Twitter and Facebook – the importance of new and happy eyes
In a week where Twitter lost large chunks of its stock value and Facebook celebrated its tenth birthday Scott Heron looks at what we can expect in the future from the social networks.
The large social platforms of Twitter and Facebook were in the news this week for very different reasons. Twitter was in the doldrums losing a fifth of its stock price because it hadn’t grown its user base as much as expected. Facebook toasted its 10th anniversary, saw it’s stock rise 15 per cent in a day, and launched a product in the US called Paper. So, are we seeing a decline in Twitter and the rise of Facebook?
Heron
No. despite their volatile stock prices, both are rising in usage and revenues, and will be around for years to come. Both will also continue to be attractive to advertisers – but we may look back at this week as the moment Facebook accelerated even further.
good to see that the ad industry is embracing social media as conventional advertising platforms rather than flogging the absurd notion that people want to be friends with companies, or worst still “brands”
Did the future end this week?
Really interesting stuff. Facebook will continue to redefine itself and provide better and more relevant user experiences as our world tastes change. It’s our challenge as advertisers to investigate these changes and recognise where the true potential for brand communication exists (NOT IN BANNER ADS). Thanks for the read Scott.
No discussion of privacy or the counter intuitive nature of attempting to monetise a social media platform?
Tech-savy kids are migrating en masse to multiple single-use platforms (kik for messaging, instagram for images, snapchat for making silly faces or sexting). Twitter kind of sits in this field, but doesn’t seem to be grabbing their attention. Privacy is cited as a major reason for this trend. Young people are missing from Facebook.
And the tension – social media platforms will always fail in the long run because people hate your industry. People hate ads, they hate the marriage of social media and advertising even more.
As soon as a social media platform becomes successful, its owners introduce advertising in an attempt to commercialise the product, this drives away the users who migrate to an ad-free platform and the system repeats.
TLDR – Kids like privacy. Advertising kills social media.