where are they going - the future of digital community
DESCRIPTION
In collaboration with Hamza Khan - Blame it on intrusive advertising, increasingly convoluted user experiences and your grandmother: 11 millions teens have left Facebook since 2011. And the exodus shows no sign of slowing down. Meanwhile, Snapchat’s users (aged between 13 and 23) are sharing more than 400 million photos per day (compared to Facebook’s 350 million photos per day, from its 1 billion worldwide users). And if Facebook’s failed $3 billion acquisition attempt of Snapchat indicates anything, it’s simply this: the social media behemoth feels threatened by the upstart startup’s potential to erode it’s marketshare of the next generation: our incoming students. This should be a wake-up call for all of us in post-secondary education. We’re in the middle of a paradigm shift in which everything we know about digital community building is in a state of flux. In student affairs, we’re preoccupied with student development and transition. We work hard to retain students and facilitate their holistic development. Till date, we’ve relied primarily on Facebook and Twitter as tools to support teenagers and young adults who increasingly spend more and more time online and on social media (reports indicate that the average teen spends between 3-6 hours per day!) But what happens when our audiences aren’t paying attention to us anymore? What do we do when students are moving in droves to platforms where everything we know about “canned & planned” digital marketing is useless? It’s time to embrace a new approach to digital engagement. Gone are the days of disrupting students during the academic cycle and then shoving our programs and services in their faces. Instead, it’s time to become a part of their daily lives – even if this means sending them the occasional funny face on Snapchat.TRANSCRIPT
Where Are They Going?
The Future of Digital Community is Dark, Silly and Fleeting
#PSEWEB
@HamzaK @BaileyParnell
About Us
RU Student Life shares the story of student life at Ryerson, one post, picture, video and tweet at a time.
What’s Going On?“I used Facebook to stay connected to Orientation.”
2011: 82.2%2012: 52.89%2013: 43%2014: 23% (projected)
Growth Decline2011: 1.5K new fans2012: 2.2K new fans2013: 1.5K new fans2014: 750 new fans (projected)
All Over The News...But was any of this real?
What Is The Industry Saying?
FacebookInstagram: $1BWhatsApp: $19BOculus Rift: $2BSnapChat: $3B (Failed)
TwitterVine: $970M
YahooTumblr: $1.1B
What Are The Numbers Saying?Snapchat: 26M usersVine: 40M usersInstagram: 200M usersWhatsApp: 450M usersFacebook: 1.23B users
But while the rest increase…
Facebook (2013-14):13-17 y/o’s: 25.3% decline18--24 y/o’s: 7.5% decline
Total 59% decline since 2011
What Are Teens Saying?
“Yeah, that’s why we go to Twitter and Instagram [instead of Facebook]. My mom doesn’t have that.”
“If you make a Twitter and Instagram, then you’ll kind of forget about Facebook.”
“On Facebook, they say so many details of the things that you don’t want to know. You’d be like, are you serious? No one really cares that much.”
So Where Are They Going?And how do we anticipate future changes?
The (Near) Future Is...
DarkEphemeralSillyContextual
A New Paradigm
“Teens don’t think about what we call ‘social media platforms’ and don’t consider these as stopping points between visiting websites. To them, social media is the internet.”
Victor Pineiro (Strategy Director, Big Spaceship)
Simple
Narrative
Aesthetic
Vine
Simple
Addicting
Comical & Creative
Easy
Comical
Relatable
Buzzfeed
SnapChat
Simple
Ephemeral
Personal
Yo!
Simple
Exclusive
Brands
Different
Informative
Anonymous
Whisper
Simple
Anonymous
Fine Line
Cross-Platform
Exclusive
Sometimes
Tinder
Simple
Popular
NO
Luckily, Some Things Never Change
Good Content:
UsefulInformationalAmusingInspiring
Good Experiences:
SimpleImmediateIntegratedPersonalized