En este artículo repasamos los muchos e interesantes movimientos que se han producido en las principales redes durante el pasado año, y cual es el camino que están tomando los grandes protagonistas de este negocio.
After a decade in which we have witnessed the social media giants adopting new positions, with large and noisy operations, such as the acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram by Facebook, and the incorporation in the sector of Microsoft and Amazon with the acquisitions of LinkedIn and Twitch, to name but a few of the more striking operations, we now find ourselves in which we could call a new chapter in the sector.
We find ourselves at a time in which the fight for user time, the emergence of new players and the appearance of alternative forms are leading many platforms to explore new functionalities which, on occasions, venture into new ground previously dominated by their competitors, leaving behind those times in which an unwritten agreement seemed to exist in which each country seemed to be clear as to which slice of the pie it had.
In our paper IDEAS LLYC paper entitled 2021: Where the leading social media players are at and where they are heading, we review the many interesting moments that have taken place for the main social media over the last year, and the path the leading players are taking in this business.
Firstly, let’s look at Twitter, immersed in a major reflection on what it wants to be, which would appear to be tattooed with the famous mantra of Silicon Valley, “fail fast, fail often”, which has spurred it on to be extremely active in the presentation of new functionalities, experimenting and reacting quickly when the results do not correspond to the expectations.
In more recent times, the microblogging network has launched and then cancelled Fleets in less than a year, its version of stories; it has presented Spaces – its proposal to enter the world of voice – it has pushed through various innovations focused on the monetization of content, like Superfollows and Twitter Blue and it has closed off the year with the introduction of Communities – its solution to group together users that share interests, which has been compared with Reditt and with Facebook groups.
Furthermore, these large strategic projects have not prevented it from implementing more tactical updates that affect its habitual functioning, such as the segmentation of profiles, the re-launch of the verification program and several improvements focused on advertisers.
Facebook, for its part, has had a tumultuous year in which it has once again got tangled up in controversies related to privacy and the use of data, which have become known as the “Facebook Papers”, the class action by 17 organizations of journalists in the United States that accuse the company of bad practices in the use of user data.
However, these controversies have not prevented the company headed up by Mark Zuckerberg from launching new services like Live Audio Rooms and Soundbites, in addition to joining the voice trend as its star format and, above all, presenting its main strategic commitment for the future – the Metaverse – about which it has left no uncertainty, starting by changing the name of the parent company, which is now called Meta.
Our IDEAS also give over a chapter to the audio-visual entertainment war, which is in full swing between such platforms as YouTube, Twitch, Instagram and Tik Tok, and the steps taken by each of them to corner the market and offer the best content to attract both users and advertisers. We also review the panorama of messaging and see how, in an environment that increasingly values privacy and security, applications like Telegram and Signal have started to pose a serious threat to the reign of WhatsApp.
Lastly, we also review where Linkedin is at after 18 years operating and five years after its acquisition by Microsoft.
In a clear commitment to quality content, the quintessential “professional” network continues to grow year after year, both in the number of active users and in the level of use and interaction, ceasing to be considered by many as a job-seeking tool to become one of the most highly valued spaces (particularly by business leaders) to access quality content and establish professional relations, all thanks to a great editorial team, to programs like Top Voices and Influencer, to improvements in its design and to new features like LinkedIn Live.
In short, we can conclude that the main drivers that move the social media are information, relations, influence, entertainment and commerce, and regarding each of these the main players are evolving their platforms by presenting new functionalities and improvements.
In light of what an active year 2021 has been in this regard, the expectations of what are to come in 2022, which has now started, are exciting. We invite you to download our paper and follow the content of our insights to stay abreast of all the news.Após uma década em que assistimos à tomada de posições dos gigantes das redes sociais, com grandes e sonantes operações como as aquisições do WhatsApp e do Instagram pelo Facebook, ou a entrada no setor da Microsoft e da Amazon com as aquisições do LinkedIn e Twitch, para citar apenas algumas das mais marcantes, estamos agora no que poderíamos chamar uma mudança no setor.
