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Ask HN: Has social media reached its saturation point?
Looking at how big social media companies are operating , their R&D and their stated plans about the future..can we infer that such phenomenon has reached its saturation point?
Zuck changed the company name and is now fixated with the metaverse, which is something nobody can really define or understand. Cartoonish characters used as avatars and the other elements put forward in his keynote leave people wondering what will the actual improvement be.
Twitter is making the transition towards a "free speach" platform which will now ask people to pay to play, somehow creating synergies with Tesla and SpaceX (what???) given the cult of personality surrounding the new owner.
Seems to me like we are really splitting hairs with regards to future improvements and innovation from both those companies, the plateu of the S-curve is in for both of them.
- WaxedChewbacca 4y ago
- thfuran 4y agoI think there's plenty of room for improvement in social media. At this point, it's all geared toward maximizing ad revenue, which is not closely aligned with maximizing utility for users.
- I_DRINK_KOOLAID 4y ago> At this point, it's all geared toward maximizing ad revenue Well, you have to make money somehow and users will never pay for social media after having been spoiled for 15+ years by free Facebook , not to mention the 20+ years of free Google. When I paid for Linkedin Gold I felt scammed and canceled after a month. People are not willing to pay for marginal improvements, they are only willing to pay for very important and vital stuff which matters a lot to them. For example...getting laid, that's why Tinder pay feature brings in revenues. Getting laid is the dictionary definition of "important and vital" and the difference between chatting on Tinder and actually getting laid using Tinder is enormous, it's not just a marginal improvement and thus prompts people to pay out of pocket to have their profile shown to a much higher number of users
- fsflover 4y ago> Well, you have to make money somehow and users will never pay for social media Somehow Mastodon has 3 millions of users despite those problems AFAIK, and growing exponentially.
- thfuran 4y agoI agree that it's difficult to unwind the expectation of free (ad-supported) services and difficult for paid alternatives to compete. I really hope we can eventually entirely or nearly entirely do away with that entire ecosystem though. But I don't really see that happening any time soon.
- brtkdotse 4y ago> you have to make money somehow and users will never pay for social media SomethingAwful charge(ed|s) $10 to create an account and we’re ruthless with banning people who were not behaving. It worked really well
- julianlam 4y agoSocial media, when it came on the scene in the form of Facebook, et. al. simply went gangbusters because there wasn't anything like it before (this is arguable, but is beyond the scope of this comment). On the other hand, lower-reach social communities like forums are still humming along just fine after all these years. Their popularity grows and wanes with trends but there will (probably) always be people on forums. Social media has broad reach but shallow depth. Forums, mailing lists, etc. have narrower reach but can be support incredibly deep dives.
- the_snooze 4y ago>Social media has broad reach but shallow depth. I'd argue that the OG university-only thefacebook.com was successful because it had narrow reach and deeper depth (at least compared to its one-size-fits all modern form). The features were tailored very specifically to that audience, and the audience found a lot of value from it.
- pram 4y agoForums can have amazing longevity. In the past 10 years I’ve seen communities on social media go completely extinct multiple times (rip Tumblr) and yet I’m still regularly using a forum I’ve posted on for 21 years. They don’t have good growth but it’s the closest thing to an authentic “public square” in my opinion. Actual conversations, instead of people just yelling on their soapbox.
- DerekBickerton 4y ago> social communities like forums are still humming along Is the web still full of vBulletin and phpBB forums that can sustain themselves with donations and such? I think the only ones left are the ones who asked for donations from the start. Yes, hosting is relatively cheap, but when boards get bigger they have to add capacity and that all adds up. There's only so much 'pocket money' can get you. Eventually you will need to sustain a forum with fees or donations.
- derbOac 4y agoIt's an interesting perspective. I think there's a few things going on that are slightly different maybe? Maybe not. I tend to think of it more that discrepancies between what the platforms are purported to be, and the actual use patterns and motives are, has grown to a point where it's getting scrutinized and having substantial pushback. Another way of looking at this is the limitations and drawbacks of current platforms are being exposed in unavoidable ways. Another issue that's gotten some attention but maybe not as much as it deserves is the diversification of social media and generational trends. I think Facebook and Twitter trends older and has become more of a political punching bag, which has led to the sorts of things you're talking about. "Younger" platforms, demographic-wise, have largely gone under the radar and we haven't seen the sort of repositioning and jockeying that we've seen with Twitter and Facebook. So Facebook is trying a sort of pivot (wisely so in my opinion, even though I'm not sure about the nature of that pivot), even as things like TikTok are percolating up into media consciousness. It may not be that social media is saturated it might be that people are migrating, passively or actively, to other platforms that have so far gone unscrutinized by older demographics who tend to use things like Twitter and Facebook. Who knows though. For me it's interesting to watch. I've never really been involved with either platform, for multiple reasons. There seems to be growing interested in more decentralized or federated platforms. I'm starting to wonder if these will gain traction sort of slowly and organically as the other platforms churn over time and they're the only things left being stable.
- I_DRINK_KOOLAID 4y ago> even as things like TikTok are percolating up into media consciousness The problem with TikTok is that it's essentially just for actors, musicians and dancers. On Youtube people can Vlog, it's impossible to vlog on TikTok. I think among the many social media Facebook and Instagram manage to capture the most people. - Facebook/Instagram everybody can take a pic or draw some art, or a video or even engage in written discussion, plus they get some officially & professionally produced content from TV (not as much as YT but they do) - Youtube misses out on people who can take cool pics and write insightful thoughts but captures those who can take cool videos or can vlog, plus they get tons of official professionally produced content from TV - TikTok misses out on everybody except amateurs who can act, sing or dance - Twitter is a stadium for culture wars and breaking news - Reddit is where you can take your time to articulate thoughts/research and link up with people who have the same interests. The news arrive just as fast as twitter without the 140 ch. limits, and it's not properly a stadium for culture wars...more like a small UFC arena
- medymed 4y agoMainstream social media may be close but niche interests probably have miles to go. HN and stack overflow have some overlap in user niche but are miles apart in intent/design/usage. Any subset of communication between people or groups has potential to have a niche optimized platform.
- tenebrisalietum 4y agoIt has to be at the saturation point for at least Facebook. Facebook is old news. Anyone who wants a Facebook account has one, anyone who wants to engage in the platform is already doing so. However the younger people understand now that posting things on public social media can have consequences, so things like Discord and Telegram are now going to be the future, and classic social media like Facebook is simply going to become more and more inauthentic until it fades away into something 70 year olds preoccupy themselves with out of habit like television.
- beej71 4y agoI'm older and have bailed on social media (I use it as a write-only broadcast medium). The posts there I want to see are lost in the manipulative noise. I'm in several small clique channels on discord and slack, including one for my extended family, instead. I've been wondering how common these are getting.
- CrimsonCape 4y agoI think that girls are particularly susceptible to self-criticism like "Wow, I have a phone but nobody calls me, harumph, I guess they don't like me / I guess I'm not worth anything to anybody." Discords are a kind of panacea to these kinds of self-harmful thoughts, since joining a Discord says "Hey I want to talk" and now the burden is on the other participants; if they are not in the Discord, clearly they don't want to talk.
- coward123 4y agoNot even close? I mean you may be on to something with your hypothesis about the current wave of social media companies, but not if you step back and look at the bigger pictures. People are always looking at ways to connect. The whole premise of social media through the lens of the consumer is to find and stay in contact with ones people - either meatspace friends or newly discovered ones online. So will FB age out? Yes probably at some point. Is Instagram too photo/video centric and lacks any substance? Absolutely. Twitter is the best overall current source for news and information (amazing!) but it's format is both its strength and weakness. The TL DR version of this is - sooner or later some next wave will come along because the core purpose is too central to humans.
- k__ 4y agoThis reminds me of an article I read yesterday. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/06/08/a-brief-history-of-the-corporation-1600-to-2100/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/06/08/a-brief-history-of-the...
- alexashka 4y agoWe've given everyone who wanted a mediocre social media product, a mediocre social media product. There are plenty of improvements one can make - but the power positions are all taken and it'll take 20-30 years for those useless idiots to die and/or retire. The golden age of the internet is over and when they and/or life finally exhausts Elon Musk, there won't be anyone who isn't a useless idiot left that has any power. We'll be right back where this species loves to be - useless idiots controlling the minds of the idiot masses, while the non-idiots quietly engage in creative pursuits.
- geocrasher 4y agoNope. FB would have gone the way of MySpace already if that were the case. Rather than a saturation point, they've hit a plateau in many cases- where will they go next? Zuckerberg is looking to reinvent FB for the next stage of growth. Instead of "moar better FB" he realizes that there needs to be something that's not just more, but different. And if he does it right, everyone will flock to it like so many did in the early FB days. Also, FB Marketplace is the new Craigslist in so many ways. Saturation point? No. Just maturing and ready for the next stage of evolution- whatever that will be.
- gberger 4y agoIsn't a saturation point a synonym for a plateau? Once something is saturated with X, you cannot add any more X to it.
- geocrasher 4y agoA plateau is more like a flat spot before more growth. Saturation means no more room for growth.
- throwawaycuriou 4y agoMy sense of plateau as a colloquialism is that it implies a flattened peak before a descent. Elvis plateau'd in the 50s.
- geocrasher 4y agoThe dictionary's sense of Plateau: a level of attainment or achievement [1] What you're describing is, as you've said, a peak. Sure, Elvis peaked in the 50's, then it was a steady decline (not a plateau) since then. [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plateau https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plateau
- FollowingTheDao 4y agoSocial media was not to broaden our relationships, it only allows us to hide from them. It is self censorship for a fragile, trauma plagued humanity. The platforms are not changing, people are. They are tired of these superficial interactions.
- FYYFFF 4y agoThe future of Social Media is no centralized social media entity. Everything these sites/companies do, you can do yourself. No need for a centralized service, just connect directly with your friends, share what you want, directly. So yes, saturation has been achieved. What comes next is the methods of how we as humans connect. (remember, FB was just a condensed and easy to use version of the Web at large), they just made it really easy to post and share. Do you really think we'll need a centralized service to do this in the future?
- memish 4y ago> Twitter is making the transition towards a "free speach" platform Twitter was originally a free speech platform. It transitioned away from that, much to the chagrin of its co-founder. "Twitter stands for freedom of expression. We stand for speaking truth to power. And we stand for empowering dialogue." https://twitter.com/jack/status/651003891153108997 https://twitter.com/jack/status/651003891153108997 The point is to restore the platform's core value and be a neutral, trusted public square. Jack himself said Elon is the only one he trusts to do that.
- demygale 4y agoIt takes a huge leap of logic to come to the conclusion that Musk cares about free speech for anyone other than himself. What he wants is speech without consequences for himself. His ability to speak is mostly unrestricted by any government power, and policy changes at Twitter will have no effect on what few restrictions he might encounter.
- bko 4y agoSo why would he buy Twitter? No one thinks its going to be a good investment. It was kind of a prerequisite to have shareholders agree to the purchase. There's no conceivable reason for him to spend his time, effort and money in buying twitter apart from his stated purpose. He's going to lose money and time on it. And its a stretch to think his personal wealth or companies will benefit from Musk owning Twitter. So if no other plausible explanation as to why he wants to buy twitter, why not just take him at face value?
- I_DRINK_KOOLAID 4y agoMusk got to #1 in the Forbes 400 by saying things to people on twitter and becoming a techno-utopian cult figure This is like Kim Kardashian buying E! to make sure they can never cancel "Keeping up with the Kardashians". Musk wants to keep rolling his promises into the future in order to avoid people asking them about practical and tangible results in the present, as they have been underwhelming to say the least when compared to the financial bubble he managed to inflate.
- adrianmonk 4y agoMaybe, but it's hard to say because some of social media is trend-based. People want to connect to each other, but they also want novelty in how they do it. After they get bored writing on each other's walls, they want to try writing 160-character quips for public consumption. And when they get bored of that, they want to try taking photos and sharing them. And when they get bored of that, they want to try trading short videos of themselves doing stuff. And so on. So when a given service stops growing, is it because all the users who could have signed up have done so? Or is it because some people moved on to the new thing? Or some combination?
- hilbert42 4y agoOK, given you're correct then how do people's lives compare now with those in the past in the pre-social media days? We shouldn't forget that for all of history until the recent advent of social media individuals had to 'connect' in different ways and that they were somehow successful in doing so—or civilization/society wouldn't exist. In the past, novelty wasn't much of an option as people had very limited choices when connecting with others. Perhaps the question we need to ask is was this more limited (and much slower) choice better for people's well-being and mental health. I don't reckon we've a satisfactory answer to that question as yet.
- discussDev 4y agoI think there are quite a few different options in the real world too. Through your kids school, through the local bar, etc... each physical location has different social rules that allow people to connect in different ways. In much the same way you can get bored of hanging out one place and go somewhere else. I do think so many people on their phones have been detrimental to some real life interaction. (Edited to not sound like I disagree with parent so much)
- hilbert42 4y agoSee my accidental reply to nradov (I should really stop using multiple computers at once). :-)
- amonroe369 4y agoPeople need to understand what the outputs of some social media companies are. I think Elon is just trying to get governments to pay for using the system to spread, collect, and take action on what is shared. If say a company like Palantir or Dataminr are connecting in to monitor for some type of activity, Twitter could charge much more for that monitoring. Hedge funds could also monitor or access data on postings to see how a stock is fluctuating. Twitter has a great concept and high end information based personalities on the platform, but its executed so poorly. Improve the interface, allow most free speech and you have a great population monitoring system that give you real time focus groups essentially. Facebook/Meta went too big brother, collected way too much information. It was bad. I used to love facebook until 2014 it started turning with all the boomers joining, and the algo changes encouraging conflict. I think Reddit will really be the next social media platform. It already has, but it uses semi-verified users, and anonymous users (less and less). Its been relatively transparent.
- egypturnash 4y agoAs long as there is an Internet, we will need someone to run the places people go to talk to each other on it. And while the name for it may change, right now we call that "social media". There is a right size for a healthy place for people to talk to each other and Facebook and Twitter are both way above this size. I will mourn neither of them when they vanish, for they have both optimized entirely for keeping users on the site as long as possible, without a single care as to whether what they're doing on the site is good for them or not - as long as the company gets to serve more ad views in between you spinning your wheels in an endless flame war, they're happy. I believe the main improvement of Facebook's "metaverse" is that Facebook hopes to have a thriving marketplace for user-generated content, of which they generously plan to only take a 47% cut. I'm sure they'll still quite happily find a way to take money to shove ads into every corner of your time with their VR helmet on, too.
- jeffwask 4y ago"Web 1 Socials" were built around for purpose communities; forums, irc, etc where like minded people gathered to discuss common interests. "Web 2 Socials" were the bundling of for purpose communities into giant super communities; reddit, facebook, twitter, etc. If this follows everything else that has gone before it on the internet. The next phase will be an unbundling where things go back to for purpose communities again until they get rebundled and the cycle repeats. https://hbr.org/2014/06/how-to-succeed-in-business-by-bundling-and-unbundling https://hbr.org/2014/06/how-to-succeed-in-business-by-bundli...
- I_DRINK_KOOLAID 4y agoBut this is not a pie getting bigger. It's always the same pie, only the size of each serve as well as the number of serve which changes . That's at least the intuition I get it from the famous phrase "2 ways of making money: bundle or unbundle" that you mentioned. When govt. broke up Standard Oil the pie of oil extraction didn't become bigger, it was just partitioned in a different way.
- 8organicbits 4y agoConsolidated communities like Facebook derived huge value because of network effects: everyone you want to talk to already has an account. Smaller communities derive value from addressing the unique needs of their users, better moderation, the unique audience is the value. Each of those communities in aggregate may be more valuable than the previous, one-size fits all mega-network. I'd expect (or maybe hope for) a stable point with a couple large general networks, and many small, niche gems.
- jeffwask 4y agoI fear that in the current incarnation of capitalism where everything is about constant growth, stability is an impossible state.
- rchaud 4y agoNo, because B2C software companies have no idea how to make money without advertising, or in the gaming industry, enabling micro-transactions and gambling behaviours. Advertising only delivers profits if users are pulled into algorithmic feeds that massively expand the scope of stuff they actually choose to follow. Twitter has its "this person you follow liked this other person's post" and FB and IG just spam you with posts from groups you're not a member of. Not enough people will walk away from SM on their own volition. So the cycle will continue.
- can16358p 4y agoI think the next big thing is combining reputation/content value into some asset in a decentralized/uncensorable way. Some combination of decentralized storage, decentralized identity, and some form of (not saying in its current form) crypto-assets (whether blockchain, L"x" scaling, or something entirely different). The idea is giving control back to where it belongs without a central authority, with a completely-uncensorable platform by design, which also "pays" the creators (and people who host those content) by design automatically instead of relying on YouTube/Instagram etc. I'm definitely not saying we are there, but I believe it will be the next big thing as technology and ideology evolves, not only for what we currently call social media, but generalized into many other aspects of information technologies such as hosting, IoTs, any kind of resource sharing being some examples.
- thenerdhead 4y agoNot even close. The internet is only available in like 60% of the world. While some platforms may now be saturated given their growth(TikTok, Instagram, etc), you will see new platforms that don't take off for a few years and will feel "fresh" because they aren't saturated quite yet. The old guard of social media may have reached its saturation point, but there's still plenty of innovation to be had.
- nradov 4y agoThe remaining 40% of the world is impoverished, or elderly. They aren't going to pay for social media access and are nearly worthless to advertisers. The total addressable market for social media will grow only slowly now. New platforms will contine to arise, but they will mostly succeed by taking market share from existing services rather than expanding the market.
- thenerdhead 4y agoWhile ads may generate money today, the future looks a bit more bleak with “play to earn” concepts that these giants would still benefit from.
- nradov 4y agoPlay to earn is a scam, similar to Ponzi schemes. It only appears to work as long as gullible suckers keep putting in money. A sucker is born every minute, but (morality aside) companies still can't build a sustainable business model out of scamming them. Eventually they either run out of money, or catch on to the scam. Governments in some countries will probably also ban or restrict such schemes, thus making it difficult for them to operate within the legitimate economy.
- thenerdhead 4y agoSure the NFT idea might be, but play to earn has existed in many online worlds for decades. If someone can make a living inside a virtual world, they can survive. It’s only going to get more popularized given big tech is hardly regulated.
- nunorbatista 4y agoPlatforms such as Facebook are great aggregators of generic information, but are not very customisable when you want to discuss specific topics i.e. when people want to talk about cars, Twitter or Instagram are limited to comments when in fact you might want to have more features to generate interaction. They also don’t want to discuss it in the same place as their uncle. I believe this is the point we are now: a lot of people have now discovered the positives of discussing with people alike and are searching for places where they have more of their kind. This is why Reddit, Twitch or Discord are growing strongly, unlike Facebook. While more and more people are still joining the platforms, the future will bring other smaller places for niches. Social Media is not saturated, it’s fragmented.
- julianlam 4y agoFacebook is definitely NOT a great aggregator of information. Trying to see surface something from years ago is damn near impossible.
- nunorbatista 4y agoAn aggregator is not an archive and at this level it works really well. Twitter is also a good aggregator and a bad archive but this is a characteristic of almost all social media platforms: instant, up to date information. Search, is not one of them.
- ceasesurthinko 4y agoI feel like the hype of social media has peaked a few years ago, at least in America. Numbers probably still are growing but it feels much more "okay" to not use social media at all nowadays versus a feel years ago it would feel pretty taboo to not use social media. "What? You don't have a facebook account? Is something wrong with you?" - 2017 "Damn, that's a good idea to delete facebook, I wish I could" - 2022
- DantesKite 4y agoI don't think so, and let me bring up a very tortured analogy to explain why. It took centuries for the meta-game of chess to develop. With the advent of supercomputers, this process has sped up considerably, but even still, it took a lot of trial and error to discover niche moves for certain scenarios. MMA is the same way. Some techniques, like the calf kick, have only been recently refined and started to be perfected, despite kicking being more or less a move any human could perform for over 200,00 years. Yet we don't seem to have a history of it. You see this across the board in many domains. Perhaps it has something to do with the difficulty of optimizing game theory. Or maybe for centuries information just didn't traverse that efficiently and now with the Internet and improved data storage, it just occurs much faster. At any rate, I suspect social media is similar. We probably don't know what an "optimum" site would look like. Twitter doesn't even have an "Edit" button yet, which is a fairly simple mechanism that would unlock a lot of new interactions.