The future of social media experience
Social Media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook changed the way users interacted online! As Instagram completes 10 years, we decided to take a guess what the next generation of social media platforms could look like!
The present landscape of social media is dominated by Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Messenger, WeChat, Instagram, and TikTok. Owing to the market penetration of broadband internet and mobile connectivity in tier 2 and 3 cities, more than half of the world’s population today uses social media with numbers only rising. With such a huge potential audience to tap into, there is scope for a dozen more social media platforms offering an experience different than the other. This competition along with advancements in technology would keep fueling innovation and the way we use social media will keep evolving.
We at Pineapple Studio believe that social media has only left the footsteps of growth in the past years, and yet has had a large effect on human behavior. The dependency of human beings on social media and it’s quick access at our fingertips intrigues us to explore what it has in store for us.
Before we move further to discuss what the experience of social media would look like in the future, let’s briefly take a look at how it has evolved in the last decade.
How has social media evolved?
Adopting Videos
For a very long time since its emergence in 2005, YouTube had been the only video focussed platform. To date, it remains at the top for any long-form content. As direct competition to Vine, Instagram introduced video in addition to posting photos.
Seeing the success of Snapchat, Facebook adopted the stories feature in its suite of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp apps. Such short-lived ephemeral content works because of two reasons:
- The rawness of the content. As compared to long-form content, there is no barrier to entry of crafting or editing a video or a photo. This rawness helps in building trust and integrity.
- FOMO or fear of missing out. Due to its volatile nature, short-form content makes the user scratch the itch of missing it out later.
Recently, live video broadcasts have been the focus. Technology has allowed users to broadcast themselves live in real-time to millions of users at the click of a button. The candid nature of live videos fuels building connections at a deeper level.
All-in-all platforms have realized the importance of video, be it short-form, long-form, stories, or live.
Personalized feeds
As the number of social media users on these platforms increased, it was no more feasible to maintain feeds in a chronological timeline due to the huge influx of content. Feeds are now driven by algorithms and personalized to each user’s interests. This has also been the primary focus as it helps to generate ad revenue. It allows them to run ads targetted based on a user’s history, demographics, and interests.
What the future holds for Social Media
Social Commerce
A lot of our product discovery today happens on social media through influencers and ads. All social media platforms will try to capitalize on making this a holistic experience by allowing the users to complete the purchase and make the payment without them needing to leave the app. Instagram already allows tagging products and even make in-app purchases in case of a few brands like Nike. Ads already being targetted based on our data will close more sales. Walmart buying stake in TikTok further ascertains social commerce’s future success. Good designs will bridge the gap between the world of social media and e-commerce, ensuring that this customer journey from product discovery to product purchase is effortless.
Community
Unveiling a redesign in April 2019, Facebook announced that it will be focussing more on groups. People feel more comfortable sharing in groups than publicly. People like to be a part of communities of their interests. Platforms will focus on improving this intimate user experience. With more people on the internet than not, private communication on social media would allow users to find their voice and space.
Wearables and voice
Over the last decade, social media platforms have predominantly adopted a mobile-first approach. Wearable technology is seeing great advancements especially in the case of smartwatches. However, presently they mainly cater to just receiving notifications. It’s only a matter of time when the wearable technology would become mainstream, and new social media platforms would emerge embracing this change. New micro-interactions and gestures will have to be designed as the screen real-estate would be very small. Voice interactions will become an important choice of input in cases where touch input is limited. You would be able to quickly reply to someone’s message by speaking to the mic of your wearable, without needing to pull out your phone from your pocket. A lot of un-learning would be required for designing VUIs (Voice User Interfaces) of the future as our present knowledge of UI relies on visual cues, triggers, and feedbacks.
AR and VR
There’s only so much you can experience on a 2D screen. AR/VR changes that by adding more depth to what you can perceive through social media and hence giving you an immersive user experience. With this 3D experience, all kinds of interactions would be different than what exists today. Slowly the dependence on smartphone screens will decrease. People would be able to share and express their experiences on social media in a more realistic way than just posting pictures and videos. Friends would hang out together on virtual meetups and live concerts while staying in different cities. Brands and influencers promoting products on social media would be able to give users an in-store experience of the product digitally. Authenticity would then become a criterion for them, and they’d be able to gain more user trust in-turn. The gap between your identity and your social presence would keep getting narrow as shown in the sci-fi drama Black Mirror. The tech has evolved for AR with smartphone cameras and eye-wear, and for VR with headsets.
Conclusion
I believe the experience of social media in the future would be very enriching for us. We would move away from staring and typing on our glass slab smartphones. This addiction would slowly fade and we’ll start using social media mindfully for its true purpose of building and maintaining connections and relationships, than just trying to maintain an image of ourselves online. Artificial intelligence would allow us to have more of a human-to-human experience with our devices, voice interfaces especially.
The world has already become a small place and we’ll continue to grow closer to each other in a mutually beneficial environment. I’m very optimistic about how social media will not only improve our experiences with it positively but also our experiences offline.
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