Recently, Entrepreneur published an article describing the ways social media will evolve in the
future. While they listed 11 different evolutions, we’ve picked out 4 that are
the most likely to occur.
1. Diversity of Personal Posts
Until now, posts have been limited to outside material,
pictures, videos and text. Don’t be surprised if, going forward, new
players will introduce more diverse posting options, intermingling
audio and visual components to create a unique experience for people
viewing and creating posts. As digital technology progresses, people will be
hungry for new and interesting ways to share experience.
Lewis emphasizes the importance audio will play in
social media’s future: “Just as many of us gathered around a cassette recorder
in our early childhood, the unique power of audio can be experienced once again
using our smartphones.”
We’re see advances in Augmented Reality (AR) technology that have reduced the cost for the end use with
devices such as Google Cardboard – an extremely inexpensive way to experience AR.
2. Users Pay for Space
Premium service will make a
splash. This one sounds counterintuitive -- after all, who would pay for a social media
experience when they’ve all been free up to this point. Two things will happen
to change that previous wisdom. First, with a more personal, story-driven
experience, customers will want high-quality images, videos and audio
files stored for posterity. Second, having a place to escape constant advertisements will become very
important, something a premium social media experience will offer.
“In order to ensure our digital
memories are stored and preserved there should be a direct and clear
relationship between compensation and the service provided,” says Lewis.
“Otherwise, what assurance do users have?”
3. Legacy Building
As has been said many times, the internet is written
in ink. It cannot be erased, and in the future, people won’t want it to be.
Users will want their social media to existing as an ongoing time capsule, a
living record of their lives. Smart platform builders will realize posting
shouldn't be a burst about a single moment in time, to be consumed in
a few seconds and forgotten about immediately, but as a multi-faceted, interactive
diary involving many writers, all telling pieces of their own and others’
stories.
“We’ve arrived at a place where we are as thoughtful
about capturing a personal moment to preserve as we are about carefully
curating our Instagram feed,” says Lewis. “It’s a question of the legacy you
want to leave behind. If someone has 2 hours to flip through your life’s
journey, what do you want them to see?
4. Mobile-native
A mammoth advantage new platforms will have is that
they about after the smartphone became ubiquitous. Facebook and Twitter both
came before they could really function on a mobile phone, but future platforms
will be designed with phones in mind from the beginning.
No clumsy borrowing between web and phone platforms
-- seamless integration. The future of the internet is mobile, so it stands to
reason that mobile-native platforms will be built to last.
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