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2024 Tends in Social Media


JoelR

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2024 Social Media predictions by Future Social:

YouTube Shorts become a key channel for brand social teams. Those Reels & TikToks you’re making can go right up on YouTube Shorts, bringing more attention to that channel that’s only hosted your TV spots the last few years. Watch Shorts become quite effective in driving brand awareness without much customization time from brand teams.

Watch time becomes a primary metric. We know we can’t win in 2024 social without video content, but we haven’t really adjusted our analytics for that shift. Rather than reporting likes and comments front and center, watch for watch time to be the new proof of engaged audiences. Anyone can double tap a heart—but can you get viewers to stick around a full minute?

Live content finally dies. Remember when every brand tried Instagram Live during quarantine? Or that big Facebook campaign to get us on live? It’s never worked for brands because who on earth is excited to watch an @brand make live content. Leave lives to Twitch streamers and creators who have a human connection with their audience.

Brands divest from trend content after looking at the numbers. I don’t expect budgets to get much better in 2024—that means more scrutiny towards effectiveness. I really think digging into sales data will show that slightly boosted engagement from trend-based content just doesn’t do as much as great original content.

Threads isn’t gonna be a thing. Meta caught the hail mary, but fumbled on the one-yard line. They got the users there, but didn’t leave anything sticky to keep people around. Now I can’t name one casual person using Threads. I do think it’ll grow from its current active users, but Twitter’s around 237 million DAUs—Threads would need at least a quarter of that to feel alive, and I just don’t see it.

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Just like Google Plus Threads will also die. Don't be surprised when Meta announces the death of Threads. I believe short form will continue to be a popular form of entertainment as well as marketing. Social media sites might also roll our their own Generative AI tools for image and video generations.

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I am expecting a lot of new features on X. Despite being launched just after 2 years of Facebook launch, Twitter has just 436 million active users and a large number of these users are bots. Compare this number with Facebook's 3 billion, Snapchat's 557 million, and Pinterest's 444 million. I think longer forms of videos will become more popular. You can see how TikTok is emphasizing longer videos.

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Musk acquiring Twitter and Twitter changing into X was probably the biggest social media news in 2023. Hopefully, we will see a lot of change on X.

The growth of short videos was also one of the popular trends on social media in 2023. A lot of social media sites continue to push short videos in their platforms.

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  • 1 month later...
On 12/13/2023 at 1:22 AM, Nomad said:

I am expecting a lot of new features on X. Despite being launched just after 2 years of Facebook launch, Twitter has just 436 million active users and a large number of these users are bots. Compare this number with Facebook's 3 billion, Snapchat's 557 million, and Pinterest's 444 million. I think longer forms of videos will become more popular. You can see how TikTok is emphasizing longer videos.

I find it interesting how YouTube (long form video) is pushing YouTube Shorts, and how TikTok (short form video) is pushing longer videos.  Regardless, video is a major media form that online communities aren't really tapping into in a meaningful manner.  

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I will admit, with Threads I thought it may have done better than it did but we seemed to go through a phase when it launched and then nothing after that. 

Short form is the way forward and I agree, too many people are passing that up and missing out on potential but creating that. 

On 1/21/2024 at 8:26 PM, JoelR said:

I find it interesting how YouTube (long form video) is pushing YouTube Shorts, and how TikTok (short form video) is pushing longer videos.  Regardless, video is a major media form that online communities aren't really tapping into in a meaningful manner.  

This is something I noticed myself, TikTok was always about the short form content but that seems to have changed drastically over the last few years. With YouTube, it is best to create both long and short-form content now too for the best success which is how TikTok seems to be now. 

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I posted years ago on the IPS site about the importance of video, namely as shorts were becoming extremely popular.  Now it's ALL about video and there's a huge gap with IPS when it comes to video.  Dealing with video is hard and expensive (storage, processing, proper encoding, browser compliance, etc), and it's why I've always suggested integration with platforms that already do video well (YouTube, Vimeo, etc).  The key integration aspect is allowing members to post video on IPS assets (Forums, Pages, etc) while externalizing the video storage and then embedding that video within the IPS asset.  IMHO, that one (perhaps complex) enhancement to IPS is invaluable.  Even as a third party app, I would pay a good amount to have that level of integration and I'd imagine many site owners would crowdsource finances to have it as a shared app.

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I'm also experimenting with trying to create and grow a new community which is heavily established on social media platforms.  The question is, what can you offer that they don't (primarily better socialization, content organization/structure, etc).  But users want ease of use at their fingertips, and the multi-step process of "creating" things on IPS is a barrier.  But I think the biggest barrier is the speed at which a post/reply and enriching content can be added (i.e. pictures and video).  The shear lack of a fluid video experience (let's face it, there are issues with the various proprietary formats and browser compatibilities) is a huge inhibitor in this age of the online social sharing.  Something better is needed to create and maintain the interest in respect to video on IPS.

As a side note, also experimenting with Facebook ads, I am convinced there is a mix of bots wasting my spend and Facebook intentionally thwarting ad placements to user bases that will actually visit and join your site (i.e. it's against their own business interests so why would they drive their own users to a site that has them spending less time on Facebook).  However, I have no idea how to reach those users without top tier content and a lot of time, when it's those same users who are creating that top tier content in volume (more than I can in the same period of time).

Edited by Clover13
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/25/2024 at 12:56 PM, Clover13 said:

I posted years ago on the IPS site about the importance of video, namely as shorts were becoming extremely popular.  Now it's ALL about video and there's a huge gap with IPS when it comes to video.  Dealing with video is hard and expensive (storage, processing, proper encoding, browser compliance, etc), and it's why I've always suggested integration with platforms that already do video well (YouTube, Vimeo, etc).  The key integration aspect is allowing members to post video on IPS assets (Forums, Pages, etc) while externalizing the video storage and then embedding that video within the IPS asset.  IMHO, that one (perhaps complex) enhancement to IPS is invaluable.  Even as a third party app, I would pay a good amount to have that level of integration and I'd imagine many site owners would crowdsource finances to have it as a shared app.

Totally agree.  

Ideally, users (on mobile) would be able to record or snap photos on their phone, and it would automatically embed into the post.  Videos would be encoded, images would be resized, etc.  

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On 1/25/2024 at 12:59 PM, Clover13 said:

As a side note, also experimenting with Facebook ads, I am convinced there is a mix of bots wasting my spend and Facebook intentionally thwarting ad placements to user bases that will actually visit and join your site (i.e. it's against their own business interests so why would they drive their own users to a site that has them spending less time on Facebook).  However, I have no idea how to reach those users without top tier content and a lot of time, when it's those same users who are creating that top tier content in volume (more than I can in the same period of time).

I have no idea what your community or niche is about, but have you thought about trying to compete where they don't compete. 

In other words, there are a lot of areas in which social media doesn't compete. Social media doesn't compete in organization. Social media doesn't compete in structure. Social media doesn't compete in building reference databases.  Social media doesn't compete in in-depth technical knowledge (and by technical, I don't necessarily mean engineering or physics, but I mean the really nitty gritty details of niches).  

Are those areas where you CAN invest your energy your time?  

Social media is not all powerful. Social media has many weakneses.  And independent communities who lean into those untapped areas can still thrive.  

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