Following social media trends can be a bit like following trending topics on Twitter. Both change very quickly and can be devilishly hard to follow. In the recent history of the Internet, social media sites have gone from being staggeringly popular only to become virtual ghost towns within mere months.
Professor Leslie Regan Shade of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information (iSchool) said there are several reasons for the success of some social media platforms over others.
“It depends on the user,” she said.
“It depends very much on what they’re using the social media for. A young person uses social media very differently than someone using it for business purposes. They may outgrow it, or grow with it,” she explained.
Sites that have a high number of users right now, such as Facebook and Twitter, are popular partially because of their strength in numbers, she said.
“These sites have such a huge user population, they’re convenient, and they’re ‘free,’” Shade said. “People feel as though if they don’t use them, they’ll be left behind or left out,” she explained.
Shade pointed out that young people looking for jobs also use social media to their advantage.
“Personal brands are important,” Shade said.
“Online personal brands are increasingly important for young people who want to find jobs,” she said.
Websites such as LinkedIn cater to this need, but are still a form of social media, Shade said.
On the contrary, users need to be careful about what they put online, especially if they’re seeking employment, Shade said.
“Content is monitored on social media sites,” Shade said. “The companies that run the sites track personal information,” she explained.
Taking care of business
Businesses embrace social media to promote their goods and services, and social media sites encourage the symbiotic relationship. Facebook’s advertising policy states, “The best ads are those that are tailored to individuals based on how they and their friends interact and affiliate with the brands, artists, and businesses they care about.”
Facebook charges advertisers per view or per click for their ads, so different ads can cost different amounts per advertiser.
One of the most successful online advertising franchises is Starbucks. Starbucks currently has over 35.2 million “Likes” on Facebook (McDonalds only has 29.5 million in comparison), and large presences on Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest, among other sites.
Shade said these business strategies involving extreme online advertising practices are one of the reasons that people are starting to shy away from specific social media. She said advertising is one of the main reasons that sites monitor user content.
“The monetization of content on social media sites has a large part to do with people growing away from social media,” she said. Sites cooperate with businesses to target personalized content, which can dissuade individuals from using certain sites anymore.
“There’s a lot of targeting of personal content. [People] may decide not to actively pursue that site anymore,” said Shade.
“Others may find it a very convenient factor.”
Intelligent design online
The other reason some social media sites fade out of fashion is because of their usability, Shade said.
“Myspace became irrelevant because Facebook presented a very streamlined design. Myspace was too cluttered and crowded, with various sources of content,” she explained.
“Rupert Murdoch bought it for a huge price in 2005, just when it was at the height of its popularity. They didn’t know what was going to happen next,” she said.
Concordia University research chair Darren Wershler agreed with Shade. He said Myspace was great for customization, but it paid the price for its aesthetics.
“We put a lot of emphasis now on usability, and usability requires a certain amount of stability,” Wershler said. “Apple has put an insane amount of effort over its existence into making its user interface the same. Myspace was attractive because you could do whatever you wanted to it. But the result was a weird, crazy mess of flashing images and links. It created a chaos for anyone that tried to find anything.”
What’s next in store for social media is hard to determine.
“One way to figure out what’s coming next is to look at what’s already come and gone,” Wershler said.
Kicking it old school
According to Wershler, social media sites are striving to look like what the Internet looked like in 1995.
“Sites like Facebook would like to be an interface that everyone has for the web. They want to make it the first thing you see when you log on to the Internet,” he said.
Older sites, such as AOL and Friendster, were extremely popular during the mid-to-late 1990s, Wershler said.
“AOL was so successful at one point, it bought Time Warner,” he said.
“At that point in history, Microsoft wasn’t even interested in the web, they wanted to make their own private network.”
Wershler explained that companies are looking to get back to that private-network model.
“Google would like to be that way too. They’re pushing their Google+ services,” said Wershler. “They want you to have your email with them, to socialize with them, and to have your phone through them.”
“There was an in-between period of the ‘World Wide Web, but that might be the exception, and not the rule. It’s hard to comprehend what the Internet is for,” Wershler said.
“Part of the problem of figuring out what’s coming next is that we can’t figure out what’s happening now,” he said.
Internet usage has changed a lot throughout the past 15 years, Wershler added.
“Torrents came into play around 2002 and they were a major use of the Internet,” he said. “YouTube has changed the way we view videos. What the Internet is ‘for’ keeps changing.”
