This post has been re-posted from Armadillo’s President’s personal web site as it touches upon a subject that we’re currently very interested in. We hope you enjoy this post and if you have any questions feel free to contact us at any time.
So it’s been a while since I’ve written or talked about the state of the Social Media sphere on the old c.t.overdrive. Frankly, in regards to the world of Social Media there really hasn’t been a change big enough to warrant a post and plus there are thousands, upon thousands, upon thousands of Social Media Experts writing about the latest social media gaff or trend.
But today I received my updated Twitter profile, which although incredibly snazzy looks eerily similar to something… but I can’t put my finger on it.
Oh yes, it looks incredibly similar to my Facebook profile.
Yes, it’s official the Twitterfication of Facebook and the Facebookification of Twitter are finally complete.
Now, to be honest the change in both Twitter and Facebook isn’t really that ground breaking. Both Twitter and Facebook have been working to incorporate the UX/UI benefits of their two successful offspring networks for quite sometime. For Twitter it’s been working to adopt ideas from Medium and Facebook with it’s ever popular Instagram. While these sorts of changes are technically dramatic given the scale of both networks, these alone are really just cosmetic and minor functionality changes to adapt to the changing design aesthetic and functionality demands of our internet usage. I wouldn’t say they’re ground breaking changes that warrant a blog post.
But in my opinion, this change really does signal something else. To me this solidifies the end of Social Media phase of the Internet’s evolution. Similar to how the explosion and dominance of Social Media killed the Web 2.0 phase, we have officially reached peak Social Media.
Let me put it this way, with the two largest Social Media golden childs (Twitter and Facebook) working to mimic their network’s UI and interactions after their competitor’s and spending more time focusing on becoming a key communication channels and personal data resources rather than on social innovation, where is the future of Social Media heading?
Think about it, when was the last time a new social network really disrupted the online social space? I would say we haven’t seen any real innovation in the realm of Social Media since Instagram and that is at least five years old. Does anyone think that there is a Social Media network like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram or even Foursquare that will revolutionize the way we use the internet in the same way?
Maybe, but I’m not seeing it right now.
Now don’t get me wrong, Humans and Society will always Innovate. It’s in our nature. And for me to say otherwise would make me sound like the guy who proclaimed that we should shut down the patent office because nothing will surpass the Fax machine. But right now with the way in which Start-ups, Entrepreneurs and Innovators are focusing their attention it doesn’t seem like we’ll ever see a time period of crazy innovation and evolution in the Social Media atmosphere like we did towards the end of the 2000s, when everything changed.
I guess what I’m getting at is a question that is asked of me a lot nowadays and that is What is the next big Facebook, Twitter, etc? To me I don’t think there is anything on the horizon. To me we’ve come to the end of the golden age of the Social Media phase.
Will there be something new in the future. I can almost guarantee it, but it won’t be a social network like we’re used to. That phase of the internet is over.