Social Networks post pandemic
How changed user expectations could mean a flurry of better social products in the next decade.
Recently, there was a huge discussion in the world about decentralized social networks, after Twitter de-platformed you-know-who. While not going on the political side of things, I believe there is an opportunity for an entirely new social network to flourish and grow big. Not just because of decentralization, but the pandemic which has changed what a typical users expects from social products.
The first version of Social Networks
Most of the social media products we use today were created almost a decade back. Be it Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snap etc. all were created before 2011. In the next 8 years, only two products have really reached a big enough scale - Discord and Tiktok/Musical.ly (outside of Asia). One way of understanding why that is because the inherent needs of users were already met, and with network effects in play, switching costs were high.
As a feature, the early iterations of social products replicated the offline/analog network that already existed and that made them immediately valuable for everyone signing up on the network. They connected almost everyone everywhere (except China of course) and made it seamless to deepen our existing connections from the analog world. This did not replace the need for analog interactions though. People continued to have serendipitous meetings in the offline world, and they would subsequently show up in the online world as first degree connections. For a typical user, a fulfilling social experience comprised of both digital and analog interactions.
While the products we use are about 10 years old, people of my generation have already switched their preferred social network at least twice. We started with Myspace/Orkut as our first social network, then moved on to Facebook, and then switched to Instagram/Snapchat (or Tumblr -> Instagram -> Tiktok for the gen Z). While the mechanics were still a user’s offline social graph, each new product had increasingly more powerful tools to create and share content — starting from texts to photos and videos and so on — first via news feed, then smartphones, and then photo/video editing tools within an app. Another reason many people switched was because the incumbent product became too crowded, and the challenger allowed for better interactions till everyone switched, and then repeat.[1] The mechanics and behaviors both remained same. The needs that Facebook fulfilled in 2012 were pretty much fulfilled by Instagram in 2020. That is, until the pandemic started.
The unmet need
When the pandemic hit, digital media and social networks stopped being a distraction and became central to all our interactions. Technologies that helped us work and live digitally saw a hyper-exponential growth. Zoom went from 10M to 200M active users. Houseparty became the No 1 app on the app store. Various other products[2] got a huge lift in traction too. TikTok saw its users grow to 91M in June 2020, and its replacement Triller raise another round at $1.25B valuation.
Along with accelerating the tech adoption, the pandemic changed our habits, and it has fundamentally altered our relationship with social and tech products[3]. However, as our dependence on these products grew, we expected more nuanced interactions and had new emotional needs, something these products were not fully ready for.
Earlier I said, impromptu analog interactions with strangers/acquaintances were a huge part of our social experience - meeting someone new, sharing experiences, engaging, conversing, sharing moments, celebrating sports or movies, and even just listening to some random chatter around you. While we switched to online for all interactions with our family and friends (the Facebook territory), there is no tool which focus extensively on addressing the part about spontaneity or belonging. Social media grew so big by enabling us to deepen our existing connections with the ability to stay in touch, and follow their lives better, but it still relied on our analog interactions to deliver the most value out of it online.
A new era
It’s not just social media. Post pandemic, every digital interaction has gone through a phase where the expectations have been recalibrated. We are stopping to consider whether we can improve or change it, to make sure it’s as fulfilling as possible. Consider Netflix: Earlier, it was enough to just watch a show with friends sitting in the same room. Not now. Users created a group chat add-on to replicate the same digitally. The same applies to other social interactions too.
Users are expecting a fulfilling social experience online, one that is as close to the in-person experiences as possible, and sometimes even better. This suddenly creates a lot of gaps and unmet needs, and there is opportunity for new companies to emerge in a space previously thought occupied. We no longer view digital as a promotional channel, but something we can derive meaningful connections from. Clubhouse has already made huge inroads in the recent weeks and recently crossed a million users. LunchClub (still invite only) managed to connect about 10x more people every week post-pandemic compared to before.
The Interest Graph
One direction the shift could take is about our interest graph. It’s no longer enough to just follow our friends online; digital mediums should give us ways to meet new people, talk to strangers, and make new connections, based on things that interest us. What tweaks can we make, or tools that we can create, to make our online interactions more real like, more about core human connections, social validation, and new friendships? How can we make our online social experience as close to physical one as possible, if not more?
The answer might be not be creating something from scratch but making something existing better with the right amount of subtle tweaks. Facebook was like the 10th social media to debut, but it optimized for UGC delivery (via news feeds and then localisation) and skyrocketed. Flickr was the photo sharing app before Instagram. Instagram eliminated the hurdles in photo editing pre upload. Tiktok reduced the effort it took to produce a video and exploded. The core heuristic: all three greatly reduced the barrier to entry, enabled exponentially more users to create content, and create quickly. All three also gave users a way to distribute, building a lasting advantage that incumbents could not catch up to. Arguably, the disruption or innovation wasn’t about catering to the professionals, but to bridge the gap between a professional and an amateur.
How can a similar thing play out on the Interest-graph front? We already have Twitter, a Person-to-Stranger network, where you *can* follow people who share your interests. [4]. The thing is, curating those people, finding such content and broadcasts has to be done from scratch. The other part, which is getting every bit of content from a followed account in your feed, assumes that my interest is in an account, not the topic that account and I share a mutual interest in. This works very well for celebrities, where fans are interested in everything they have to say and do, but not for regular people. That being said, Twitter is a great starting point. How can we improve Twitter’s core proposition of delivering interest based content to suit the users’ psychological and emotional needs post-pandemic? Can the interaction be more synchronous? can we make a typical user feel like a celebrity in the field he is interested in? Whichever product can answer it, it has the potential to be even larger than Twitter (and maybe even Facebook.[5]) [6]
Similarly, across the industry, there is demand for many other products. During the pandemic, it was more important to know happenings in our neighborhood, which created another surge in usage of Facebook groups. That could be a starting point for a completely new and interesting product which connects you to people who live around you.
Conclusion
Decentralization explains the “how” part, the architecture upon which the next gen social networks should be built. Pandemic has given us a “why” and “what” part too. Fellow entrepreneurs, don’t ignore the signs. Never before have we seen something that drastically altered the behaviors of global population. We need a way to connect with others, it is a fundamental human need that can never be ignored. People are trying new things with existing tools to create new (or similar to real life) experiences they crave for[7]. With an ability to ship fast, and without a baggage of legacy, founders who can figure out sticky habits have a staggering opportunity.
Over the last few years, it’s often repeated that social is dead, and it’s pointless and suicidal to compete against Facebook or Twitter. This is also the basis for an anti-trust investigation about Facebook. The pandemic dramatically leveled the playing field, and gave an opportunity to everyone to build a better social experience to satisfy completely new emotional needs for a typical user. I am hopeful we will see a flurry of better social products, which can make our online experience closer to the physical world, or even transcend it.
Thanks to Malvika Maloo, Pratik Poddar, Rahul Gaitonde, Snneha for reading an early draft of this post.
Next: The difference between a private network, social network, and a forum. (will update the link when I write it)
Notes:
[1]: On often repeated meme about this is that teenagers do not want to be on the same platform as their parents or the generation above them given it takes away the freedom to express freely. The moment most of our parents will switch to Insta, we may stop using that too.
[2]: Not just social networks, the downloads and use of dating apps, Bumble biz, and sites like Omegle and Chatroulette has increased a lot too. Many products have a new lifeline thanks to the pandemic.
[3]: We had smartphones to kill time during this pandemic. I have always wondered what did people do during Spanish flu? Answer: indulge in hobbies like writing, reading, painting etc. May not be a coincidence that 1920s golden age just followed the pandemic. I am not sure if we will have similar kind of successes.
[4]: While this is very much true, many users follow others because they already know them (friends) or they want to know them or hang out with them (celebrities). This also makes Twitter as a unique platform, where every user is trying to get something out of it, and is successful to an extent, though not as fulfilling to stick to it. A good offline analogue to Twitter would be a bar. All kinds of people are there - some you know, some famous, and you can hear what they are broadcast.
[5]: The reason for saying it would be bigger than Facebook is just that a user’s potential interest graph is larger than his social graph due to sheer possibility of connecting with strangers. It also could be denser, as it captures the ‘why’ of connection rather than just ‘how’.
[6]: While Reddit also has interest based subreddits, I feel that Reddit may have a problem with keeping new users to stick. Reddit reported in Oct 2020 that their DAUs increased by 44% post pandemic to 52M. That makes it 36 DAUs in Dec 2019 (if not Oct), which compared to 430M MAUs, it is quite low. This means that reddit is exhibiting forum culture - many lurkers but a few power users who treat it as their fiefdom and use it very frequently.
[7]: Most examples are Zoom centric because that was the tool that broke out during pandemic and everyone had access to it. People had comedy shows on zoom, played poker, had music concerts, and so on. Zoom became the Discord for the rest of the world. Though Zoom is an imperfect solution for most of things I mentioned. Music concerts can be an even better experience with access to right acoustics. That would be better than live concert! How about a chat emoji that actually laughs like the sender?