Have you ever heard of “Houseparty”? No, not the kind of party your teenagers throw when you’re escaping to Fujairah or Oman for a weekend, but the video hangout platform. It’s best described as synchronous social networking — instead of posting updates and waiting for people to react and engage with them, services like Houseparty offer multi-person live streaming and networking.
Think of it like a Skype group call but with the screen split in up to eight windows so that all participants can interact with each other at the same time. Oh, and you don’t have to invite people to the call or chat. You just open the app and “you’re in the house”. If that sounds overly chaotic or plain disastrous to you, chances are you’re older than 22. Houseparty is what is known as a “third-place” — not your home, not your work, but a place like a coffee shop allowing random interactions with whoever happens to be there at the same time as you. Don’t think it’s a thing? It’s a thing! Over one million people spend 20 million minutes every day on Houseparty. I know, I know… You thought Twitter was a mess. Think again.
Here’s another social media fact that is going to shape the way people will engage online in 2018: In 2017 social media was depressing. Between the orange guy tweeting incessantly the seemingly ever-increasing volume and pace of current affairs online, users didn’t exactly lose the will to live, but started to tune out. I predict this trend to continue in 2018 with users increasingly escaping the “mainstream” social media into “third places” — online groups and apps that let them engage with likeminded groups of people. “Houseparty” is just one example, Facebook Spaces is another product along similar lines aimed at groups of friends connecting virtually. Staying with Facebook, the platform is currently testing dual newsfeeds in some markets, which see personal content being displayed in a separate newsfeed to branded/business pages content. By default, users see the personal newsfeed and have to click to see the alternative newsfeed. Unsurprisingly, engagement with content posted by business pages essentially dropped to zero in the test markets.
| Advertisement |
Remember when blogs were a thing? Sure, people still blog, but think when you last read a blog post that was longer than, say, 800 words. As a wordsmith, it pains me to say this, but long-form content is doomed. People just don’t read it anymore. Some might, but the majority seems to swiftly move along. I now get approached by people who say they are “Instagram Bloggers” — excuse me? Since when was Instagram a blogging platform?! Since a little while ago, apparently. Oddly enough, Twitter increased its character limit from 140 to 280 in 2017. Twitter isn’t doing too well and looks to do even worse in 2018. Go figure.
Content isn’t only getting shorter and shorter, it also stays online for less time. There’s a fancy term for this: ephemeral content. Sounds like a disease, but isn’t. Simply put, content stays online for 24 hours before it disappears. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; it just means you’ll have to adjust your content generating strategy to tap into your followers’ ‘FOMO’. That’s short for ‘fear of missing out’. It is — you guessed it — a thing. In 2018, forget YOLO — it will all be about FOMO.
Some people say that virtual reality will finally go mainstream on social media in 2018. They might be right given the latest technology Apple et. al. are putting in their smartphones, but personally I think that the virtual reality mainstream is still more than a year away. What won’t be more than a year away, though, are WhatsApp business profiles and bot-assisted conversations. WhatsApp is already the world’s favourite messaging app and the roll-out of business accounts will be very beneficial — think seamlessly connecting your Facebook business page, Instagram business account, and WhatsApp (all owned by Facebook, of course). Think self-service advertising tools allowing you to advertise on WhatsApp — Facebook already allows advertising in Facebook Messenger, so WhatsApp is the next logical step. The same with chat bots — users like them and experts forecast that, by the end of 2018, 30% of all online conversations will be bot-assisted. That’s a lot of bots.
With all these developments does spending time on your company’s traditional social media channels still make sense? Of course it does, but they’re no longer the ‘be-all and end-all’ of your online engagement in 2018.
Whatever you do: Keep it social!
What’s new in 2018? Get ready for some changes:
1. Shorter & faster: Social media content is getting more short-lived almost by the day. You’ll need to rethink your content strategy to make things shorter and more engaging to attract a reasonable amount of organic views & clicks.
2. Stories: If you haven’t yet mastered Instagram Stories, now is the time to do so, because nearly half of all Instagram users are forecast to use Stories by the end of 2018.
3. Messenger Apps: WhatsApp business profiles, Facebook Messenger bots — 2018 is going to be even more messenger apps-centric than 2017, which means you’ll need to rethink your internal message handling procedures, but also your advertising objectives (switch from focusing on clicks to starting messenger app conversations).
4. Fun: Given the current climate and the rise of questionable news and current affairs updates, social media users in 2018 will increasingly look for content that lets them escape reality for a bit, is fun, and generally provides an antidote to the avalanche of news updates.
5. Third places will become a thing: Third places, closed or quasi-closed online communities for groups of users sharing similar interests or aims will become a thing in 2018. The question is how businesses can engage in such places without coming across as outside intruders.
About the Author: Martin Kubler is the founder of Iconsulthotels and the CEO of sps:affinity. Iconsulthotels is now sps:hotels — a leading hotel management consultancy that provides its clients forward-looking business strategies, keeping them ahead of the market. Email: hello@spsaffinity.com.
Search our database of more than 2,700 industry companies
