social media is Even if a quarter-life crisis is looming, if a quarter-life crisis is real, then if we can give social media a shelf life, it will effectively play a role in our society from now until the end of time. Maybe. After 25 years of status updates, newsfeeds, witty tweets, performative photos, and endless scrolling, the American social media companies that have successfully captured and monetized our attention are running out of fresh ideas. , is trying to reinvent itself.
Are you lucky?
About 18 months ago, face-computer 3D immersion was about to reinvigorate our online social experiences. Facebook believed so strongly in this vision that they changed the name to Meta to reflect it. Recently, Meta decided that something a little simpler could increase engagement, so he launched Threads (basically Twitter for Instagram).
Now, video app TikTok is introducing a way to create text-based posts. This is a unique version of the create feature found in Instagram Stories. The new text option, which users typically access through the app’s camera to post videos and photos, is described by TikTok as the latest addition to its content creation options, allowing creators to write stories, poems, recipes, and other writing. It’s advertised as “Empowering people to share their content.” On TikTok. ” Text: It’s the future. This comes shortly after Twitter rebranded itself as X as part of the company’s broader strategy to become a do-it-all app like China’s WeChat.
TikTok’s new text feature feels mostly bells and whistles, and Twitter’s brand pivot almost feels superfluous, but that’s not a cause for existential angst in and of itself. But they’re part of an evolving social media landscape, where polite “borrowing” of features has turned into full-fledged land grabbing to fill our attention spans. Whether it’s subscriptions, shopping, payments, or AI-powered products, social media companies are using everything they can to combat both the unpredictable advertising market and the limited ability of people to use a dozen different social apps. We are taking measures.
Chris Messina, a software product designer who is credited with introducing hashtags to Twitter, says, “When you evaluate these apps through a traditional innovation lens, you’re right: They copy each other, they don’t have new ideas.” says. “But a better way to understand this is that because social media is now a fashion industry, product managers are measuring success based on engagement and retention, not innovation.”
Messina also said that X (nĂ©e Twitter) is currently “incredibly vulnerable, and the most competitive teams like Meta and TikTok will sit back and watch if they can carve out Twitter’s former advertising base.” He added that he believed there was no way he could stay there.
Meta’s early success with Instagram Threads (more than 100 million registrations in less than a week) is largely due to the advantages of its platform. Over a billion people already use Instagram, and porting your Instagram identity to Threads will be a breeze. But it’s success in metrics, not qualitative, but quantitative. (In any case, Threads’ daily active users have reportedly declined.) Threads still doesn’t have a web or desktop app, its promised time series feed isn’t yet live, and it’s more open source. features are not yet supported. Protocols that the company has announced it supports.