Do first impressions really count?
Close observation of the social networks over time seems to show that in a world where adoption and he number of active users are the key factors that separate winners from losers, most companies simply copy or incorporate into their services what has worked for their competitors.
For example, Facebook has incorporated multiple elements of Twitter, Twitter modifies its direct messages so that they look like instant messaging; Facebook is looking to repeat the success of Medium’s long-form-blogging; while Snapchat’s growth has put it on a collision course with Twitter, etc, etc.
But the development of each tool tends to have what we might call a very strong conceptual anchor in the original idea that set in motion its adoption. To all intents and purposes, many users continue seeing Facebook as a way to keep up with what our friends and family are doing, although in reality they use it to read the news, watch videos, and keep up with other trends.
When we think of Twitter, we still tend to associate it with what it was when we used it to see what the people we were following had to say, although these days it is a means to keep up to date with subjects that interest us, meaning that the criteria we apply as to who to follow has changed significantly.
Snapchat is still about self-destructing messages in most people’s minds, although it now offers a range of non-perishable options, as well as formats for reading news and even sending money to friends.
Medium, which started out as a way to write longer articles, is now trying to attract people who want to upload any kind of content, regardless of its length, with some success. As they grow, these social tools add new functions and develop others they started out with, but the initial idea that attracted us in the first place remains rooted in our minds
Providing access to the news is the main trend within the growing convergence taking place on the social networks. Becoming the platform to provide information to users is unarguably attractive, and influences the way people use the social networks. Twitter’s decision to move from asking what are you doing? to telling us what’s happening turned it into a resource that many of its users consider vital when it come to getting the latest news, and has certainly prompted Facebook’s Instant Articles and Snapchat’s Discover.
We’re talking here about first order social change: a society that used to use the television, radio and press to find out what’s going on in the world now gets that information from the social networks, only turning to the traditional media for background or greater depth, or when we still sit down to watch the evening news while we eat dinner, or listen to the radio in the car.
Pew Research has just issued a report about the development of Twitter and Facebook, and it highlights their quantitative importance: obviously, Twitter is less popular than Facebook: one in 10 Americans regards it as an essential source of news, while one in four says the same about Facebook.
In fact, Facebook has now taken Google over as the number one traffic source for news: at the beginning of 2014, Facebook accounted for just 20% of all the traffic from documented sources to the company’s network of media sites, and now it is more than double that. Leaving aside details such as perceptions that Twitter is best for the very latest news or that Facebook is seen as providing more general news, it’s clear that we are talking about gradual change and that it takes time to overcome those initial elements, which only highlights Facebook’s achievement in taking the lead as a provider of news.
In general, once a social network has found the value proposition that sets off mass adoption, it tends to stick with it, creating a perception based on our first impressions that can be very difficult to move away from.
How much of our use of the social networks on the internet are based on those initial clichés? How many of us continue to see those social networks in the same way we did initially, rather than making decisions about their possible use based on what they are now? Just how flexible are we when it comes to changing that first impression when we were introduced to a social network?
(En español, aquí)
