WITH everyone having a smartphone, social media has become a regular fixture of our everyday lives. One of the first things we do when we wake up is check our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds. We check on them throughout the day and again at night before we go to bed.
As such, how social media will evolve and change will have a profound impact on us. But how exactly it will evolve is anybody’s guess. There are some clues though as to the short-to-medium term future of social media.
MORE OPTIONS WHEN POSTING
Currently, when you post updates on social media, it’s usually limited to text posting, pictures and videos. Many now also offer livestreams. But there’s still plenty of different types of content that are not so easy to post such as, surprisingly, audio.
Despite the popularity of podcasts, it’s still not yet possible to upload just audio to Facebook and other social media. Right now if someone wants to upload an audio podcast, they have to present it as a video — one that has no moving images and just contains audio. It’s a work-around but hardly an elegant solution. This must change and most likely will do soon.
In time, we’ll probably see more tools available to create varied types of content beyond the usual ones like text, picture and videos. Built-in tools to allow users to create animation, gifs, memes, and perhaps even 3D and Augmented Reality content will be the things to look out for in the future.
AI AND ALGORITHM
What kind of posts we’ll see on our timelines and what kind of ads we’ll be exposed to are all determined by algorithms set by the platform concerned. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning already plays a big role in this and will continue to grow in importance. In due time, everything we do on social media will be impacted by AI.
This will result in a better experience as the AI-driven algorithms will probably know us better than we know ourselves and will be able to deliver us content, ads, recommendations and so on with remarkable speed and accuracy. It will probably even be able to anticipate our needs and wants before we realise it ourselves based on our interactions and activities on social media.
Striking a good balance between protecting user privacy and delivering highly personalised content and experiences will be a tough challenge for social media platforms to try to achieve. But achieve it they must otherwise there’ll be a huge consumer and government backlash.
GOVERNMENT REGULATION
For now, social media is largely unregulated. The Cambridge Analytica scandal and Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential election have heightened calls for the government to regulate social media platforms like Facebook.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and other social media heads prefer for the industry to regulate itself but self-regulation is hard to achieve in any industry. As such, governments will probably start to intervene to ensure the public’s best interests are protected, especially in regard to privacy.
PAY TO PLAY
Social media is called social media for a reason. The emphasis is on relationships and interaction. Traditionally, big brands do not have any relationship with its customers nor do they have any interaction with them. They’re just there for people to admire and aspire towards.
That approach doesn’t work so well anymore. Today, it’s the era of influencer marketing where popular personalities (not necessarily celebrities) are able to make a deeper impact than big brands themselves.
These personalities are real enough for their fans to feel a certain affinity with. When they interact with the influencer, sometimes they get a response, which is part of the appeal. This is also why many brands are now trying to reach their target customers through the use of social influencers. The thinking is that influencers will be more impactful than a well-made but impersonal commercial.
For a while, social media had been evolving towards becoming a kind of broadcast tool that brands could leverage on. But that’s not the reason people signed up for social media though. Facebook has responded by prioritising posts by individuals rather than companies in the newsfeed. With Facebook being the most popular and influential social network, other social media companies are likely to follow suit and prioritise personal postings over corporate ones.
This has a huge impact on how companies will want to promote themselves through Facebook and other social media. One way to ensure their messages reach their target is of course to use social influencers, as mentioned above. After all, these influencers are considered individuals and not companies so their postings will not be throttled like corporate ones.
But there is another way — through social media advertising or boosting. What this means is companies pay the platform (e.g. Facebook) to ensure a certain number of people of a certain demographic will see the ad.
Basically we’re looking at the death of organic reach. Gone are the days when a company’s main challenge is to get people to “Like” their pages. Now even if they “Like” it, this doesn’t mean they will see the content posted by the company. Organic reach is already less than 2 per cent. It will decline to close to zero for brands. So, they’ll have no choice but to pay for advertising or pay an influencer to help them promote their brand.
Either way, it involves money. Social media may be something new and exciting compared to traditional media, but in some ways it’s still the same. You’ll have to pay to play.