Why social networks are almost not social anymore – 07/18/2023 – Market

Between posing for shirtless photos and trolling Elon Musk online, Mark Zuckerberg has been spending this summer sharing his thoughts on the future of social media. Considering he just released the fastest growing app on record, people are paying attention.

Threads, Meta’s new social network, gained 100 million subscribers in its first five days of operation. Not bad for a watered down version of Twitter. According to Zuckerberg, the idea is to create a public conversation app for a billion people.

Listening to a billion people talking sounds like a nightmare. But that’s not exactly what Zuckerberg means. Threads is more of a stage than a public square. Zuckerberg doesn’t want us all to be part of the conversation — he wants us all in the audience.

Social networks are not very sociable these days. Feeds are algorithmic – meaning you see what the apps want to show you. After I joined Threads, I saw a lot of designer brands and celebrities. I couldn’t tell you what my friends were posting, but I could reveal that reality star Bethenny Frankel had commented something about the new “Barbie” movie.

Once upon a time, people entered social networks to communicate with each other. I joined Facebook in 2007 to see what my friends were doing online. It’s hard to remember why it was so interesting to look at a bunch of blurry photos after a night out at the club, but I spent a lot of time doing it.

This has now given way to content coming from unknowns. I still have all my social media accounts, but I rarely post anything. For many of us, the point of being on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter isn’t to post our own stuff or see what our friends are up to, but to watch a small number of popular creators. Instead of talking to each other, we become silent spectators most of the time.

This is the result of TikTokification of social networks. Videos on TikTok are not created for the purpose of their creators communicating with existing contacts. Content consumed by the widest possible audience. A strange result of this is that the algorithm can produce a bizarre form of anonymity. We sometimes hear creators on TikTok preface particularly personal videos with “if you know me — no, you don’t.” The sought-after audience is always made up of strangers.

What this all means is that social networking companies no longer rely on the network effect of real-life relationships that made Facebook so attractive in the first place. Who cares if your friends aren’t signed in to a specific social network? They are not the ones whose contents you are interested in anyway.

Theoretically speaking, this should open up the industry to more competition. Admittedly, we’ve seen a flurry of new apps over the last two or three years, including companies like Hive and Post. But there’s a catch: to attract an audience, you need high-profile names.

That’s why Threads looks the way it does, with well-known brands and accounts heavily promoted. That’s why Musk split the Twitter timeline in two when he bought the company and added an algorithmically-based “For You” feed. It’s why Snapchat has added creator content to more parts of the app, including the map, and why a chronological post feed is no longer the default on Facebook.

This shift has changed the dynamic between social media users and businesses. Content that was once free is now getting expensive. If you want MrBeast to leave his 167 million YouTube subscribers and move to his social media platform, you’re going to have to make it worth his while. That’s why revenue sharing and creator fundraising schemes are expanding.

As creators’ power has grown, their influence has extended into more areas, including the news. In the past, newsrooms have tried to help journalists become social media stars, with mixed success. Converting creators into journalists gets more views.

Social networks have had a problematic relationship with journalism, which they accuse of negativity and unwanted controversy. Meta created the Facebook Journalism Project in 2017, but has repeatedly said it can choose to remove news. Adam Mosseri, who runs Threads, says the new app won’t do anything to encourage politics and “hard news.”

Other platforms want to incorporate journalism on their own, more creator-friendly terms. I was recently in the London office of The News Movement, a journalism startup co-founded by former Dow Jones chief executive Will Lewis. The company has a partnership with Snapchat that offers rudimentary training in journalism for young creators, helping them to identify bias and misinformation, for example. After that creators are encouraged to add Snapchat to the platforms they use.

Micaiah Miles, a young American who has more than 58 thousand followers on TikTok, made a video explaining the disappearance of the submersible Titan that received more than 1 million views on Snapchat. Professional journalists can be distressed by this. But a high engagement rate means advertisers will be happy.

Last year, low ad growth led to claims that we were seeing the end of the social platform era. In reality we are just watching the death of social networking. This is the era of creators. The role of social media in digital entertainment is just beginning.

Translated by Clara Allain