Remember when Peach was supposed to be an up and coming social media platform? What’s Peach you ask? I think that answers your question.
Remember when Snapchat was going to takeover the social media world? Yeah, we remember that too.
When it comes to social media, we are always wanting something new and exciting to catch our eyes. The millennial generation, 18-34 year olds, tend to use social media more often than others and they, myself included, tend to want something new whenever possible otherwise we get bored and move on to the next product. So what can we as social media professionals to keep up with the latest trends while also ensuring that we are maximizing our return on investment?
All of this makes sense as there is always some sort of new social media technology that is coming out and we are becoming accustomed to seeing these new platforms. If one platform becomes stagnant it is going to quickly lose ground. Is it a coincidence that Twitter has experimented with hosting live streams of NFL games on their platform? Is it a coincidence that they also recently decided to up their character limit from 140 to 280? It doesn’t seem likely as they are looking to generate buzz around their platform in order to stay relevant with consumers who are always craving something more.
The whole Instagram vs. Snapchat debate is the perfect example. People were flocking to Snapchat left and right in 2016 and brands were quick to follow as they looked to maximize their exposure on the platform that seemed to be gaining a lot of traction. And then out of nowhere, Instagram comes along and creates stories for their platform as well and everyone began to think, “What is Instagram doing? They are directly copying Snapchat. Is this really sustainable?” However, the ability to post high quality images and videos directly to a consumer’s and brand’s profile gave Instagram an edge. A few months later and Instagram took Snapchat’s stories idea and not only matched the quality, but made it exponentially better. Meanwhile, Snapchat is continuing to see their stock price dive and are struggling to stay alive.
The moral of the story is that social media is ever involving and we must continue to follow the platforms as well as experiment with those that may be up and coming. Are we going to come across a platform like Peach that is popular for 48 hours and then immediately dies? Of course, but is something that we must monitor just in case it does become popular. It is easy to see which brands took advantage of Instagram stories once they became public and then it is also easy to see which brands ignored the new feature until the very last minute.
As Facebook continues to implement new features such as the Facebook Marketplace and Facebook Watch, does this mean that we could see the likes Craigslist and Netflix begin to suffer since Facebook is coming up with a new way to essentially execute their product? We can’t be sure, but it is an interesting thought. If this is the case, brands will want to make sure they are one of the first to capitalize on these new futures in order for them to stay relevant in the digital and social world.
(Picture via TechCrunch)