The 7 Trendiest Social Media Platforms to Date
The lessons we can learn about how dominant social platforms emerge and then disappear into irrelevance.
I’d like to preface this post with the chart below. It shows the relative popularity of different social media sites based on Google Trends search data.
Each of these platforms was selected based on popular culture, economic status, and well… nostalgia.
The trend line for each single platform is based off how popular the site was in the United States at any point in time from June 2004 to June 2018. This popularity ranking is based on the site’s historical peak popularity (represented by a rating of 100 at the top of the graph).
Basically, top of the chart is when the site was post talked about, and the bottom is when it was least.
Some sites are past their peak. Some are at their peak right now. You’ll also see how a few peaked during the establishment of the social media frontier.
In this post, I’ll try to encapsulate each platform in 1 sentence, and then look to form an explanation of how the popularity or downfall of the platform came to be.
Let’s jump right into it.
Myspace — Peaked in Summer ‘07
Started a friendship with Tom, made your own space, and then left.
For the most part, Myspace was the first social media experience for a lot of internet users.
Hopping on the site, updating your Top 8, and copy pasting HTML codes so you can have the sickest background.
I’ve asked many people what was so special about Myspace? Originally I thought maybe it was just a “right-place right-time” kind of success.
Could it have been so popular because it was one of the first of its kind? Just maybe.
However, the resounding opinion from those that I’ve asked seemed to be that Myspace’s allure came from the personalization and customization features of the platform.
Myspace Tom, if you’re out there reading, thanks for giving the internet a space they could make truly their own. Even if only for a moment.
Facebook — Peaked in Winter ‘12
Connecting with family and old friends so that you can argue about politics.
Facebook launched in 2004, and gained enough momentum to dethrone Myspace with its promise of being exclusive to ivy league universities. Eventually Facebook dropped that shtick when it realized it was ready to take over the world.
The platform originally stood as an outlet for sharing photos and your relationship status with friends. Although, that type of content has taken the backseat to promoted videos, fake news, and privacy scandals.
No matter where the landscape of social media takes us, we’ll all remember the story of Mark Zuckerberg in his Harvard dorm room, throwing together a website that would become the first to sign up 1/3 of the Earth’s population.
Twitter — Peaked in Summer ‘12
Fitting everyone’s dumb thoughts into 140 characters.
There’s a simplicity that comes with Twitter that hasn’t seemed to have left it over the years. Even when it’s character limit changed from it’s iconic 140 characters to 280, engagement increased while the Tweet length remained the same.
It seems there’s something to say about Twitter’s ethos, as well as the intentions of the community.
When we are speaking with someone, and they’re droning on about this and that, we tend to mentally checkout. Instead, Twitter culture cultivates banter that is absorbable in short bursts which can produce some of the Internet’s most viral content.
Twitter’s “What’s happening?” prompt when writing a Tweet is a call for us to live in the now.
Twitter’s peak came just before Facebook’s, during a time where the two companies were duking it out to see who could capture our status best.
Looking at Facebook’s prompt of “What’s on your mind?” seems to enable the user to explore their thoughts without the guidelines of past, present, or future.
It doesn’t seem that Twitter is going to ever define what a status should be, and they shouldn’t.
Although, lately users like Trump and Kanye have ushered in a Tweet wave that could best rephrase Twitter’s status prompt as, “Say the first thing that comes to mind, GO!”
Reddit — Currently at Peak Popularity
A community for any topic, as long as the mods approve.
I’ve seen first-hand the exodus of users from Facebook and onto Reddit.
Why? Because Facebook is getting cluttered with more and more of the content we don’t want to see.
For anyone unfamiliar with Reddit, it’s a community based forum where each community is centered on a topic and is moderated by admins of the community. Instead of dropping “likes” on a post, users upvote and downvote posts and comments (yes, a post can go completely in the negative like this comment from EA about Star Wars Battlefront).
Reddit is the #5 Most Visited site in the United States, with the average user spending over a whopping 14 minutes on the site daily according to Alexa.com.
To put this in perspective:
Facebook averages a tad over 10 minutes. Youtube (where content is centered around watching videos) averages just under 9 minutes.
According to Alexa, out of the top 50 sites in the United States, Reddit’s average daily usage per user ranks #3 behind Saleforce and well… Xvideos.
By far one of the most inviting features of Reddit is its anonymity. Where on Instagram and Facebook, users are expected to post as they should be, Reddit is a place where individuals can post as who they are.
For this reason, you’ll get revealing discussions on Reddit that you wouldn’t be able to find elsewhere, and that may just be one of the driving reasons why Reddit is so popular right now.
Although, for the same reason, the platform has enabled hate groups to create their own bubbles where they can post their opinions freely. Reddit has been cracking down on this more and more, either by banning whole communities or removing communities from their frontpage.
As more users join Reddit, we’ll just have to sit back and watch what this community of many communities will become.
Google Plus — Peaked in Summer ‘11
Something that could have caught on, but now just gets forced upon us.
I’ll keep this point brief, if you ever find yourself wondering “What’s a bad idea for a social media platform”, think Google Plus.
In the Summer of ’11, Google launched their take at a social media platform, with a twist at launch that proved both enticing and ultimately condemning: Exclusivity.
Google required that upon signing up, a user needed to be invited by someone who was already a Google Plus user. While this was exciting for those looking to gain access to the exclusive platform, many realized that once they got access, they didn’t have any friends online to talk to because they didn’t have access yet.
Thus, Google Plus users signed on to a blank site with no connections, and subsequently signed off.
The only reason Google Plus has remained relevant is because Google has forced everyone with any Youtube, Gmail or Google subsidiary account to use the defective platform to sign up.
What should be even more shocking is that this chart is derived from Google Trends data, so…
Google Plus isn’t even a popular search term on its own Search Engine.
And that’s the story of the flame then fizzle that is Google Plus.
Instagram — Currently at Peak Popularity
Get double-tapped on photos and videos of you looking like your best you… or on cat photos.
Instagram at this moment is at an all-time peak popularity status, which may seem surprising considering the platform is nearly 8 years old.
Many attribute Instagram’s continued success to users moving away from its parent platform Facebook as well as the mass-departure that came from Snapchat’s recent unpopular UI updates.
Still, Instagram’s success may have more to do with its driving mission.
Instagram has grown more and more popular year-over-year because their focus has remained on their media content: photos and videos.
This mission was especially evident in the design overhaul Instagram underwent in 2016, where they ditched all the colors in the app’s UI and replaced them with black text and icons over a simple white background.
— Sarah Perez, TechCrunch
Instagram has done a great job as remaining simple in terms of functionality as well, only introducing new features as a means to wipe out a competitor.
- During the 2013 peak popularity of the 6-second video app Vine, Instagram went from photo-only to allowing users to post 15 second videos.
- In August of 2016, Instagram launched Stories as a means to compete with Snapchat’s enormous popularity. *cough DJ Khaled cough*
- Last month, June of 2018, Instagram launched IGTV to capture the creators leaving Youtube because of demonitization-gate.
It’s clear that Instagram’s hyper-focus has helped them to stay on task with providing users a platform to post their photos and videos, while simultaneously crushing any competitors that threaten their space.
Snapchat — Peaked in Fall ‘15
Captured the here and now, but failing to capture our attention.
Snapchat’s recent fall from grace seems centered around changing its presentation too much.
Where user’s Snapchat Stories were once simply a swipe to the right and listed in chronological order, came an update where stories of your friends were separated from celebrities and… jumbled all around. Seriously, there’s no good way to describe the mess they created.
This resulted in an environment that impeeding user’s ability to see their friend’s stories, and left celebrities like Kyle Jenner angry enough to wipe $1 billion off of Snapchat’s value upon her exit from the app.
The platform launched in 2011 and grew to popularity from its ability to send pictures that self-destruct. When the Story functionality was unveiled in 2013, the app went from Messenger to Social Media.
A lot of Snapchat’s problems have come from a constant tug-of-war between becoming more robust while trying to remain simple.
Snapchat may see further decline as many users have accepted alternatives to the platform. I think I’d like to leave everyone with one big takeaway I’ve learned about these social platforms:
If your offering is simple, keep your presentation of it simple.
Bonus Round
I thought that I would break down a few other services briefly. While Youtube is a massive platform with over 1 Billion users, I left it out of the original list so that I could compare it with other video services such as Twitch and Vine.
Tumblr also made the original cut, however I thought that the creative element of the platform (but also it’s lack of popularity as of late) would pair it nicely with Pinterest.
And well, LinkedIn was just too professional for me to put in the original lineup.
So, let’s knock out some one liners for these quickly.
Youtube — Peaked in Spring ‘10
Making videos with friends becomes making them for a living, and then not making a living anymore.
Vine — Peaked in Fall ‘13
6 seconds of randomness, breeding viral sensations that have lived long beyond the app’s lifespan; RIP.
Twitch — Current at Peak Popularity
Have you heard of Fortnite yet?
Tumblr — Peaked in Summer ‘13
Blogging taken to the next level of customization, then taken over by Yahoo!
Pinterest — Peaked in Spring ‘12
Pin those arts & crafts or that interior design, but make sure you log in first.
LinkedIn — Peaked in Summer ‘15
The “Business in the Front” to the social media “Party in the Back”
Now with all this retrospection in mind, how do you feel about the social platforms you use? Did I leave any out that you’d like to see more about?
Feel free to leave a response below, and applause is always appreciated!
Also, if you’re looking to put together the next big thing, check out Rocket & Mouse.
