Welcome to the Odyssey 2020 –

Discover the Upcoming Social Media Trends

Social media is evolving faster than ever. People’s habits change, platforms follow those changes and evolve, and new platforms come to existence. All of this changes how people use or react to social media, as well as how marketers try to reach their audience. What is even more important is to have and understand this kind of data way before, so you can stay ahead in your social media strategy and planning.

According to the Global State of Digital report for 2019:

· The number of internet users worldwide in 2019 is 4.388 billion and up 9.1% year-on-year

· The number of social media users in 2019 is 3.484 billion and up 9% year-on-year

· The number of mobile phone users in 2019 is 5.112 billion, and up to 2% year on year.

With these statistics in mind, we really need to think about the importance of following the future trends of social media.

The importance of Security and privacy

Did you ever wonder how exactly the future of social media will look like?

According to the Facebook CEO Mark Zuckenberg “fundamentally more private experiences” will take a big part of the social media future. In his statement about social media’s future he said that he believes that the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services, where people can be confident about what they say to each other will stay secure and their messages and content won’t stick around forever.

Although Facebook doesn’t have a strong reputation in building privacy-protective services, he believes that platforms focused on private communication will be even more important to people than the platforms that are already build.

All social media platforms have security advantages and security risks. Unfortunately, the most popular platforms we use such as Skype or Facebook combine features that make them exceptionally risky. While the usage of social media brought us multiple advantages, the same exposure that we get from sharing content, commenting or messaging, can be noticed by hackers or stalkers which can bring certain risks too.

There is no such thing as a perfectly safe social network, but here is a list of the top 5 well-known platforms that support active users in their privacy concerns and are leaders in this future trend:

1. Telegram

2. WhatsApp

3. Reddit

4. Twitter

5. Youtube

A Pew Research Center survey revealed that the public has astonishingly low confidence in the abilities of their service to securely data. Only 9% of social media users feel the sites they use are trustworthy. This need brings new social media channels like ProtonMail, Cryptocat, Signal, Viber or Wire, which will open new ways of communication where the security and the privacy of your information will be a top priority.

Gate Keepers and Virtual Communities

It all started with the online communities from the early internet era, highly engaged but largely separate spaces. Then the mega-platforms came and brought all kinds of negative effects like ever-changing algorithms and pay-to-play costs, which changed many things. The user frustrations brought the resurrection of the communities again, this time in a different form. The rise of the niche social networks, messaging apps, and chat channels are here to stay. Gated areas within other platforms continue to grow in popularity among the younger generations that are in search of a more private corner of the internet.

Are you familiar with “finstas”?

The word “Finsta” comes from “fake” and “insta” and it’s used as a term to explain the existence of the secondary Instagram account used primarily by teens to post photos they don’t want to share on their primary accounts.

It maybe seems that “finsta” is a teens-only phenomenon, but this type of gated community opens to everyone because of the way it functions. It allows you to be as honest, liberal or broad-minded as you want, and the best thing is the only people that can see your content and the only people who know you’re “doing it”, are the people you’ve selected yourself.

Going back from Big to Small — the Niche Social Media Platforms

Although what the famous communication scientist Harrold Lasswel once said that — Communication is about Who says What in Which channel to Whom with What effects-still stays the same, things changed and the time when we were building our marketing strategy by using the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is long gone. Social media platforms are still a big thing, and every one of these platforms has millions and millions of users.

Even thou for many people this is a good thing, some users feel a bit lost in this crowd. They look for something a bit different, close to social media networks but more specialized in the things they’re interested in. They are looking for the community of their niche.

A niche is a specialized subset of a larger set, so a niche social media network is one that targets a select segment of the general population. These networks allow users to connect with fewer people who share the same interests, hobbies or professional associations.

Another way to look at niche social media networks is to understand that those networks make their money through paid advertising, so niche social media platforms represent a perfect place to advertise your business to your already made target audience. The more targeted audience is your conversion rates are going to be higher. So if you look for a specific place where your users spend their time, look for them on some of the many niche social media networks. From real estate, brokers, advocates, movie or music lover communities, to “dogsters” and “catsters”, believe me, the list goes on and on.

Virtual reality

Although a staggering 42% of the world’s population has at least one social media account, to stay at the top of the game, you must always fulfill user’s needs and constantly keep up with the latest trends. One of the questions that keep rising when it comes to social media future trends is:

“Is virtual reality the future of social media?”

Humans are visual creatures. Many of the newest features social media platforms offer are connected with pictures or video offerings. Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, WeChat and many other personal communication applications will use A.R in the near future, more than the Instagram and Snapchat filters that are already in use for their regular users.

The possibilities of technologies like AR and VR are endless for all of these social media platforms, but as for many things, it looks like Facebook is taking the biggest step by announcing a new massive, multi-user virtual world called “Horizon”. (this new virtual layer of the social media networks in beta in 2020, giving users tools to hang-out with other users, watch and create content).

The rise of the Social Machines

When we think of artificial intelligence (AI) we think of robots. That is how science fiction entertainment has formed our view of it. In reality, AI refers to any intelligent system that uses an algorithm so as to perform any mathematical computation.

In today’s information age the search for highly personalized content and more sophisticated systems for data processing is a demand for every social network.

Machine learning behind the scenes keeps working on moderation and data analysis but is becoming more visible in many of our online communities.

The rise of the social machines is here, but the question is in which ways are we as humans going to choose to interact with them.

There are many definitions and explanations of the term “Social Machine” but for the most part, social machines are viewed as systems that involve both social participation and technological mediation. That is why the target of the social machines research is connected with the social networking systems like Facebook, or the microblogging services offered by Twitter, even the collaborative authoring environments such as Wikipedia. (source — “Where the smart things are: social machines and the internet of things”).

The future is yet to come

As more and more people depend on modern technologies, using them to connect, the more social media will continue to evolve. Some social media platforms will gain more popularity, some will fade away.

Niche social platforms will perform well, Instagram may remove “Likes” Video content will dominate, user-generated content will continue to be popular… all of those trends have the potential to dominate the social media landscape in 2020, but don’t forget:

“It’s not all about the trends; it’s how you leverage those trends to your advantage”.