The future of social networks is much less social – 07/25/2023 – Market

Nearly two decades ago, Facebook exploded onto college campuses as a site for students to chat. Then came Twitter, where people posted about what they had for breakfast, and Instagram, where friends shared photos to keep in touch.

Today, Instagram and Facebook feeds are full of ads and sponsored posts. TikTok and Snapchat are full of videos from influencers promoting soaps and dating apps. And soon the Twitter posts that will get the most visibility will come primarily from subscribers who pay for exposure and other perks.

Social media is, in many ways, becoming less social. The types of posts where people update friends and family about their lives have become harder to see over the years as the biggest sites have become more and more “corporate”. Instead of seeing messages and photos from friends and family about their vacation or fancy dinners, users of Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter and Snapchat are now more likely to see professionalized content from brands, influencers and others who pay for placement.

The shift has implications for big social media companies and how people interact with each other digitally. But it also raises questions about a core idea: the online platform. For years, the idea of ​​a platform — a multipurpose, public-facing site where people would spend most of their time — reigned supreme. But while the big social networks made it a priority to connect people with brands, rather than connecting them with others, some users began looking to community-driven websites and apps dedicated to specific hobbies and topics.

“Platforms as we knew them are gone,” said Zizi Papacharissi, a professor of communication at the University of Illinois-Chicago who teaches about social networking. “They lived beyond their usefulness.”

The shift helps explain why some social networking companies, which continue to have billions of users and make billions of dollars, are now exploring new avenues of business. Twitter, owned by Elon Musk, has been pressuring people and brands to pay $8 to $1,000 a month to become subscribers. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is entering the immersive online world of the so-called metaverse.

For users, this means that instead of spending all of their time on one or a few large social networks, some are gravitating towards smaller, more focused sites. These include Mastodon, which is essentially a Twitter clone divided into communities; Nextdoor, a social network for neighbors to complain about everyday issues like potholes in the streets; and apps like Truth Social, which was started by former President Donald Trump and is seen as a social network for conservatives.

“It’s not about picking one network to rule them all — that’s the crazy logic of Silicon Valley,” said Ethan Zuckerman, a professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “The future is for you to be a member of dozens of different communities, because as human beings, that’s how we are.”

Twitter, which automatically responds to press inquiries with a poop emoji, had no comment on the evolution of social media. Meta declined to comment and TikTok did not respond to a request for comment. Snap, maker of Snapchat, said that while its app has evolved, connecting people with their friends and family remains its core function.

A shift to smaller, more focused networks was predicted years ago by some of the biggest names in social networking, including Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Meta, and Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter.

In 2019, Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post that private messaging and small groups were the fastest growing areas of online communication. Dorsey, who stepped down as Twitter’s chief executive in 2021, has promoted so-called decentralized social networks, which give people control over the content they see and the communities they engage with. He recently posted on Nostr, a social networking site based on this principle.

The tricky part for users is finding the newer, smaller networks because they are obscure. But broader social networks like Mastodon or Reddit often act as gateways to smaller communities. When signing up for Mastodon, for example, people can choose a server from an extensive list, including those related to gaming, food and activism.

Eugen Rochko, chief executive of Mastodon, said users publish more than 1 billion posts a month in their communities and that there are no algorithms or ads altering personal feeds.

A big benefit of small networks is that they create forums for specific communities, including marginalized people. Ahwaa, founded in 2011, is a social network for members of the LGBTQ community in countries around the Persian Gulf where being gay is illegal. Other smaller networks, like Letterboxd, an app for movie enthusiasts to share their thoughts on movies, are focused on special interests.

Smaller communities can also alleviate some of the social pressure of using social media, especially for younger people. Over the past decade, stories have surfaced — including in congressional hearings on the dangers of social media — about teens developing eating disorders after trying to live up to “perfect Instagram” photos and watching videos on TikTok.

The idea that a new social networking site could be the one app for everyone seems unrealistic, experts say. When teens are done trying out a new network — like BeReal, the photo-sharing app that was popular with teens last year but is now losing millions of active users — they move on to the next one.

“They won’t be captured by the first shiny platform that comes along,” Papacharissi said.

People’s online identities will become increasingly fragmented across multiple sites, she added. To talk about professional achievements, there is LinkedIn. To play video games with other players, there’s Discord. To discuss news, Artifact.

“What we’re interested in is smaller groups of people communicating with each other about specific things,” Papacharissi said.

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves