Is Social Media Too Social?
‘Is Social Media Too Social?’
It may sound ridiculous to question social media being too social. However I believe it has some points that we have to consider about social media these days.
The representative example of social media that is used worldwide is Facebook. And Facebook was also one of the most important platforms for setting the current format of social media. However when we think of the social media of its early stage format, it had different characteristics from what it is right now.
The story that Facebook started from choosing the ‘Hotter’ person between two people is a famous story. And also at the beginning the platform was restricted to certain schools only. It means my connections were focused on the people who I may actually know in ‘real life’. So even if I write down my information or post something on my Facebook Wall, it did not feel like I am exposing my information to unknown people on the internet. So the post’s characteristics were closer to me, myself, having a personal space that my close friends can take a look on. There was no need for finding some trending challenges online, or putting efforts such as recording with hundreds of trials to make your contents more enjoyable to anyone.
Now social media is not for me, but for my followers
However now, ‘going viral’ became one of the most important factors in posting contents. For this, various challenges are showing up everyday, and of course the story in the content is not about my ordinary life anymore. The purpose of uploading is not for me but for my followers, with stories that my followers would like. So to post on social media, it’s becoming harder to upload something you already have in your phone’s gallery. But you have to check the trends and record a new video in proper quality, requiring multiple trials of shooting and lots of editing process as well. And of course not all of the users are good at making this enjoyable content. Those people who are especially good at creating these contents are called Influencers, and the social platform is adapting to a space for these people, such as Tik Tok.
This increase of viral contents may be an unavoidable change in the social platform. With the changes of content’s format in social media, from text to photo and now to video, video has many features that can be spread easier and faster. First, it is less influenced by the language. Compared to text, in video it has smaller language barriers and unlike photo it does not require additional explanation in text below. Also video passes information in the limited amount of time, the duration of the video — which has been getting shorter on various platforms. So regardless of the viewers, users receive the information in the same amount of time, even in an easier format. So this ability to contain enjoyable content in video became an important factor, not only making the term ‘influencer’ but now even treated as the new trending job.
Are people getting lost in social media?
However the key that I would like to point out is that “Not everyone wants to be an influencer”. We all know that the first generation social media’s target audience were not the influencers at the beginning. So with the changes of the dominant platform, from MySpace to Facebook, Instagram, and now Tik Tok or Youtube, most of the people who used the earlier platform joined the new social media group as they kept growing. However although they may have accounts in the emerging platforms, they are not used to this influencer friendly space.
While they often posted something in social media before, now it is becoming more difficult to upload something in the same space. There may be many reasons but the biggest is the changes of the platform’s characteristics — easier spread of the contents and more reveal for the viral / trending contents in the platform. So now they just watch the contents without uploading something, leading to reduction of the role from “Producer & Consumer” to “Consumer Only”. While the influencers or those who want to be influencers are actively posting contents in the platform, posting way more actively even compensating several hundreds of non-influencer users upload counts, still the platform does not serve the needs of non-influencer’s uploading demands. This reduction of the role is happening not by the users’ will itself, but forced by the changes of the platforms.
Social Media for Non-Influencers?
Thus still there should be some space that the non-influencers can post something without any entry barrier. However it does not necessarily mean we have to go back to the older version of social media. These users are also used to the new trending videos by consuming the influencers well made contents. And ignoring these transitions to video contents in the social media industry, where all the trends are most quickly reflected, is going to be a risky choice to be positioned as the next social media. So to be the proper social media for the non-influencers but not something out of trend, these users should be able to create proper quality video contents. Video editing in mobile apps has developed enormously, but still it is difficult to get used to the controlling system in full usage especially for the non-influencers.
So the key is going to be producing guaranteed proper quality video contents regardless of the type of videos and also with less efforts. It is going to be an extremely challenging task but that is what we are trying now. I am aware that the purpose of this post is not for the promotion of our app. But still as a founder of the company, for my responsibility to take care of it, I am leaving the link of our product in the post. (More details about our app will be posted in another one).
As one of the unwillingly lost users in social media these days, I hope some companies solve this problem with new proper social media. It shouldn’t be necessarily dealing with videos, like the idea of using audio in Clubhouse and its fast user acquisition is truly glad news. But easy video editing for these non-influencers and providing a proper space for them is also going to be a big challenge that someone has to solve.
And of course hoping that solves the problem to be us… desperately :)
