There continues to be innovative and interesting developments in the social landscape. I’ve been an observer and analyzer of how people behave on social for 7 years now, both from a personal perspective and in my professional work.
What first intrigued me about social in the beginning (by beginning I mean Xanga and Myspace) and continues to interest me today is HOW people communicate on social platforms and how it EVOLVES our real life communication.
Beyond just allowing us to share photos and update what we’re doing, social platforms are forever changing the way we dialogue with one another.
This change of dialogue is something that shouldn’t be taken likely...as what we share on digital…changes how we share in person.
Ponder this:
When was the last time you talked to a friend about the TV show that was on last night?
and
When was the last time you talked to a friend about a photo your mutual friend posted on Instagram?
In the olden days we used to gather around the “water cooler” at the office to talk about our favorite TV show or current events. The water cooler represented a central conversational gather place for small groups of people.
Today however, over and over again I find my wife and our mutual friends breaking out into full conversations about what our friends post on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. These types of dialogues happen offline when we’re together and we are having similar conversation in the digital space on platforms through group messaging — usually this conversation is dominated by visuals (screen shots of other photos, etc)
Our mutual friend’s social content has replaced traditional media in our daily conversations with our group of friends.
The challenge is — we need a “social” water cooler to gather around to have this dialogue.
We need a social platform that encourages and allows this type of intimate and private group conversation.
The race to group conversation/messaging is the most important innovation in social in 2013.
Every single social channel is trying to get there and at an increasingly rapid rate. Consider what’s happened in the past year around group and private messaging
- Facebook introduces and updates a stand alone messaging app
- Snapchat comes to the forefront as one of the most popular messaging apps
- Line is exploding overseas
- Facebook tried to unsuccessfully acquire Snapchat
- Twitter announced the ability to DM anyone and this week the ability to send photos over DM
- Today, Instagram introduced the ability send photos directly to friends rather than share with everyone (which is Facebook’s direct response to Snapchat denying their acquisition)
There has been a massive shift in the past 18 months about how we communicate with one another on social media…
The future isn’t conversation with everyone, it’s conversation with the people we care about.
The future is a gathering place, or a “social water cooler” for us to communicate around. Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc are desperately trying to be that destination, to be THE social messaging platform.
In many cases, most of this group, water cooler style dialogue is occurring via text messaging. However texting costs money for users and as messaging app features continue to enhance and outpace what texting offers, I have no doubt that people will shift usage into social messaging apps for private and group conversations.
What’s unpredictable at this moment is: what platform will win the messaging game? For the one that does win, how will they monetize it without alienating users? What role does a brand (or advertiser) have in private messaging between users?
What is predictable is that it’s sure to be an exciting ride and that nothing, absolutely nothing will stay the same.
The platforms and brands that evolve the quickest to customers ever changing communication behavior will survive.
