Social Media Trends of 2020
At the WOM Protocol and YEAY app we are always looking at how the consumption of apps and content ecosystems are evolving. How consumers and young people use apps differently is changing the world and how our attention is shared globally and digitally.
2020 is going to be an exciting fresh year for social media and its content as apps evolve as digital natives mature in their consumption preferences.
So let’s take a dive into some of the trends we are noticing in the wacky world of social media, apps, content, and attention.
1. The Future of the Meme Will Evolve
In 2019 we saw musical.ly inspired TikTok videos trend and memes evolve across the internet in GIFs in chat and on networks like Imgur, Reddit, Twitter, Weibo and all across the ever-changing apps.
Gen Z oriented ecosystems like Twitch, Snapchat, Imgur and Bilibili show a lot of innovation based on their maturing understanding of their audience. Imgur, for example, is launching a gaming meme-app.
As visual storytelling continues to evolve, the way content perks our attention and the way content goes viral and even how we express sentiment is being changed by the meme culture of GenZ.
2. Blockchain Content Proliferation Ecosystems Will Grow
As content platforms seek more authentic and trusted platforms, blockchain’s impact on the future of social sharing and word of mouth will evolve as well. The YEAY app will be the first app to launch on the WOM Protocol to promote honest recommendations and ad-free experiences.
As GenZ is using peer-to-peer sharing more in micro video the way word of mouth is expanding for brands, app partners and more trusted audited influencers means blockchain could finally impact app culture in a more significant way in 2020.
3. The Global Community Increases
As more of the developing world get access to the internet, how content works on the internet also changes. Today there are 2.46 billion people on social media. And as eMarketer reports, that number is only going to get bigger.
This means as some Western countries leave apps like Facebook’s blue app and other legacy networks, people in Africa and parts of Asia are joining them for the first time, changing their communities, groups and interactions.
In 2020, we expect to see further diversification of content niches, which we can already notice with GenZ who are very savvy app consumers. Gen Z as digital natives are more interested in highly specialized niche content apps and platforms, rather than huge social media platforms with sprawling algorithms and outdated news feeds.
4. Encrypted Chat and Private Groups Are Consolidated
When in March 2019 Mark Zuckerberg spoke about a pivot to privacy for Facebook, he wasn’t kidding. While Facebook has gotten into dating and extended E-commerce efforts on IG, Facebook is all about the chat experiences even with their new Portal devices. From Facebook Marketplace, to Groups, to Events, to Facebook dating — it’s all about leading consumers to successful one-to-one personal chat experiences.
With well over 2 billion users, Facebook has become a private chat utility. It’s unclear if in 2020 Snapchat, TikTok or anyone else can compete with Facebook, not just for its network size and global penetration, but the value proposition of being a leader in private encrypted chat with Messenger, WhatsApp and niche chat interactions that have a universal utility to consumers.
5. Influencer Marketing Will Have to Adjust to the Hidden Likes
At the end of 2019 Instagram and Facebook decided to start to hide likes on posts. This makes it more difficult for aspirational micro-influencers to show their value to businesses while earning a side hustle for their follower growth and the “social proof” impact of the value they offer. Many in marketing believe this is actually Facebook forcing businesses and brands to use Ads over influencers. It certainly has Influencers on Instagram worried and could impact their income.
As influencer marketing grew up in the 2015 to 2019 period, sponsored content and black-hat means to growth-hack influence also became common, something which Instagram is trying to clean up. Yet creators and influencers are possibly less happy with Instagram and YouTube than ever before for a constantly changing algorithm and stricter rules.
6. Decentralized Groups Adding Value on Reddit
As the crypto winter and crypto bans took shape, the concept of “decentralization” took a downgrade in 2019. However social networks representing a soft form of decentralization, like Reddit, are still doing well according to recent statistics.
Reddit has provided an overview this week of its key performance stats and milestones for 2019 as part of its year in review, including 430 million monthly active users (a +30% YoY increase). Reddit is also an exceedingly proactive network for real dialogues and interactions taking place, as can be seen by the post to comment ratio.
- 199 million posts
- 1.7 billion comments
- 32 billion upvotes
Reddit, therefore, shows a more “human” network where real interactions instead of algorithms appear to predominate. That has a more “decentralized” value proposition that appeals more to the under 35 Millennial and GenZ crowd.
7. Augmented Word of Mouth Will Drive Influencer Marketing Forward
We all want to consume content that’s more authentic, honest and real. Many of the meta-trends we are seeing in social media are to reduce fake, sponsored content and algorithmic feeds in exchange for stories (video), micro video and more trustworthy content from sources that are close to us, such as our peers, coworkers, real friends, and genuine word-of-mouth recommendations.
Augmented WOM = More Honest Content.
Blockchain tech, authenticators and better audited and regulated networks will create a more genuine brand, product, experience and lifestyle recommendations. Social media is evolving to the point where a new kind of word of mouth that’s more honest will be able to take place. This is the mission statement of the WOM Protocol.
More honest ecosystems that are better regulated for authenticity are necessary to improve trust in networks that intersect with our niche interests but also provide authentic value across content, without bad actors that game the system or bot-like behavior that has become prominent in the 2016 to 2019 period of mobile app usage.
8. Chat and Video Native Apps have Become the New Social Media
A major trend outline by services such as SensorTower show the top apps of 2019 are mostly related to chat and video, such as WhatsApp and TikTok showing global dominance in terms of downloads in the millions.
As video, gaming and chat have become primary ecosystems for micro-interactions in chat, the apps and platforms that best combine them tend to do very well — such as Facebook, ByteDance and Snapchat Inc that are all increasing their global advertising market share.
The exodus from news feed based social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are real as users seek more personal interactions on chat and entertainment experiences in video storytelling (emphasis on creative experience) such as in TikTok and on YouTube. This shows mobile is becoming more niche, private and experiential, in line with the preferences of digital native GenZ consumers and mobile natives in particular.
TikTok in 2019 beat Instagram by wide margins across both Apple and Google channels, showing how experiential and creative media is outperforming even the story-based micro video sharing that Instagram and Facebook products are replicating and cloning.
The rise of chat, creative video and music memes shows an increase in experiential preferences among GenZ. Chat apps were the new social media in 2019, continuing the trend of many previous years.
9. Ephemeral Content or “Eye Candy Content” Increases
TikTok videos are 15-second clips that keep us dazzled with short term rewards, and this kind of glance content for substantially shorter mobile attention systems should continue in the manner of Instagram stories and Snapchat filters.
Why does ephemeral content endure? It’s because users are spending more sessions of shorter duration on their favorite apps as our attention changes along with digital transformation.
In the epiphone of glance content, memes, GIFs, filters and lenses, the creative and interactive video of TikTok truly does seem like the new wave and viral content is increasingly of this variety.
10. Marketers Will Need to Turn to GenZ Apps to Reach Young Consumers
TikTok and Snapchat should have great years in 2020 for advertising since the GenZ niche is notoriously hard to reach, even as Instagram tries to create a healthier user experience. The rise of niche apps, new platforms, Esports, game streaming, and chat focused young people means the stickiest apps for young people will be those that are the most fun and that can retain the peers of cohort.
Increasing ad-spend on GenZ and niche apps that favor digital native behavior means a diversification of mobile add spend as digital natives continue to alter their social media behavior.
11. Social Commerce Will Find New Paths to Purchase
From Pinterest going IPO to Instagram commerce trying to innovate to TikTok finding use cases for product search and E-commerce, 2020 is shaping up to be an important year for “social commerce”.
Buying directly via social media apps may become more common. Some analysts suspect that Social commerce is well on its way to becoming a mainstream retail channel on par with other mediums like websites and offline stores. Our own app, YEAY, combines peer-to-peer recommendations with products, brands and lifestyle preferences.
Will token incentives help social commerce ecosystems thrive? Gen Z is quite cryptocurrency-friendly, so don’t be surprised if this becomes more mainstream as the evolution of social commerce isn’t likely to be all advertising-based.
This concludes part 1 in our social media trends analysis at the WOM Protocol. We’ll have more to offer soon. Meanwhile, you can follow us here:
- Website — https://womprotocol.io/
- Twitter — https://twitter.com/WOMProtocol
- Telegram — https://t.me/WOMProtocolChat
- Medium — https://medium.com/wom-protocol
- Deck — https://womprotocol.io/pdf/wom-business-deck.pdf
- Whitepaper — https://womprotocol.io/pdf/en/wom-whitepaper.pdf
- Economy Paper — https://www.womprotocol.io/pdf/wom-economypaper.pdf
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