Where is social media going?

Shruti Mishra

*A year begins and everyone and his uncle has an opinion on where the digital world is headed. Definitely an interesting topic; lots of research, much chewing of data, and hours spent pondering what on earth it all means.

That’s the essence of what our youngest intern has done—taken a look at the future of social media in the digital world.*

Read on. #

Before diving into what the future holds for social media, let us look at some snippets of how it has evolved over the years:

Inception of various social networks

When did you create your first social media account? Thinking back, are you surprised to know it was over a decade ago?

Social media is not just about interaction anymore #

Back in noughties, social media networks were launched for one reason - for people to interact with each other. What seemingly started off as a mode of interaction through messaging, video chats, etc., has now turned into something that goes beyond status updates, “likes” and saying, “Hi!”.

The last five years have seen tremendous changes with people turning increasingly towards digital media; today, it has become a ubiquitous part of our daily life. Taking advantage of this, businesses are using social media for marketing purposes to increase visibility and brand-equity.

Source: http://scoutdigitalmarketing.com.au/social-media/evolution-social-media-last-5-years-infographic/

There are over 500 million tweets on Twitter, 4.5 billion “likes” on Facebook and, about 95 million photos and videos are uploaded every day on Instagram. Marketers are gaining valuable information about customers—who they are, what they like, and how they feel about a brand.

New age social media #

Some networks have created a visual niche for themselves with innovative features. People now have convenient and attractive forms of communicating with messaging, images, videos, gifs, memes, and live streaming of videos. Snapchat’s innovative visual interaction has made Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram borrow its “stories” and “disappearing message” features.

MySpace, launched back in 2003, offered an interactive user-platform for friends to post personal profiles, blogs, photos, music, and videos. It did not last long. Meanwhile, “Yo”, that absurdly smash-hit app that only allowed users to send friends the word “yo” as a text and audio notification, arrived on the scene. Another overnight success that tanked in a week.

Anything visual goes viral #

Did you know that LinkedIn is even older than Gmail, which came into the picture in 2004?

LinkedIn was launched in 2002 business and employment with a purpose of networking. Today, it is an active platform for hiring talent, seeking career growth, exchanging views, showcasing achievements, and even e-learning. It operates through its website as well as a mobile app. Gmail, on the other hand, began as an email service. It then extended its reach by linking email to other Google features such as Hangouts, YouTube, Maps, etc.

Then, Twitter was launched to serve as a medium to “tweet” succinct online news and interactive messages. Now, it has become a platform for sharing visual content, and tweets are increasingly becoming hashtag-driven. Twitter has also launched “moments” to enable users to stitch together multiple tweets into slideshow-like stories to save in their profiles. It has become a source for people to find news and see what others are talking about.

After Facebook, Twitter and Google+, another social media site is becoming a valuable marketing tool for businesses. Pinterest, launched back in 2010 as an online bulletin board for your favorite images, has experienced a wild growth. A photo-sharing social network, it also calls itself a “catalogue of ideas”. More and more people now use infographics as a way of communication and sharing content.

YouTube, launched way back in 2005, was the first video-sharing website. Now, it is used not just for uploading and downloading videos, but also as a network for users to interact. It introduced live-streaming features first and has now launched YouTube Red for people to watch videos offline.

So popular has video become that it is not only being used for entertainment and advertisement, but has also given birth to MOOCs—a whole new system of education through platforms like Coursera, Lynda, Unacademy and Udemy.

What is in store for 2020? #

As of now, an estimated 67% of the world uses social media. Marketers can increase brand-equity on social media with quick response time and 24/7 support to meet customer-expectations. By the end of 2017, businesses will experience immense growth with social media as platforms to attract customers and sell products.

By 2020, it seems very probable that we will see some changes in social media platforms—and the way they are used—that will likely affect all stakeholders:

• Social media users
  The number of social media users will grow; the demographics will be radically different. They will be more specifically connected to their interests and this will eventually lead to market fragmentation.

• Wearable technology
  We have witnessed mobile phones and tablets overtaking desktops as primary devices to access the internet. In the future, we will see the reach of the internet expanding further to every corner of the civilised world. Be it your car dashboard with touch-screen browser, or wearable technology like smartwatches that provide instant connectivity to the internet, 2020 will only see a growing abundance of these technologies.

• Social TV
  Social TV is the use of social media to enrich the experience of TV viewers. This involves trailers, programme reviews, discussions with audiences, quizzes, and the like. By 2020, content-creators will provide customised content for social TV based on social media activity.

• Privacy

What about our privacy concerns and identity theft? Experts believe that social media will become a mainstream network where interactions would get deleted after a specific period of time, hopefully enhancing user privacy and public-safety.

Although it is impossible to predict exactly what the future has in store for us in terms of social media, it is quite clear that it will continue to grow. With new and exciting technologies just around the corner, it will be interesting to see how social media will evolve in the coming decades.

Shruti Mishra is our newest intern at Influx. She has an MBA in marketing and is exploring the various aspects of what makes digital marketing click.