A Brief History of Social Media Trends: Consolidation and Diversification

A Short History of Social Media

“Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss” – The Who

Breathlessly, the media is reports Facebook’s sagging numbers as teens look elsewhere for sharing and networking. What will happen?!? Facebook was become the default platform where everyone shares everything. How else will Grandma be able to know if I’m OK, or see our pictures? So, teens are leaving to find a little bit more (perceived) privacy in their social business.

Which should not surprise anyone.

Predictable Social Cycles

The history of social networking has always been a cycle of consolidation and diversification. People consolidate towards an accepted platform that develops as a center of social communication, and then after a few years, leave and divide their interests among more options that give more diversity, focus, and control. The divided platforms offer a controlled method of communication, even without the features and mass appeal of the previous. Even with less mass appeal, but to a more specific purpose.

Pre-2012, the social media landscape was dominated by many different types of platforms:

• Bulletin boards were the primary method of communicating in the pre-HTML internet.
• Newsgroups fractured the bulletin boards into hundreds or thousands of subgroups and categories.
• Newsgroups then lost audiences to forums, which offered a broader appeal and easier access and more organized topical structures.
• Forums grew and attracted high visibility, but then early social networks started to attract people away, as the development of the personal profile and mutual networks emerged (Orkut, Friendster, MySpace).
• People gravitated to the ability to have their own “space” online, where they could control their information and present a face to an invited network of friends.
• Personal blogging started to eat away at the standard networks, as people were able to independently create something of their own and publish it to the world – This especially pulled many high-contributing experts away from the forums, as they saw a way to monetize their knowledge and build their own network, rather than contribute to a public forum.
• Facebook gained momentum as a way of presenting yourself to the college community and burst onto the scene to a welcoming public. For many years, it has been the central hub of updates from friends and family – the place to go to keep up with the lives of others.
• Snapchat became the new place for teens. As one teen explained to me; “Snapchat is like Facebook, but for younger, faster people.” Apparently, teenagers don’t like being pestered by their grandmothers to keep them up to date on Facebook.

Until teens do what teens have always done – keep their lives out of the view of adults. So, of course, they gravitate and divide their attention among multiple platforms that allow them to control their “face” to the world in multiple ways. Through temporary images that are quickly deleted after sending to finding better ways of SMS chat without paying the overpriced SMS rates of telcos.

Somewhat Recent Developments

Fast forward to the present day, and the cycles of consolidation and diversification continue unabated. Social media has evolved with new platforms entering the fray, each offering unique features that cater to different user preferences and privacy concerns.

Consolidation: Facebook purchases Instagram and WhatsApp to remove competition. Rebranding to Meta as a parent company, Facebook maintains a surprisingly large international user base, while younger users flock to Instagram enabling Meta to be a dominant player in the social space.

TikTok, catapulted to fame by acquiring multiple platforms and developing into its modern version. Literally capturing the attention of Gen Z with its engaging and creative content, powered by highly personalized algorithm-driven feeds.

More Diverse Social Platforms

However, we still see diverse platforms arising in different communities:

• Discord, originally a gaming communication platform, has broadened its appeal by providing spaces for various interest-based communities, offering more privacy and control over interactions compared to mainstream social media.
• BeReal emerged as an alternative social app that encourages authenticity by prompting users to share unfiltered photos at random times each day, countering the curated and often artificial nature of other platforms.
• Threads, launched by Instagram’s parent company Meta, attempts to consolidate conversations by integrating text-based posts within the Instagram ecosystem, offering an alternative to Twitter’s open and often contentious environment.
• OnlyFans, the adult-oriented platform in this group enabled “real people” to develop their own audiences for mature entertainment. Ironically, it is facing competition from AI-generated “influencers” who offer much of the same services.

As new platforms gain traction, established giants like Facebook and X (Twitter) have faced significant challenges, including privacy concerns, algorithmic biases, and increasing regulation. Users are increasingly wary of how their data is used and are demanding greater transparency and control.

People are People, and Behavior is Predictable

The “new” is a powerful draw, and the “new” is coming to the market with increasing frequency. Asian social apps such as WeChat, QQ, LINE, and KakaoTalk are poised to enter the US market with their offerings, and multiple US-based apps are always apt to steal a portion of Facebook’s users.

Interestingly, what makes this time uniquely different is that the companies that have enjoyed a near monopoly on social networking and digital audiences for the past few years now have to react to the diversification that always happens after consolidation. MySpace didn’t see it coming, or react quickly enough. But even if it had, could it have prevented the trend? Both Google and Facebook are facing a trend that is starting to slide away, and their reactions will be telling.

Google attempted to create its own social network, Google+, but it ultimately failed to gain traction. People, while loyal users of the search engine and Google services, completely rejected the forced entry into Google’s attempt at a social platform. Again illustrating the challenges of forcing consolidation in a market that favors diversification.