The future of social networks will not include your friends.
Social Networks as you know them group people around relationships. You friend or follow someone because you know them, work with them, met them at a party, and so on.
To a large extent, the problem of connecting one’s self to people in this way has been solved. Facebook, Path, Twitter, Instagram: these services all offer different ways to express and communicate with the people you already know, i.e. your social graph [1].
But, there are still other problems to be solved in this space. Untapped opportunities await beyond your existing social connections. Companies that see this potential in grouping people together in ways that don’t include your social graph will be the big winners.
Here are a few examples of this trend playing out in apps that are seeing major growth and engagement, and it’s all taking place exclusively on mobile [2]:
Knotch
“The Opinion Network” — users rank topics (like The Walking Dead or Cheeseburgers) in color from hot to cold. Whereas only some of your friends might share your interests, users on Knotch express their opinions to audiences that inherently care about the topic at hand. Knotch sees the average user returning over 10 times per day [3]. (knotch.it)
Whisper
“The anonymous social network” — users post secrets (in the form of images with overlaid text) to public locations, with a layer of imposed anonymity. Whisper averages 2.5 billion views per day, and the average daily user visits Whisper for 30 minutes [4]. (www.whisper.sh)
Rando
Users post a single photo that is delivered randomly to another random user in the world. But, you don’t know who received it, only their general location. For every photo you share, you get one from a different random user somewhere in the world. Just 2 months after launching, Rando saw over 5 million photos shared through their app [4].(http://www.ustwo.co.uk/blog/introducing-rando/)
These apps share a common thread: they provide new and different distribution channels of people for you to interact with. Those channels have already proven of tremendous value to users. It seems a logical step that they will also prove valuable to brands and advertisers as well.
While current social networks solidify your social graph, these companies are charting new waters and leveraging other criteria to better connect you to new groups of people around the world.
Our app, Fleck, shares a similar approach by connecting creatives and artists based on shared interests. On Fleck, you follow topics instead of people. No more #selfies or #breakfastburritos when all you really want to see are photos of Street Art or Typography. It’s a simpler, focused way to share photos around the topics you care most about, with people you normally would never come across. You just tell Fleck the topics you are into, and a global community is waiting.
We launched recently with just a few topics geared towards fashion and design, and we are seeing 30% of our users contributing photos, a metric we are really excited about. We would love for you to check it out and give us your feedback. Fleck can be downloaded for iOS at www.getfleck.com/download.
Have any thoughts on this trend or what we’re building? Are you working on a product that fits this trend? Drop me an email: rory[at]getfleck[dot]com—I’d love to chat.
- Yes, apps like Twitter, Instagram and even Pinterest let you follow people you don’t actually know, like celebrities and tastemakers. We would argue it’s still a social connection albeit one-sided.
- Besides mobile usage exploding in growth, and these devices being accessible to users wherever they go, further rationalizations for these apps to be mobile only is fodder for another post.
- http://www.forbes.com/sites/limyunghui/2013/04/28/the-color-of-rants-and-raves-on-knotch-opinion-network/
- http://allthingsd.com/20130802/im-so-over-oversharing-on-making-our-digital-lives-more-real/
- http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/you-know-whats-cool-5-million-randos/
