As we lay 2014 to rest, we’re topping our hats to some of the social media crazes that came along with it. Messaging. Anonymity. Ephemerality. Yo (whatever that was). At the same time, we’re stepping into a whole new year, which means a brand new bunch of communication trends. Here’s some of the trends, rising stars, and falling figures you can expect to see:
1) Chat as a platform
Some of the biggest social networking companies are turning their messaging applications into portals for other purposes. They’re following in the wake of China’s hugely successful WeChat app, which people use to flag cabs, manage their mortgage, send gifts, purchase goods, and play games.
Western companies are betting that Americans can be convinced to do the same. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently said, “We believe that messaging is one of the few things that people actually do more than social networking.” If that level of engagement can be captured and channeled into other features, there’s money to be made.
Snapchat has already started adding functions powered by other companies, like its new Snapcash payment partnership with Square. Facebook’s head of messaging, David Marcus, said that Messenger will be pursuing a portal play too.
2) Location based feeds and Yik Yak’s moment
Location based feeds will see a resurgence in 2015. Social apps will allow you to see posts made by strangers in your area, adding a place-based element to your networks. In 2014, we saw newcomer Yik Yak, which pioneered this feature, raise $62 million on this premise and introduce a “Peek Anywhere” tool that allows people to drop a pin anywhere in the country to see what people are talking about. In November, Twitter followed suit by previewing a nearly identical feature and reportedly partnering with Foursquare to run it. And last week Secret unrolled a major product shift to do the same.
These developments happened towards the end of 2014, so 2015 will be the year we see such features come to fruition, battle to build audiences, and live or die by their location chops.
3) Foursquare’s finale
Foursquare has been puttering along for years now, trying to turn its array of data and technology into a functioning consumer business. In 2014 it attempted a drastic surgery, cutting off the feature it’s arguably known for — the check in — into a separate app so it could focus its core app on a Yelp-like experience. User data following that surgery didn’t look good.
In 2015, I suspect we’ll see Foursquare’s finale, unless it raises another round. Will it dump a ton of money into marketing and start to succeed with a more mainstream audience? Will it sell to a company like Twitter that might need its extensive location and user data?
4) Deep linking and app constellations
2014 was the year of The Great Unbundling in social. Mark Zuckerberg heralded the shift in an interview with The New York Times, saying, “In mobile there’s a big premium on creating single-purpose first-class experiences. So what we’re doing with Creative Labs is basically unbundling the big blue app.” We saw Facebook in particular pursue this strategy, forcing users to download Facebook Messenger as a separate application. Likewise, Facebook property Instagram released the Hyperlapse app as a separate entity.
But these applications all connect back to one another — you can share a Hyperlapse video on Instagram and access Messenger through your core Facebook app. Such links take you to specific places in another app — like your conversation with another user — not just the app homescreen. As social applications turn into portals for other experiences in 2015, the deep linking trend and constellation of apps that communication with each other will only grow. Snapchat’s Snapcash, Messenger’s new “Stickered” app, and Uber’s API are only the beginning.
5) Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat come of age
If 2014 was the year Pinterest and Snapchat dipped their toes in the pool of potential marketing money (Instagram did so at the tail end of 2013), then 2015 will be the year they dive in. Leaked emails from Snapchat show that Evan Spiegel is eager to build a sustainable business model. Pinterest is valued at $5 billion and the IPO rumors have been swirling for months. And Instagram is growing more powerful by the day. We’ll see them experiment with new ways of making money and ad dollars will flock to these visual properties.
did you check @soundtracker? Location based music/people discovery. would love your feedback and mention in your article about 2015 predictions
RE #5 – they “will come of age” ??? wow, that was a bold prediction…would have thought you’d try to predict their revenue potential on your own or something like that…..
Reblogged this on The Myta Issue and commented:
I’m looking forward to Foursquare’s Finale. I may sound mean, but other SocMed sites have surpassed what they have started. A quiet retreat is what they need. Who knows? They might come back in some other shape or form, better than what we’ve had before…
whatever happened to just simply texting and phone calls?
Regarding the deep linking and app constellations- This unbundling is seamless on Android because of the ubiquitous back button. For iOS users, if you’ve never used Android, the back button navigates backwards, both within the app you’re currently in, and backwards across to the apps you were previously in. For Android users, it doesn’t matter if Messenger and Facebook are different apps. Messenger becomes just another view in the Navigation stack on Facebook. And that article your friend linked to in Messenger feels like a Chrome view in Messenger- not a half-baked web view, but a fully-fledged Chrome mobile tab of the article. Two taps of the Android back button and you’re back to where you started. This intra-app flow feels natural and is the only Android feature I find missing on iOS.
Until iOS has a similar feature, the unbundling of apps will make the user experience more of a pain than a welcome efficiency gain.