Social media will probably change a lot in the next couple of years, we have already seen a lot of different social media sites come and go. In the Netherlands for most people it started with MSN and Hyves, nowadays both do not even exist anymore. And even though Twitter still is one of the biggest social media sites you see a big decline in the Netherlands. Last year 1.5 million people used Twitter every day, now this is only 1 million, a decline of 33%. Every year you have one or more new social media hype, as you can see in the table below, Pinterest really grew last year. So what will happen to social media in the future?
In the article by AJ Agrawal, he says that the thinks social media will be a lot more personal in the future, a lot more people will complete their profiles as much as possible. They add more pictures and put a lot of information about themselves online. This does not only help companies with targeting the right people, but also keeps the users focused and engaged with the respective social media platform.
In a different article by Jason Falls, he talks about the future of social media, he thinks it will probably be good in the long term, but on the short term not so much. A lot of businesses right now are rushing into social media, if you don’t have social media as a company already you need to make it now. The problem with this is that most businesses don’t do it right. And the results will not be as clearly visible or be as fast as with normal ads on the television or the radio. With those ads you get immediate payoff, but with social media you have to think long term, this will be new and too much for most companies according to Jason Falls.
This is mostly short term, but how do people think social media will look like 10 years from now? In an article on the site of the Webber University, they talk about the battle for the share of engagement. Existing social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter will try to make the content more engaging, instead of just looking on the sites. Also the ads will be a lot more valuable on the internet instead of the old fashioned advertisements on television and radio.
So there are a lot of different opinions about what social media will look like in the future. Will it grow until we live our lives mostly online and with social media, or will it completely disappear? What do you think will happen to social media in the future?
References
(2015), In the Netherlands, Pinterest Gains, but Facebook Still Reigns, http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Netherlands-Pinterest-Gains-Facebook-Still-Reigns/1012345.
A.J. Agrawal (2014), 5 Predictions for the Future of Social Media, http://www.inc.com/aj-agrawal/5-predictions-of-the-future-of-social-media.html.
J. Falls (2008), The Future of Social Media: Hope Or Hype https://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/social-media-marketing/the-future-of-social-media-hope-or-hype/.
Weber, Social Media in 2025 http://webber.edu/social-media-in-2025/.
It’s interesting to think about this subject. On the one hand I think social media will grow extremely fast in the future, but on the other hand there is an option that for example Facebook and Twitter disappear in the future. The thoughts that Facebook will disappear in the future sounds very strange for me, because the social media platform has a lot of active users. But maybe in the past when Hyves and MSN were popular the people had the same thoughts about that social media platforms. These different situations cause the fact that it’s really hard to tell what’s going to happen in the future.