Non-chronological social media feeds: Love it? Hate it? Doesn’t matter, they’re here to stay
We’ve lived through it all. You open up your favorite social media app and notice something odd. The first piece of content is from days ago. You scroll down and the second post was posted 30 minutes ago, and the next one is 4 hours ago. You think something is wrong and then you find out it’s an update the app publisher just pushed out.
And then you tell yourself, I’m stopping social media. We all know how that goes. The urge to check kicks back in. Fast forward to a few days later, you notice you’re on it longer than you usually are. Wait what? You’re using it for longer now, isn’t that a good thing?
We won’t get into the dangers of social media and the effects it has, but this is better for everyone. For the end consumer, the app publisher, and the advertisers.
If the end consumer is using the app for longer periods of time, that means they’re enjoying the content on there. The social media company uses this to their advantage and sells it in their pitch to advertisers who want as many people to see their ads. The longer the user is on that platform, more data is being stored on what the user likes/dislikes.
The more people spend time on social media, the more ads they see, and the more money for the social media company.
If you’re a marketer and behind the decision to make a feed chronological or personalized, you wouldn’t ever think of keeping your feed chronological. You get more data, more clients, more consumers, and more people enjoying the overall experience.
Sure, a lot of people say bring back the chronological feed or else they’ll quit, but we all know that’s not going to happen. Social media platforms do whatever they want because they can. It is a free platform, after all, we’re not paying for anything. When we don’t pay for something, we become the product. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s how Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Snapchat, Google, and more companies run now. It’s in their business model to sell you as many ads as possible while also making sure you’re enjoying your time on their platform.
That comes at risks though, as we saw with Snapchat. They recently changed their app UI and received a massive outcry. We do see why they did it, but many didn’t. Someone started a petition that now has over 1.2 million signatures to go back to the old design. Too bad nothing will change, since the CEO of Snapchat, Evan Spiegel, stated the redesign is here to stay. When none of your customers are paid customers, it’s very tough to listen to their feed back since your main objective is to make money and retain advertisers, who are your only “paying” customers.
Like the saying goes, everyone follows the money. We also saw how YouTube stopped paying massive contributors to their platform only because the content they pushed out did not meet advertiser standards.
If you really want the chronological feed back, there’s one way to do it, and that is to get people to pay. We asked our followers on Instagram if they would pay for social media and if they would pay for a chronological feed option. The results show that majority of people don’t want to pay for social media, and even if they got the chronological feed back, it isn’t that intriguing for them to pay.
But it would be interesting to see if these social media platforms have a free and paid tier like Spotify and other music streaming services. With Spotify, there are over 70 million paying subscribers and 70 million users who don’t pay as of January 2018. Around 80 percent of Spotify subscribers began as free users, Daniel Ek, the CEO and co-founder of Spotify, said in an interview back in 2015. From 20% paying customers back then, the rate changed to 37% in March 2017 and then to 50% in January 2018.
Back then, not a lot of people were used to streaming. Everyone used to buy or download music for free. Fast forward to today, you see millions of customers signing up for music streaming services, and a lot more than usual numbers of people paying for them. Right now social media is free, but going forward, we don’t know if society will get used to social media being paid for. Of course, comparing the social media industry to the music industry is not the best way to do it, since music has always needed someone to pay for it, whereas social media has always been free.
But the possibility is still plausible. A lot can change in just 10 years. Industries can get disrupted easily, look at the massive successes of Spotify, Uber, Airbnb, and many more. Not only that, but a lot of companies are starting to offer their products and services by subscriptions only. Gone are the days where people pay for something once. Adobe used to have standalone apps that can be bought once and used forever, but now we have Adobe Creative Cloud which comes with multiple programs for a monthly fee. Can you imagine key features like higher quality images, no ads, and high-quality content access being introduced as a paid tier to users? I surely see that happening, and personally, I wouldn’t mind paying for them. But everyone is different.
We can see that with people who prefer iCloud email vs Gmail. Both are free, but one is for everyone, and the other is for people who only pay for an Apple device. Gmail is known to read through data for advertisers while iCloud is completely free of Ads. With iCloud, Apple is making money through their devices and through iCloud upgrades such as more storage. With Gmail, anyone can sign up. iCloud only has 5GB free while Gmail has 15GB. How is it that a free product has more storage? That’s because the data is very valuable. Consumers concerned with privacy usually tend to go for the paid option because; a) they don’t enjoy ads, and b) they don’t want their information being sold or shared.
Which is fair, especially when you see how Facebook tracks every single move you make on their platform. There is a Google Chrome/Firefox extension called Data Selfie which analyzes your Facebook usage and exports the same data Facebook sends to advertisers. Watch this video to see how you data is extracted from usage tracking. After watching this video, ask yourself, are you still on the edge of not paying for social media, or did you change your mind and figure paying for it might sound like a good idea?
This puts social media platforms in a very tough position because if users aren’t willing to pay, how else can they survive while making a profit? The only way is to continue their current strategy, and that includes sticking with the non-chronological feed for now. It’ll be exciting to see what happens in the future, but for now, enjoy the post on your feed from 5 days ago, just make sure it’s not a picture of your crush!
Written By: Ayman Jaddaa, RMA Vice President Creative
