It’s hard enough to keep up with all the new social media channels piling on to an already taxed marketing team. Since the early 2000s, the web has trained us to “do that brand new thing” with abandon. Social media managers struggle to keep up with the on-boarding of a new channel, almost weekly now. Add to that, the old standards like Facebook (it’s hard to believe we live in an age that a 2009 company is an old standard) are constantly launching new features, expanding and contracting tools for brand development.
On Thursday, Twitter announced they will be discontinuing the video sharing app, Vine, with little explanation. Does this mean Vine wasn’t successful? Actually, the opposite is true. Adding to our vocabulary of web words in everyday speech, “Do it for the Vine!” became the double-dog-dare of millennials. Whole media careers were launched as were the social media famers, dubbed “Viners.” The six-second share craze spoke to our dwindling attention spans, and the platform blew up in popularity. Some experts speculate that while popular Viners earned sponsorship fees from innovative brands, Vine itself did not. Ad revenue is the lifeblood of sustaining a sharing economy technology platform. Just ask the youngest billionaire in our nation’s history. We’re looking at you, Zuck.
Vine is not the only social media site on Twitter’s chopping block. Periscope, though first to market in live-streaming, lost in its failure to create content standards as well as the fact that other platforms were introducing live-stream options.
Does this point to a shrinkage in social media appetite? Quite the opposite, it speaks to a UX sophistication on the part of users and advertisers. Consumers demand a quick adoption by their peers and companies who wish to engage with their brand influencers. The next social media disruptor remains to be revealed. Don’t think a new company could change the game all over again? Remember MySpace? Yeah, me neither.
Bottom line for brands:
- We are still at the beginning of a new way of communicating.
- Change in social media strategy takes a lot of risk and confidence.
- The concept is pretty standard, even if the players change from time to time.
Let’s make sure your social media strategy and efforts are centered on “how” and “what” you communicate, and let the “where” be part of a fluid experience journey. We’d love to talk to you about your opportunities in new social media strategies. Contact us for a chat!
