There has been many changes to social media, one minute it's free, then all of a sudden, all social media platforms are charging users, so what has changed?
Well to be honest, social media has grown up and is maturing.
Let's look at the platforms and what has changed.
BUT there, is one overarching change that has taken place, the use of AI.
Artificial Intelligence
One of the biggest changes to social media is the advent of the new AI platforms
Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT are nothing more than predictive text. You ask them a question and it tries to predict what answer you want. In most cases it does this pretty well, in some cases it does not.
You may recall the factual errors Microsoft ended up presenting at Bings AI launch, details here.
To feed these LLMs you need data for them to predict from. So where have AI companies gone for this data? Social media.
One place AI companies have gone is Scraping X, (formally Twitter) for that data.
That's why Elon Musk stopped the amount of data you can access. Nothing against the people using the platform, it was based on the fact that big tech was scraping X, for free.
X charges for its API now, which means many social media management tools are passing that cost onto their customers. Scheduling tool, Buffer is a great example, they have now moved an ability to see hashtags to the paid offering, while this could be seen as a cynical "upsell", as they now need pay X (Twitter) they have to pass on that cost to users. But X isn't the only company doing this.
Of the top 1,000 websites in the world, 20% are blocking crawler bots that gather web data for AI services, according to new data from Originality.AI, an AI content checker. In addition, many corporate websites have blocked data mining from chatbots.
Why it matters:
In the absence of clear legal or regulatory rules governing AI's use of copyrighted material, websites big and small are taking matters into their own hands.
Let's now look at changes that have taken place for a number of social media networks.
Why is this happening? How can brands adjust? And what does the future hold?
As well as transforming business to using social and digital strategically, we often get asked about current social media functionality, the long term viability of platforms and the future, such as:-
- What's going on with X / Twitter?
- With more and more platforms charging, why is this and what should we do?
- What about the other networks?
- Does our overall social strategy need to change?
Here are my thoughts on these, as well as what we've told our customers over the past few months:
LinkedIn has been charging for it's usage for years. There was a time you could have used the free edition of LinkedIn, but the functionality has been tightened up that now people need to pay for the professional edition to really make proper use of the platform. Linkedin are investing in the platform big time and while the platform is build on spam, in the form of inmails, many people have realised that conversations and relationships are not based on spam.
Linkedin have also made announcements about the use of AI, here is the latest article by Tomer Cohen - chief product office at Linkedin - Reimagining LinkedIn in the New Era of AI
X - What was Twitter
What used to be free is no longer. I’m talking about data, API access, etc. If you're a social media manager/marketer this means that the brand publishing and listening tools you use are now more expensive because many companies are passing that cost onto you.
When customers ask us how they should think about Twitter (Should they take it seriously? Should they change their strategy?), here's what we say: If Twitter is where your customers are, keep prioritizing it. Some of our clients, including two of the top three largest companies in the world, continue to generate the majority of their organic social ROI from Twitter, so it’s clearly essential for them. Data from Simon Kemp here, shows that it's not all dim and dismal for X.
There is also my recent article “The latest quarterly update on the state of social media, the data, facts and science” which gives my analaysis of the latest social media data.
In a recent article in the Financial Times (FT), Ian Leslie said "people don't visit Twitter despite the toxicity, but because of it. .... As with smoking, the knowledge that your inhaling something unhealthy is perversely, part of the appeal".
Maybe I'm not part of the majority, I like Twitter because it has opinions I don't agree with, because I want to understand, but maybe not agree with, other people's point of views. As a friend of mine, who is developing a new web 3.0 social network, said to me recently "good ideas will rise and bad ideas will sink".
Ian also talks about "user interia". “once a social media service has built a big user base, the user base itself becomes the reason to stay”.
I have to admit that I'm biased, having built a 175,000 following, it means I'm invested in the platform .
Meta - What was Facebook
I don't see anything changing here. Meta was the first platform to highly restrict its API, which was due to Cambridge Analytica. Meta did this to prevent data exfiltration and other unapproved use cases.
Meta have started charging to get a "tick" so far the free version seems to work. There are many arguments that you need to "pay to play" with Facebook / Meta, that is true if you haven't taken the time to build a community and your content isn't interesting or insightful.
It's on this platform where the saying' "Advertising is a tax paid by the unremarkable" holds true.
Meta know that advertising is dead, which is why they are investing in AL and the Metaverse, see this article from The Drum. Sorry but you need to be registered to read it.
AI bolsters Meta’s Q3 revenue surge, as Zuckerberg continues to bet big on the metaverse
Our advice has always been go where your customers are, Instagram seems to be one of those platforms where people feel most comfortable. After all, we all have photos we can post and if we are "scared" there is minimal text. I still remember one of my first articles I wrote
How to use Twitter to get 10 C-Level Appointments Per Week — A Case Study, which is where I talk about Twitter. There is also a story about my friend who was using social media to get these meeting, but couldn't find their target on LinkedIn, but found them on Instagram posting photos of their dog walks with their two labradors. The point being that being successful in social is not about understanding the platform, but being social.
Threads
Threads was an instant hit, well access to it was via Instagram and while it notched up 44 million daily active users at its peak, it's now lost 80% of that and is down to 8 million. The questions is, how many Twitter look-a-like platforms do we need?
TikTok
TikTok is very different from other social media platforms as LinkedIn, Meta, X, are all based on connections, friends etc and followers. While you can follow people on TikTok it's the algorithm that drives the platform.
If, for example, you watch "dashcam videos" it will serve you up more and more dashcam videos regardless of who is sharing them. This has "changed" social media and many of the platforms are trying to catch up. That said, many social media customers actually prefer a timeline which is based on time of post, or friends posts. I guess for many people they grew up with social media like this.
TikTok also has its own shop, which is where my 9 and 12 year old great niece and nephew look first to buy anything. While I realise the days when they will have sign off on a multi-million project are years away. People scoffed about Millennials being in senior positions and of course, they are.
This site also charges for its API, but this is more about protecting its data from AI products. Social networks, Reddit especially, are one of the best sources of data for training a large language model.
If you want to use Reddit in anger, then you will now need to pay, like LinkedIn, they have squeezed the free version out of functionality.
Discord
This platform, looks and feels like Slack, but tends to be used by gamers, but if you want to build a community and can convince people to use Discord, this would be the place to build that community.
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