If you use one of those smaller paid email providers you can still interact with people who use Gmail. If you tried to create a small Instagram competitor it's unlikely that Facebook would ever agree to federate with you.
No, but you can federate with the millions of people already using other alternatives based on ActivityPub.
People are really underestimating the second order effects from the Twitter exodus. It's not just Twitter that has a competitor. It's just a matter of time until all the Fediverse gets enough of a critical mass and then all walled gardens will lose its appeal.
Neither. The analogy was to say that their point was irrelevant. The fact that there is a network with 1.5B users does not prevent of a smaller, pay-to-join, network.
It obviously doesn't, plenty of space for niche players.
But it does prevent them from becoming the next 2B people social network which will default to becoming to go-to social media to connect with just about anyone you meet in the world.
A $1/month app won't replace Instagram (the article is about IG dying).
My sibling comment addressed this point: my bet [0] is that the next big social media network is not going to be a monopolistic walled garden, but it will be instead made by a constellation of federated providers. My belief is not that Instagram is going to be replaced by one niche app where people pay $1/month, but it will die and be replaced by thousands of smaller players who can interoperate:
- Newspapers, TV networks and streaming services who will offer a "free" account to their Mastodon (or similar) server for paying subscribers.
- "Influencers" who will be hosting their own ActivityPub servers
- Companies who will realize that they can put all their marketing communications under their own control and branding.
- Fringe communities who will be running their servers just because they can.
- Commercial providers who will look for something that can differentiate themselves (privacy, custom clients with special features) and charge for it.
- etc, etc, etc.
[0]: By bet, I mean that literally. This has been one of my side-projects and I've put already a non-negligible amount of time and money into it. Thanks to Musk, my service has seen more activity, signups and inquiries about custom hosting in the past 3 weeks than it has seen in the first 3 years.
No one uses it because no one posts > No one posts because they don't expect interaction > No one expects interaction because no one uses it
And then brands or influencers don't join because there's no potential to make money.
Part of the history of these big incumbents is that people were discovering a more user-friendly way to use the web through them; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube all were "Hey, we can now do something we could do before, much easier, in a more accessible way that I can show to my normie friends/my parents."
Alternatives that DO come up, like 500px or Vimeo, end up needing to become more for enthusiasts (people who care about fidelity, rather than novelty), turning away normies in the process. That's fine for them, as long as their goal isn't to "be an alternative YouTube/Flickr."
Pixelfed is the droid you're looking for. You can find a server to join at https://pixelfed.org and then support the project via Patreon for $1/month (or more).
Social products all have a lifetime value and it’s incredibly short. The same thing will also happen to TikTok one day. I suspect we will learn in the coming decades that social media companies are very profitable in the short term, but not so in the long term, say 20 years, unless the keep introducing new viral social products.
This is a problem for commercial social media companies. Companies need to make profit to operate, and once they stop being able to show growth then investments start to dry up. There is also no clear revenue model aside from ads and mining of user data.
The situation is quite different in open source world. The only factors that matter for an open source platform are having enough people who are willing to develop it, run servers, and post content. Once the platform reaches enough users to be sustainable then it can exist indefinitely without need for growth or any significant funding.
We can look at Mastodon as a case study. It builds on top of all the work done by GNU Social and the OStatus protocol. GNU Social languished in obscurity for many years, but Mastodon was able to build on this work and create a much larger social network. Now, there's a whole federation of different platforms using ActivityPub protocol that grew out of OStatus. Fediverse will likely outlive every single commercial social media platform in existence today.
I think this is a lazy conclusion and needs more depth. What’s huge - seismic really - is that people actually prefer to know more about strangers than friends. On average, these strangers tend to be personalities and as a result are more entertaining / interesting / provocative than my typical friend. Combine this with the average person posting less about their life and you end up with a serious problem.
Twitter first rode this trend, but TikTok really exploited it specifically with the medium of video and their algorithm to serve content.
Networks effects were once seen as the ultimate moat and one reason why FB could never be taken down. But it turns out if the content people “trade” on their “marketplace” is poor, all the network effects in the world won’t save you.
What you are describing is the broadcast model. Instagram is moving towards that model to compete with TikTok but that is exactly why people stopped using it because it’s no longer the Instagram they were using.
Influencers (aka personalities) are only entertaining for a short period of time. They have constantly churn out new content to keep engaging users. It is because user don’t know them and are less attached.
Therefore as long as TikTok has influencers that can continue to make new content, it will keep attracting new users. But I suspect that this is also not long term sustainable. People, both influencers and users, will get burned out eventually.
Your argument that network model dies because of broadcast model is just one part. My argument still stands that eventually people will get tired of a social media product and move on to the next ones.
Not sure how my observations are lazy though considering your does not provide anymore insight that others didn’t already know… it’s already been reported on Rolling Stone, Venture Beat, etc back in July. Aren’t you just regurgitating their idea with offhand keywords?
I take that back the "lazy" comment - my mistake. In my defense, I haven't read those articles and came up with these ideas on my own.
Agreed re broadcast model - that's an important distinction too vs the classic follower model. This is why, despite my best efforts, I still see content from strangers on my twitter feed. They know it drives engagement.
> People, both influencers and users, will get burned out eventually.
I disagree - because the space here is endless. Influencers will churn out and users will move on to the next one. I don't think users will get burned out - their tastes will evolve. Each phase of life has its own content pool. I'll describe my own journey here: I got married this past year. In the lead up to that, there were tons of wedding planning videos. Now I get served a lot of married couple w/no kids content. That'll probably keep changing as I move through life.
> I got married this past year. In the lead up to that, there were tons of wedding planning videos. Now I get served a lot of married couple w/no kids content. That'll probably keep changing as I move through life.
This is an interesting observation. You are arguing that your taste for content will change preventing you from getting tired of the product.
My argument is more along the lines of the medium. People get bored of photos because it’s old and so they move on to short videos.
Both are non-conflicting. I do see how your argument will prolong the lifecycle of the product.
That's possible - video is definitely more enticing than photos and there's data out there to back that up among the general population. Perhaps people will get bored of videos one day - we'll see.
It would be interesting to see a major player in the space really embracing the fashion and seasonality of their products and succeeding with that strategy.
I think it's the opposite: lifetimes for well-established social products are getting longer. People left digg for reddit because of a redesign, people stay on Twitter despite an ideologic shift from left to right! Nerds switch platforms over minor perceived slights and switch Linux distributions over license-philosophies or systemd-controversies; normies stay with the herd, with the audience, with the likes and clicks.
I don't know if IG is dead, but that Reels nonsense was an absolute fiasco. They kept showing me reels that were nonsensical and were only designed to lead engagement stats from questions of "what is the person trying to do here". Not to mention, the comments on many of these useless vids were always in Turkish. I don't speak Turkish, I've never been to Turkey, yet comments on videos were always in Turkish.
I get the baffling Turkish videos too. It’s a shame, instagram used to show me landscape architecture photos that I was genuinely interested in. And it doesn’t matter how much I flag it as not interesting, the random videos never stop.
I get a lot of Turkish construction videos, and even more strangely, a lot of Turkish bus driver videos. No idea how I ended up in that cohort ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I hope not. I use it as a way to save my moments with my family, in the expectation that It will survive some good years, and therefore my kids can then watch the pics, videos, comments and get a better picture (pun intended) of the context of the photos. Much better than have it in a disk (if its survive) or printed.
This situation is increasingly a concern for me too, and I think replication and shared data ownership is the solution.
Like everyone you care about having a copy of your data, and the copy always being up to date, perhaps encrypted so only those family you want to consume the content have access to those pictures too via user control.
Anyhow it's sad that Facebook has so much of my family's lives hostage... Only there can I see what's up.
If you don't care at all about popular figures and just want to share content with people you actually know, https://movim.eu would be a much better alternative.
Yes, well i just have it private, i just have the real close friends and family.. thats my message in a bottle to the future.. I hope it reaches the shore, someday.
> Anyhow it's sad that Facebook has so much of my family's lives hostage... Only there can I see what's up.
I'm not the social media kind of people, but I have some friends and family members, that my last words were through facebook. So as a communication tool, I see its value. Said that, I don't have the app installed anywhere. Just messages notifications via email.
It's because these apps are longer social in the original sense of social media. Most of my family's sharing of what would have been Instagram or Facebook posts are now in a WhatsApp group I admin. Sure I would have loved to get everyone onto Signal instead but the end result has been much better experience for us.
And for larger groups Discord is not horrible alternative. Just need to give up on tracking everything, but it is very good platform to share and momentarily discuss interesting things.
Eldest son (17) and all his mates use it - very rarely do they post publicly, it's purely for messaging. I've never been sure why, there's plenty enough alternatives, but that's how it is for him and his cohort.
It’s used heavily in dating these days. We use instagram as a messenger because that’s what everyone has and it’s socially easier to ask a new person for the instagram rather than their phone number.
Its predictable and not entirely private like a close friend group chat on iMessage or WhatsApp. Plus of course the way it integrates with feeds of photo/videos you’re already looking at casually.
If data plans weren't tied to them, Gen Z probably wouldn't have phone numbers at all anymore. (Well, at least in those parts of the world where a data reception no slower than 3G is ubiquitous.)
If you think about it, the whole concept really does stick out nowadays. The idea of this unique, static (or at least not easily changeable), non-descript identifier tied only to you and your physical device is very much a product of its time.
Phone numbers only continue to exist by momentum – if a similar thing were to be implemented today, it would never catch on so universally.
Not OP, but going by pesonal experience way back in days of original facebook days a lot of people never posted that much and mainly consumed as soon as it was possible.
Even before that on forums etc. there were many more lurkers than posters.
17 year old me didn't wanted to be compared to all the others "perfect" lives.
Maybe I'm naive but I bet that hasn't fundamentally changed.
I’m far from bullish on meta long-term, but reporting like this would have you believe that nobody uses Facebook, and that Instagram is soon to share its fate. Optimists that they are, tech reporters overweight growth to absurd extremes. Maybe reporting on youth trends brings out the insecurities in all of us—you’d rather not look clueless in front of your two cool friends in their early 20s than the 2 billion or so Facebook MAUs.
TikTok is a platform with huge growth potential. IG is perceptibly declining. But Facebook has proven itself fairly durable, mostly to people outside tech and media bubbles. It’d be wise to not call it over just yet.
It takes a second to open an app, become a MAU, and then close it in disinterest. I'll admit this is my relationship with Facebook. I never see anything on there I am remotely interested in. Just old relatives spewing nonsense. But I guess I count as one of those 2 billion MAUs. I wonder how many are in the same spot.
I’d bet a solid majority, like it is on any social platform. Most users don’t post or engage.
Biggest predictor for Facebook and IG use among my sample of friends is whether they’re married and have families, or in many cases, pets. In my sample, many own homes or property. Not where the growth is, but not worthless from a revenue standpoint.
Myself and other folks in my friend group are MAU in that we use FB about once a month, maybe once every two months. My IG use became the same after the recent feed changes. Using either platform now feels like work and I have enough work to do already.
All of us tend to forget that each year there is a whole cohort of people getting a new phone and using fb, instagram, twitter, whatever for the first time.
Durable isn't a great word for what Facebook has become. It's been LinkedIn-ified - the entire notifications category is filled with useless recommendations and suggestions rather than meaningful updates from connections. And they still put notification dots up for it.
Even if there's an opt out option and I could 'filter that' I haven't seen anything else relevant in 1+ year.
That sounds like a bad experience, but it’s not universal. It’s challenging to understand a platform from our individual vantage points (without access to internal dashboards), particularly on a network with between 2–3 billion MAUs. And if your personal interests are elsewhere, and your generational cohort is underrepresented. I’m an ‘elder millennial’ who got Facebook when it was still only for edu domains, and I’ve grown older with the service. I just briefly checked in with mine and within the last 24 hours I can see at least a dozen updates (all with decent engagement) from family and friends, some distant and others close. Babies being born, kids doing kid stuff, holiday posts. Pretty typical, particularly at this time of year. All that is to say, it’s all a function of your real world network. If I were the age I was when I started using Facebook, I’d probably find it desolate and boring, too.
But I would say ‘fairly durable’ is an apt description of an 18 year old service still operating at its scale. Exciting, maybe less than it once was. But fairly durable, certainly.
Instagram as a social network sucks but I like sharing my photos with people who are already my friends (private account), and seeing their photos too.
my close friends and family have moved to the app Locket for sharing photos. much more direct and less "social" features (likes, follows, reels) that i don't care about.
In my German circles, that spot has been covered by whatsapp for a long while now. It never has been instagram or anything else really. For me it went from studivz (long defunct German "facebook" for university students, didn't last long), via facebook (for a short while, and due to lack of alternatives) straight to whatsapp, and has stayed there ever since, with the exception of some photography interested people sharing larger sets of photos on flickr at times, and some dating/sexting happening on snap (but most of that still was/is on whatsapp). Instagram was always understood as a place where you go if you want to see celebs, influencers and the "wannabes".
Granted, I am a bit older, a millennial (as much as it hurts me to admit) and an older one at that, but I regularly take the tram in my city at times when all the teenagers are going to school or coming from school, and you can see a damn lot of whatsapp on all those phone screens, a lot of tiktok, and a good amount of discord.
(verb): change course by swinging a fore-and-aft sail across a following wind.
(noun): an act or instance of jibing.
GP believes that the Atlantic article constitutes an instance of changing course by swinging a sail across a following wind, presumably metaphorically.
Instagram used to be about seeing what my friends were up to; now it’s all my friends resharing made-for-IG takes and re-re-re-re-re-sharing group photos I’ve already seen seven times.
I want an “OC Only” toggle.
Edit: And the above was referring only to Stories. I haven’t looked at the feed regularly in over a year.
Walking through the mall yesterday, I was shocked to see 5+ adults watch FB Reels / IG / TikTok. I think FB might be right about video being the future.
Instagram is "transitional" technology. It peaked at a time when traditional social networks had started their slow decline, and things like Snapchat and TikTok were gaining some popularity. These days it's a bit too open for traditional users, and a bit too boring for the average TikTok user. It will always fill a niche, but it will inevitably shrink by at least an order of magnitude.
“In other words, Instagram is giving us the ick: that feeling when a romantic partner or crush does something small but noticeable—like wearing a fedora—that immediately turns you off forever”
This was so ridiculously judgmental that I couldn’t keep reading.
My anecdata is that all IG is really used for anymore is messaging due to inertia and cross-posting content from other platforms. Very little original user generated content.
Fundamentally, these old apps that are built on the "create an account and manually follow users" model cannot compete with TikTok right now, and I don't think they'll be able to change to be competitive with TikTok in the future.
Maybe I'm ignorant of what TikTok is but it seems to be mostly about video sharing and less about "social networking" with friends and family??
I also think TikTok has serious risks going forward re Chinese government. Already a lot of grumbling from lawmakers in US about banning it as CCP growing more belligerent in recent years whereas Facebook products aren't at all influenced by it.
Instagram and facebook is still primarily focused on content from people you know, though they are also trying to copy some of TikTok’s randos content via the Reels feature.
At the end of the day they just want to get attention by giving content, whether using friends or essentially crowdsourcing.
I prefer Netflix, because I’m paying them and they are not just manipulating me to show ads.
The trend in social media for years has been away from social and toward just addictive content and finding the best way to crowdsource that content. The purpose is becoming simply to get you to spend as much time as possible staring at the phone to sell ads, and nothing more.
I predict the next advancement will be pure AI generated content, just a continuous adversarial attack on the human brain programmed to maximize viewing time for each individual. This could be packaged as things like virtual friends (Replika) or games with constantly evolving game play punctuated with ads or even as something that looks like TikTok.
Pure refined 200 proof addictive emptiness is the logical apex of “free” mass media. We will look back on TV and early generation social media as high culture compared to what’s coming.
I think we're seeing a pendulum swing in some ways. The migration to Mastodon has been really exciting because servers are funded through Patreon, not eyeballs.
Communities are smaller and content is higher quality, without pressuring you to post content you think will get the most likes. It's like an actual social media platform, not what so many others have become.
Facebook was never really about social. They just stumbled upon the realization that commenting on friends’ stuffs and looking at some of it was addicting. That’s why there was backlash against it because people realized Facebook wasn’t really working to help us improve our social relationships in any way but merely using it to steal our attention, much to our detriment (waste time).
Eventually AI was developed to automate addictive content which is just a more generalized solution yo what FB was doing.
> I prefer Netflix, because I’m paying them and they are not just manipulating me to show ads
Sorry to break it to you but Netflix is absolutely manipulating their audience in trying to convince everyone to watch Netflix productions.
When Netflix came into the market they had a unique platform and were burning money to get good content in. Now studios realized there is money in streaming and are squeezing Netflix prices.
Making their own productions means it is all vertical for them, less risk and more profitable.
By the end of it you're stuck watching something, just not exactly what you wanted in the first place.
I don’t understand. What I see on Netflix I either want to watch or not. What does it matter if it is a Netflix production or not? My point is more that I’d rather watch more long form thoughtfully crafted content than short dopamine hits designed to hook me for the purpose of showing ads in between.
In my eyes, TikTok is a social entertainment app where simple user-generated content is created with the purpose to provide enjoyment. It's not focused on the needs of other users, but entirely about one's own needs. Hence, I call this new version of social Eigensocial.
unlike most digital apps The Atlantic has been around for almost 170 years. Based on that fact alone I'd give it a good shot to outlive not one but the next five to ten successors of IG.
There are different segments on Instagram. Perhaps the "lifestyle blogger" or "influencer" has lost it's popularity. However, other audiences are still following different interests on Instagram. There are still thousands of artists (maybe millions) posting their art and illustrations, and still popular on Instagram.
I am surprised people expect these apps to remain popular for a long time. The internet has changed so much. I've watched social media apps come and go every few years and I personally think they are all short lived trends with maybe a few exceptions. They capture a young market first, who provide the value (photos, videos, memes) and then older generations start joining after the young market is captured. Then after five to 10 years, they age out, the fad is over. A new app captures the younger generation and the cycle repeats.
Some smaller social media networks have maybe kinda sorta survived more than one generation to some extent but it's debatable. Twitter seems like it has the most staying power so far but the present situation is evolving rapidly.
I also have seen and beleive this is an accurate picture of how these things go. But I'd ask, what about pseudo- social network apps like airbnb? They have a minimal social aspect, but to me app like that will have a longer possible lifetime. I guess even in airbnb's case there are competitors encroaching and stealing market share...
I mean I think the people who predicted they would remain popular for a long time were actually right? They may stop accelerating but they are still as popular as ever.
YouTube is the second visited site in the US and FB is the third - and they've been at the top for over a decade. E-mail is not a social network but has stuck around for 20 years. I've used Reddit since 2010. I've been on Instagram for six years now and probably use it more now than I ever have. Even Snapchat which to me seemed like a fad - is massively popular among teens.
I think it is true there are lots of smaller sites like Vine or Digg or YikYak which peter out but it seems like if you hit the critical mass then you can maintain popularity for decades.
YouTube likely has staying power despite of what the company are doing with the UI and user experience flows, because it sure as hell can't be because of it. And at least their search is not trying to actively work against the user. (Their recommendation engine is a dumpster fire, for sure.)
A mostly usable, generally accessible, and fairly easily discoverable video hosting platform. I can think of a lot of worse product pitches.
I'd actually keep using social apps more if they stayed closer to their original versions.
My Facebook feed turned from updates from my friends and family to garbage filled with politics, ads, suggested pages, and I stopped using it.
My Instagram feed turned from photos of my family and friends to garbage: again ads, recommended pages, later videos. Eventually I deleted it.
Twitter was close to that when they introduces algorithmic feed which showed stuff I didn't want to see and I was close to deleting the app, thankfully there's a way to still have the chronological feed without all the "likes" and "recommendations".
I keep using Reddit because I still can use it the same way as years ago - join communities that interest me and not see the stuff I don't want (even though they regularly push some more useless stuff to show me)
I believe social media can last long, but they need to find balance between monetization, innovation, and staying true to their users. Facebook and Instagram went way too far in alienating their users, and while they're still popular, they're declining.
What you're saying is interesting. I think part of that is the tension between older and younger generations which is why I don't think these things last.
Reddit is kind of a notable standout. Maybe that and Twitter's features are what guarantees a sustained viewership. I don't know, this is all kind of new.
At least for photo and video sharing sites, it seems like these tend to be trendy and have a population boom and bust cycle. But then again I don't want to speak authoritatively. But looking at FB it reported it's first decline in daily visits this year and the decline among teens and younger generations is even more pronounced. Certainly looks like a population peak.
The desire to "grow", and the lack of a defined end state for that growth, is the problem. It's not hard to build a social media service that pays for itself and then some, but they all are run by greedy people and so they want more money all the time. These people have no notion of "enough money". That's the fundamental problem behind all social media services going to shit.
I’m surprised Reddit is even considered social media. The anonymity of the users and focus on subjects over people make it a very different experience. With Facebook and instagram you have a limited pool of people that interest each other and if they stop posting they have to figure out what to show you. That’s… really hard, especially if you signed up with these people in mind.
With Reddit meanwhile you can easily select the subjects you are interested in and there’s a bottomless pit of people who can post and comment on that. While it being mostly text based will probably limit how big it can get compared to something like TikTok I suspect there’s a better slow and steady business model with less churn.
I also really like that they offer a monthly sub at a fair price that removes the ad problem. I really wish more companies would take this sort of approach.
In a very broad sense, I'm glad to see things like this happening; I think a (relatively) high rate of turnover in social media is probably orders of magnitude better and safer than "one app to rule them all, forever."
It additionally makes me bullish on federated deals like Activitypub/Mastodon.
It's funny that the above presently tend to be "lefty-crunchy-hippie" -- because, I think if corporations get it through their hiveminds that the above enables them to have their own "official source of truth," thus preventing doofiness like blue check marks, this would all take off in a beneficial way.
They keep starting out with a free service then they focus on turning it into a paid service... In Instagram's case, just like with Twitter and even TikTok now, they charge users for visibility, or they trickle it out just enough to make users constantly and feverishly ask what they're doing wrong. It's mental manipulation that just doesn't work, and the paid advertising format leads platforms to their death, but just like users keep posting, investors are flocking to put money onto the next social media platform.
I hope that independent web communities return, and that people start making their own web sites, tracking music and entertainment across multiple platforms and dealing with their content payola schemes and repetitive marketing is ruining everything fun and useful about the Internet.
I think the key to a massively successful new social network will be a fallback API of just email/text.
Why not let your shiny new social network UI parse any dumb input into a fancy thread format? Zero adoption friction. Federation baked in.
Example: You run a mastodon-like service that can receive email. When it gets an email, it publishes a twirt with the contents. Truncates as needed.
If it's a new email address, spin up new user with email username.
No password needed, cause it came from the email address you own.
Conversely, in the fancy interface, you can @soandso@gmail.com and it will email them for you. Doesn't matter if they've "joined twartordon." So it has a dumb-simple user growth model baked in.
I've been promoting this idea for years in the man-yells-at-clouds format, but folks don't seem to get why it's so powerful...
SMS is how I used to use Twitter, back in 2008 or so. You could text 40404 with your tweet, and you could receive Tweets from that number too. It was great in that era before I had a smartphone, and it felt like something halfway between a group chat and microblogging. I miss that mode of interaction.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 225 ms ] threadI tried using Peer Tube recently, felt like I was on 2005 YouTube...absolute no man’s land
People are really underestimating the second order effects from the Twitter exodus. It's not just Twitter that has a competitor. It's just a matter of time until all the Fediverse gets enough of a critical mass and then all walled gardens will lose its appeal.
I'm not really sure whether you made this analogy to disagree or to prove their point.
But it does prevent them from becoming the next 2B people social network which will default to becoming to go-to social media to connect with just about anyone you meet in the world.
A $1/month app won't replace Instagram (the article is about IG dying).
- Newspapers, TV networks and streaming services who will offer a "free" account to their Mastodon (or similar) server for paying subscribers.
- "Influencers" who will be hosting their own ActivityPub servers
- Companies who will realize that they can put all their marketing communications under their own control and branding.
- Fringe communities who will be running their servers just because they can.
- Commercial providers who will look for something that can differentiate themselves (privacy, custom clients with special features) and charge for it.
- etc, etc, etc.
[0]: By bet, I mean that literally. This has been one of my side-projects and I've put already a non-negligible amount of time and money into it. Thanks to Musk, my service has seen more activity, signups and inquiries about custom hosting in the past 3 weeks than it has seen in the first 3 years.
No one uses it because no one posts > No one posts because they don't expect interaction > No one expects interaction because no one uses it
And then brands or influencers don't join because there's no potential to make money.
Part of the history of these big incumbents is that people were discovering a more user-friendly way to use the web through them; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube all were "Hey, we can now do something we could do before, much easier, in a more accessible way that I can show to my normie friends/my parents."
Alternatives that DO come up, like 500px or Vimeo, end up needing to become more for enthusiasts (people who care about fidelity, rather than novelty), turning away normies in the process. That's fine for them, as long as their goal isn't to "be an alternative YouTube/Flickr."
Tell me you are willing to pay $1/month, and I will stop postponing it and finally add it to https://communick.com
The situation is quite different in open source world. The only factors that matter for an open source platform are having enough people who are willing to develop it, run servers, and post content. Once the platform reaches enough users to be sustainable then it can exist indefinitely without need for growth or any significant funding.
We can look at Mastodon as a case study. It builds on top of all the work done by GNU Social and the OStatus protocol. GNU Social languished in obscurity for many years, but Mastodon was able to build on this work and create a much larger social network. Now, there's a whole federation of different platforms using ActivityPub protocol that grew out of OStatus. Fediverse will likely outlive every single commercial social media platform in existence today.
Twitter first rode this trend, but TikTok really exploited it specifically with the medium of video and their algorithm to serve content.
Networks effects were once seen as the ultimate moat and one reason why FB could never be taken down. But it turns out if the content people “trade” on their “marketplace” is poor, all the network effects in the world won’t save you.
Influencers (aka personalities) are only entertaining for a short period of time. They have constantly churn out new content to keep engaging users. It is because user don’t know them and are less attached.
Therefore as long as TikTok has influencers that can continue to make new content, it will keep attracting new users. But I suspect that this is also not long term sustainable. People, both influencers and users, will get burned out eventually.
Your argument that network model dies because of broadcast model is just one part. My argument still stands that eventually people will get tired of a social media product and move on to the next ones.
Not sure how my observations are lazy though considering your does not provide anymore insight that others didn’t already know… it’s already been reported on Rolling Stone, Venture Beat, etc back in July. Aren’t you just regurgitating their idea with offhand keywords?
Agreed re broadcast model - that's an important distinction too vs the classic follower model. This is why, despite my best efforts, I still see content from strangers on my twitter feed. They know it drives engagement.
> People, both influencers and users, will get burned out eventually.
I disagree - because the space here is endless. Influencers will churn out and users will move on to the next one. I don't think users will get burned out - their tastes will evolve. Each phase of life has its own content pool. I'll describe my own journey here: I got married this past year. In the lead up to that, there were tons of wedding planning videos. Now I get served a lot of married couple w/no kids content. That'll probably keep changing as I move through life.
This is an interesting observation. You are arguing that your taste for content will change preventing you from getting tired of the product.
My argument is more along the lines of the medium. People get bored of photos because it’s old and so they move on to short videos.
Both are non-conflicting. I do see how your argument will prolong the lifecycle of the product.
Some categories of brands can be long lived. Coca Cola and Disney.
Some categories of brands are mayflies. Pop music, TV, fast fashion.
My hunch is the average lifecycle of social media brands and MMORPG properties are roughly the same. Say 5-10 years?
I understand that modern IG may not be the greatest, but engagement wise their choices, at least for the 25+ tier, have paid off imho.
Like everyone you care about having a copy of your data, and the copy always being up to date, perhaps encrypted so only those family you want to consume the content have access to those pictures too via user control.
Anyhow it's sad that Facebook has so much of my family's lives hostage... Only there can I see what's up.
I wish I could see a 'family' feed.
I'm not the social media kind of people, but I have some friends and family members, that my last words were through facebook. So as a communication tool, I see its value. Said that, I don't have the app installed anywhere. Just messages notifications via email.
Its predictable and not entirely private like a close friend group chat on iMessage or WhatsApp. Plus of course the way it integrates with feeds of photo/videos you’re already looking at casually.
The same way FB used to be.
If you think about it, the whole concept really does stick out nowadays. The idea of this unique, static (or at least not easily changeable), non-descript identifier tied only to you and your physical device is very much a product of its time.
Phone numbers only continue to exist by momentum – if a similar thing were to be implemented today, it would never catch on so universally.
Even before that on forums etc. there were many more lurkers than posters.
17 year old me didn't wanted to be compared to all the others "perfect" lives.
Maybe I'm naive but I bet that hasn't fundamentally changed.
TikTok is a platform with huge growth potential. IG is perceptibly declining. But Facebook has proven itself fairly durable, mostly to people outside tech and media bubbles. It’d be wise to not call it over just yet.
Biggest predictor for Facebook and IG use among my sample of friends is whether they’re married and have families, or in many cases, pets. In my sample, many own homes or property. Not where the growth is, but not worthless from a revenue standpoint.
Which way does the correlation go?
But I would say ‘fairly durable’ is an apt description of an 18 year old service still operating at its scale. Exciting, maybe less than it once was. But fairly durable, certainly.
The underlying thesis behind FB - that people want to connect with people that they know - is eroding.
Granted, I am a bit older, a millennial (as much as it hurts me to admit) and an older one at that, but I regularly take the tram in my city at times when all the teenagers are going to school or coming from school, and you can see a damn lot of whatsapp on all those phone screens, a lot of tiktok, and a good amount of discord.
Maybe it is, but it will be a death by 500 million cuts, not a max exodus. There is no clear successor.
Successor to what? As if it serves some purpose? This is like wondering what will "successfully replace" a tumor that's to be removed...
(And, yes, you can have millions of users without service a purpose, at least not any useful one. All kinds of crap has).
Instagram it's not over, and I bet will win the battle against TikTok
(verb): change course by swinging a fore-and-aft sail across a following wind.
(noun): an act or instance of jibing.
GP believes that the Atlantic article constitutes an instance of changing course by swinging a sail across a following wind, presumably metaphorically.
gibe - (noun) an insulting or mocking remark; a taunt.
"a gibe at his old rivals"
I want an “OC Only” toggle.
Edit: And the above was referring only to Stories. I haven’t looked at the feed regularly in over a year.
This was so ridiculously judgmental that I couldn’t keep reading.
Fundamentally, these old apps that are built on the "create an account and manually follow users" model cannot compete with TikTok right now, and I don't think they'll be able to change to be competitive with TikTok in the future.
I also think TikTok has serious risks going forward re Chinese government. Already a lot of grumbling from lawmakers in US about banning it as CCP growing more belligerent in recent years whereas Facebook products aren't at all influenced by it.
Youtube is long addictive videos.
Instagram and facebook is still primarily focused on content from people you know, though they are also trying to copy some of TikTok’s randos content via the Reels feature.
At the end of the day they just want to get attention by giving content, whether using friends or essentially crowdsourcing.
I prefer Netflix, because I’m paying them and they are not just manipulating me to show ads.
The Three Trends:
1. Medium: text -> images -> video -> 3D graphics -> VR
2. AI: time -> rank -> recommend -> generate
3. UI: click -> scroll -> tap -> swipe -> autoplay
TikTok is at the video/recommend/swipe stage.
Yeah, that sounds like it would become popular very quickly.
I predict the next advancement will be pure AI generated content, just a continuous adversarial attack on the human brain programmed to maximize viewing time for each individual. This could be packaged as things like virtual friends (Replika) or games with constantly evolving game play punctuated with ads or even as something that looks like TikTok.
Pure refined 200 proof addictive emptiness is the logical apex of “free” mass media. We will look back on TV and early generation social media as high culture compared to what’s coming.
Eventually AI was developed to automate addictive content which is just a more generalized solution yo what FB was doing.
Sorry to break it to you but Netflix is absolutely manipulating their audience in trying to convince everyone to watch Netflix productions.
When Netflix came into the market they had a unique platform and were burning money to get good content in. Now studios realized there is money in streaming and are squeezing Netflix prices.
Making their own productions means it is all vertical for them, less risk and more profitable.
By the end of it you're stuck watching something, just not exactly what you wanted in the first place.
There is simply far too much stuff on the Internet that's not memberwalled or paywalled.
Some smaller social media networks have maybe kinda sorta survived more than one generation to some extent but it's debatable. Twitter seems like it has the most staying power so far but the present situation is evolving rapidly.
YouTube is the second visited site in the US and FB is the third - and they've been at the top for over a decade. E-mail is not a social network but has stuck around for 20 years. I've used Reddit since 2010. I've been on Instagram for six years now and probably use it more now than I ever have. Even Snapchat which to me seemed like a fad - is massively popular among teens.
I think it is true there are lots of smaller sites like Vine or Digg or YikYak which peter out but it seems like if you hit the critical mass then you can maintain popularity for decades.
A mostly usable, generally accessible, and fairly easily discoverable video hosting platform. I can think of a lot of worse product pitches.
My Facebook feed turned from updates from my friends and family to garbage filled with politics, ads, suggested pages, and I stopped using it.
My Instagram feed turned from photos of my family and friends to garbage: again ads, recommended pages, later videos. Eventually I deleted it.
Twitter was close to that when they introduces algorithmic feed which showed stuff I didn't want to see and I was close to deleting the app, thankfully there's a way to still have the chronological feed without all the "likes" and "recommendations".
I keep using Reddit because I still can use it the same way as years ago - join communities that interest me and not see the stuff I don't want (even though they regularly push some more useless stuff to show me)
I believe social media can last long, but they need to find balance between monetization, innovation, and staying true to their users. Facebook and Instagram went way too far in alienating their users, and while they're still popular, they're declining.
Reddit is kind of a notable standout. Maybe that and Twitter's features are what guarantees a sustained viewership. I don't know, this is all kind of new.
At least for photo and video sharing sites, it seems like these tend to be trendy and have a population boom and bust cycle. But then again I don't want to speak authoritatively. But looking at FB it reported it's first decline in daily visits this year and the decline among teens and younger generations is even more pronounced. Certainly looks like a population peak.
The fediverse won't be like that though.
With Reddit meanwhile you can easily select the subjects you are interested in and there’s a bottomless pit of people who can post and comment on that. While it being mostly text based will probably limit how big it can get compared to something like TikTok I suspect there’s a better slow and steady business model with less churn.
I also really like that they offer a monthly sub at a fair price that removes the ad problem. I really wish more companies would take this sort of approach.
It additionally makes me bullish on federated deals like Activitypub/Mastodon.
It's funny that the above presently tend to be "lefty-crunchy-hippie" -- because, I think if corporations get it through their hiveminds that the above enables them to have their own "official source of truth," thus preventing doofiness like blue check marks, this would all take off in a beneficial way.
I hope that independent web communities return, and that people start making their own web sites, tracking music and entertainment across multiple platforms and dealing with their content payola schemes and repetitive marketing is ruining everything fun and useful about the Internet.
It recently passed the mom test. My 70-something mom signing up for something is a strong signal it has peaked.
Why not let your shiny new social network UI parse any dumb input into a fancy thread format? Zero adoption friction. Federation baked in.
Example: You run a mastodon-like service that can receive email. When it gets an email, it publishes a twirt with the contents. Truncates as needed.
If it's a new email address, spin up new user with email username. No password needed, cause it came from the email address you own.
Conversely, in the fancy interface, you can @soandso@gmail.com and it will email them for you. Doesn't matter if they've "joined twartordon." So it has a dumb-simple user growth model baked in.
I've been promoting this idea for years in the man-yells-at-clouds format, but folks don't seem to get why it's so powerful...
When you're blocking 99.93% of incoming messages as spam you'll learn to be more selective.