experience that's infinitely more valuable than the majority of networks.
On Twitter, I can process content faster than other channels, socialize and segment my interests (Lists), all at once in real-time. I certainly can't do this on Facebook or LinkedIn, where I'm more of a "passenger" of the interface. That's not something you want in a social network!
Every year we can expect social media experiments, and these trials have to learn from the history of our digital media, and moreover, engage with the future and current trends. You can't give me a Blab.im of facebook, I want the Blab experience if I live-stream. You can't copy the thrill of what Instagram used to be and first was. How quickly channels "deteriorate" is a sign of the times though. Facebook was lucky it had a good 10 years of being somewhat relevant, to claim that it has a billion and half of users and say its x billion video views, even if it cheated, used us and basically lied about how relevant it actually was. A dishonest company will not give uplifting engagement and its effect upon users will be, well, depressing.
In 2016, that would be impossible. So as you dabble with new channels, try to have some perspective of what will stick and what is just a mega corporation, out of touch with the times, that happens to have user-base and a way to monetize its value that has more to do with pleasing boardrooms, than pleasing the actual user-experience.
Marketing | Brand | Strategy
8 年Per your follow up question - Facebook is the dominant social network today, still. While teens are less active there, sure - it's still a big deal.
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8 年Its called social media, but really its not that social. In fact it should be called individual media. People are hopping around and trying all the new platforms because they are seeking fulfillment which when found is often only a micro experience (many google was right about micro moments and engagement). I'm just as guilt, instead of sitting here and writing this I should be talking to the person next to me who is buried into their smartphone looking at crap, yes I took peek. Its an interesting world we live in now. The best social experience I had over the weekend was trail running with friends in the mountains, so i tend to agree with you Fehim Nizam.
Sorry, but it is about monetisation. Someone has to pay for the development team, the servers, the coms, the offices, etc. A lot of these 'services' are only surviving via investor funds. Monetisation is important as it determines the value and utility users will to a service or product. If people had to pay for a lot of the stuff out there currently they would stop using it.
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8 年I find it so interesting the fickleness of social media users and the jumping from one new platform to another as they seek out the new experience and as a result the dramatic rise and fall of users. Social media right across the spectrum is stagnating in terms of new users, primarily due to saturation and the constant need for fulfillment.
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8 年All I get from this article is that people should be less online and just get out more. People want more 'reality' from their social channels??? Open your door and walk out and look around, see with your eyes, smell, taste, rather than living through other people's reality. Though it is true that when you take a look around, and I mean actually look around, you'll probably see most people staring at a little screen, to find out what's going on around them.