RIP, “town square.” Hello, “living room.” In case you missed it, in a single blog post last month Mark Zuckerberg quietly upended the world of social media. Gone (or nearly so) is the quaint idea of social media as a public broadcast channel or "town square" — a way for anyone to reach a mass audience, start a dialogue and change the world. It was an inspiring vision, to be sure, but one undone by trolls and data mining, invasive ads, Russian interference and addictive algorithms.
In its place, Zuckerberg proposed a very different conception of social media as a largely private communication tool: a place for people to message one-on-one or within small, closed groups. In this scenario, updates either disappear shortly after sending or else are encrypted — effectively putting them out of reach of advertisers and other prying eyes. Facebook’s related decision to unite its messaging kingdom, enabling interoperability between Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp, only highlights the primacy of messaging in the new social paradigm.
While this represents quite an about face from Facebook’s initial mission, it’s also been a long time coming. Growth of private messaging services has easily outpaced growth of traditional social platforms in recent years. Snapchat propelled ephemeral, private messages and disappearing Stories into teen consciousness as early as 2012. In China, messaging app WeChat is already an institution with more than a billion users, serving as a platform for everything from shopping to posting videos and booking doctor appointments. Indeed, worldwide, Facebook-owned chat platforms WhatsApp and Messenger now count more users than Facebook itself does.
In other words, the writing was on the wall. Successive privacy scandals and fights with regulators may have accelerated Facebook’s push to messaging, but shifting user preferences have grown impossible to ignore. Yet for both Facebook and for brands that rely on the platform this change presents a series of existential challenges. Facebook’s business model is built around collecting user data and then selling highly targeted ads. Businesses have spent years diligently amassing followings and figuring out the best way to connect with users. As the “town square” model recedes in prominence, where, exactly, does this leave brands that have come to rely on social media as a primary means of reaching their audiences?
Beyond the town square model
For now, there are neither easy answers nor is there cause for panic. The transition to a post-social future will be a gradual one. In the years ahead, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other “public” platforms will continue to play a vital role. But alongside them (and, often, inside them) parallel private messaging platforms will continue to evolve and grow in importance. For brands looking to stay ahead of the curve, here are a few strategies for adapting:
Understand the culture of messaging. Messaging has its own rules and norms, distinct from other forms of social media. For brands, embracing messaging as an inbound, customer-service channel is a logical place to get your feet wet. Two-thirds of consumers now identify messaging apps as their preferred way to engage with businesses — ranking it above phone, email, live chat and even face-to-face interactions. Where the terrain is less settled is how (or even if) to use these apps for outbound messaging. Do consumers really want to be sold to on chat apps? Well, maybe ... provided content is targeted and actionable, not spam. H&M gives individualized fashion advice through Kik, while Domino’s helps customers find coupons and make delivery orders via Facebook Messenger. It’s also worth noting that Messenger and WhatsApp both have paid ad options, though the verdict is out on their effectiveness.
Be transparent and show value. The post-social future is also going to be decidedly opt-in. Privacy concerns, enhanced encryption and increased regulation all mean that consumers will be parting with less of their data, at least by default. Brands hoping to learn about their customers will need to get them to actively volunteer info. This starts with transparency — laying out a clear return for users, whether that’s personalized recommendations, in-depth insights or special content. Then, it comes down to delivering. Intimate, behind-the-scenes glimpses of people and places — not polished ad copy — are the new lingua franca in the social media world. Indeed, multimedia Stories (those ephemeral slideshows on Instagram) are now growing 15 times faster than newsfeed-based sharing. Brands like the Guardian, Tictail and Glossier have all mastered the art of using Stories to deliver value and authenticity, not clickbait.
Enlist AI sooner, rather than later. As social media moves from one-to-many to one-to-one engagement, another obvious challenge arises: scale. Engaging every customer individually, with personalized messages, would stretch the resources of a major brand, let alone a small business making do with limited budget. The only fix is smart automation. Granted, messaging bots are off to a rocky start: Facebook’s first-gen bots reportedly failed to understand users 70 percent of the time. But that’s largely because too many companies are trying to “build a human” in digital code. Instead, the focus is best narrowed to addressing the most common customer queries with bots, the ones that come up time and time again. Equally critical is how efficiently—and intelligently—customers are escalated to human agents. Makeup company Sephora offers a model for how to do this right, deploying an army of chatbots to help with tutorials and product suggestions but having real humans on call when a customer requires more help.
Stay tuned for more changes. Zuckerberg has been explicit that messaging is only the start. Facebook, he writes, will eventually “build more ways for people to interact on top of that, including calls, video chats, groups, stories, businesses, payments, commerce, and ultimately a platform for many other kinds of private services.” His inspiration here comes at least in part from Tencent, the Chinese Internet services giant that counts more than a billion users across the WeChat and QQ messaging platforms. Tencent long ago saw the limits of a one-to-many social media model reliant on advertising and today earns only 17% of its revenue from ads. The rest comes from a highly diversified revenue stream including gaming (37%), online payments and other fees (23%) and value-added services like video subscriptions (24%). (Indeed, for many Chinese users, the WeChat app is the Internet — a one stop-shop for all-things online.) Rather than selling user data, Tencent sells services to users, while serving as a mobile payment platform for all kinds of transactions. Considering that 70 percent of China’s Gen Z population buys direct from social media, this points to a probable commerce-oriented future for Facebook — one already signaled in the launch of the new Checkout on Instagram functionality.
The big takeaway for brands is that the rules, both written and unwritten, of social media are changing. The viral, broadcast model — filled with catchy posts, likes and comments, and big followings — is being replaced by a more personal and more earnest vision of social connection. These changes won’t happen overnight, but companies hoping to keep pace need to begin adjusting their strategies now to account for a post-social, messaging-based future. But as much as some things change, others stay the same. Engaging content, personal attention and the ability to deliver real value to users will be just as important as ever, if not more so, in the years ahead.
