Social Media Trends: 2023 Review & 2024 Forecasting

2023 Review of Social Media Trends

There continues to be a userbase shift to “Dark Social” and private communities wherein users are sharing in DMs or closed communities such as Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, Messenger group chats, etc. as opposed to posting to their public-facing timelines.

The lack of safety and moderation tools provided by platforms means that end users are having a very poor experience. They are fed up with bots and dogpiling. People have found that it is safer to share an opinion in a community that knows them and doesn’t seek to misinterpret their intentions. If you happen to misspeak or try out a hot take to clarify your own thoughts on the matter, the people in your closed circle know you well enough to know your intentions and can challenge you without it escaping your sphere of influence and becoming a larger cancellation.

This shift to Dark Social can frustrate marketers because there could be bumps in sales that current analytics tools may not be able to explain. Sharing within closed communities can lead to strong word-of-mouth gains for some.

There has been movement towards paid subscriptions with the advent of X Premium/Twitter Blue, Meta Verified and Ad Free options, and Snapchat+. This will continue across all platforms.

As For You Pages, timelines, and feeds become increasingly clogged with paid content placement, users might be willing to pay for an ad-free experience or for paid-exclusive premium features.

The Death of Twitter/X?

There has been so much speculation about the big changes at Twitter/X leading to the death of the platform, but the situation has not been as dire as the “doom and gloomers” had initially forecasted. It is true that CEO Elon Musk’s behavior has been erratic, and there has not been good follow-through on publicly-stated plans, which has driven away brands and prompted advertisers to pull their funds from X and re-invest on other platforms.

The changeover to the x.com domain broke back-end analytics so marketers and social media managers have been “flying blind” without access to the data they had previously relied upon to fine-tune their content strategies.

There is ample publicly-available data to support claims that bot activity has increased on the platform and that users have not been spending as much time on the app or have abandoned it altogether.

Additionally, X currently has no data security team. Giving X access to any form of payment information is ill-advised at this time.

Threads, T2, Bluesky, Mastodon, etc. have not lived up to the promise of being a full Twitter replacement.

The widely-anticipated launch of Threads has been viewed by some to be a failure due to the sharp drop in active users after an initially impressive uptake. The platform, at launch, lacked many basic features and had geographically-restricted access which put a damper on adoption rates.

Mastodon has seen widespread adoption among tech workers, but non-tech consumers found the setup process to be too intimidating and complicated. Bluesky has struggled with individual users not being able to find their niche communities.

ByteDance launched a fulfillment service called TikTok Shops to compete with Amazon and Meta Commerce, but it struggled.

Software glitches in the rollout of TikTok Shops negatively impacted the small businesses that were early adopters leading to a poor experience for both sellers and buyers. This led sellers to send up the alarm in their communities prompting others to halt their plans to use the feature for direct sales. It was a huge stumble out of the starting gate and uptake has been slow ever since. TikTok broke trust with the creators they were relying on to make the launch of the tool a success, and they are struggling to recover.

HarperCollins and WH Smith launched a test program in partnership with TikTok Shop UK in 2022 to allow users to order books directly from videos without leaving the app in an attempt to capitalize on the impact that Booktok has had on the sale of certain titles. Since the initial press coverage of the launch of this partnership, things have gone quiet, so the assumption is that publishers have still not been successful in using the platform’s commerce tools for direct-to-consumer fulfillment. On the flip side of that coin, record labels have been effectively using Meta Commerce to boost both physical and digital album sales.

Creator-led consumer goods launches have been the biggest social media marketing success stories of 2023

Prime from Logan Paul, Skims from Kim Kardashian, and Feastibles from Mr. Beast were giant successes because of the trust that influencers have built up over time with their audiences.

Similarly, in publishing, titles like Baking Yesteryear by B. Dylan Hollis, Danny Loves Pasta by Danny Freeman, Safe and Sound by Mercury Stardust, the Trans Handy Ma’am, etc. have been topping bestseller lists.

Live video continues to be the most engaged-with form of content across all platforms.

Live video can have a huge barrier to entry for many would-be creators, but there are so many creative workarounds for people who prefer not to have their faces on camera. Creators have been using voice-over only, blocking their faces with large microphones, using sock puppets or paper cutouts of an avatar of themselves, etc., to avoid doing a full “face reveal” and protect their identities while still building audiences on social media through both streaming platforms and on short-form video platforms that have live video features.

2024 Social Media Trends Forecast

The future of text-based “micro-blogging” platforms is still bright.

The launch of Threads in the EU will be a big boost to the platform. The addition of accessibility features and a continuous improvement of user experience will be big determining factors in userbase growth over time.

Given how unpredictable the CEO of X Elon Musk’s behavior is and the somewhat dire forecasts for the future of the platform’s revenue sources, shifting away from investing too much energy into growing your audience on X makes sense.

Text-based micro-blogging platforms still lead image-based platforms in driving traffic to “owned media” sites due to robust support of links. Even when links are de-emphasized by the algorithm, users still see better traffic statistics from text-based platforms like X and Facebook than from short-form video platforms and image-based platforms like Snapchat and Instagram.

The major challenge for brands on social media will continue to be moving towards using platforms for conversion instead of strictly for raising brand awareness.

This is why we’re seeing so many commerce tools come online and why companies like Meta have shifted their focus away from communities with huge layoffs in the Facebook Groups teams.

Social media, however, is not a storefront. It was built for having conversations and sharing ideas, not for making purchases, so it’s trying to be something it’s not and was never intended to be in service of market pressures. Expert Matt Navarro thinks TikTok will have an easier time trying to become Amazon than Amazon will have trying to become TikTok but having an existing logistics infrastructure in place may mean his prediction is incorrect.

Live Shopping has been gaining a lot of traction in Asia on all platforms that support live video (mostly Instagram and TikTok), but there is still low market penetration in the US.

Multi-level marketing schemes were early adopters of live shopping in the US when Facebook Live came online in 2016, so that may have left US consumers with a poor impression of social commerce.

Amazon is trying to tap into social commerce by partnering with Meta and Snapchat to add features to their e-commerce platform that mimic social media platforms. These changes are geared towards bringing more live shopping to the Amazon app. Similarly, LinkInBio is implementing tools that will facilitate direct sales.

Expect TikTok Shops to continue to be pushed heavily in the For You Page algorithm, and watch for ByteDance’s foray into publishing as they’re expected to launch their own imprint and begin direct book sales on the app.

Nearby Feed is coming to multiple platforms utilizing location data to customize your feed in real-time.

This was one of the main strengths of Snapchat circa 2018, but expect data privacy challenges to slow integration into more platforms.

The Creator Economy - Influencer marketing has outpaced ad spend and will continue to take a larger share of advertising budgets, but still, only 4% of creators make six figures.

New subscription tools on LinkedIn, YouTube, and X are trying to give content creators more ways to charge for access, but many still rely on third-party platforms such as Patreon, Substack, OnlyFans, and others such as Five.Me.

Many content creators will likely try to diversify their income streams through publishing contracts and product launches in 2024.

Short Form Video Monetization is the Wild West.

YouTube has suffered three straight quarters of ad revenue declines (NOT LOSSES, just declining growth). Per analysis from Logically Answered, this is largely an effect of YouTube Shorts not being able to be monetized as effectively as long-form video and a shift towards short-form video taking away market share from long-form content. YouTube continues to be the most stable platform for creators to monetize their output.

The TikTok Creator Fund did not live up to its promise and is being replaced with The Creativity Program.

Monetization on the Reels Play program is still invitation-only, and creators have very little insight into the analytics behind their payouts, but this program is expected to expand, and Meta should bring more reporting features online in the future.

AI-powered large language model tools will allow creators to automate and streamline processes like copywriting so they’re able to publish content more frequently.

Generative AI tools are making some tasks that used to require the involvement of highly-skilled specialists more accessible to everyone, which could lead to an overall increase in output (and also an intensification of the squeeze on creators to do more and more with a finite time resource).

Spammers will be early adopters and everyone else will be feeling the pressure to develop new skills like writing effective AI prompts and researching what the best options are amid the rapidly expanding suite of new tools.

More bulk-created content will lead to a higher signal-to-noise ratio for thoughtful, long-form content to break through. Expect less overall reach on public posts across all platforms due to cluttered feeds.

Improvements in chatbots will continue to drive customer service successes via social. Designing conversations will be a needed skill for digital marketers to learn.

Generative AI images and video are improving at a rapid rate, with new tools expected to be released to the public in 2024.

Tech giants, including Microsoft, Google, and Meta, are continuing to make huge investments in artificial intelligence. Platform integration of AI-driven tools will be a big growth sector, but there are liability concerns surrounding the copyrights on the contents of the datasets that these machine-learning tools have been trained on. Expect more landmark lawsuits to be filed and the public to begin making calls for an increase in the transparency of where training datasets have originated. For AI tools to be useful, users must be able to trust their output which requires high quality input.

Malicious deepfakes making the rounds on social media will continue to be a big problem for free and fair elections and for prominent public figures’ reputation management.

AI avatar technology continues to improve and will allow more creators to begin using live video anonymously.

Expect more augmented reality to infiltrate digital commerce sites like Warby Parker’s virtual try-on.

Trends such as the “make it more” image prompts will continue to make waves on social networks.

Regulatory challenges in Europe and elsewhere have had a big impact on platforms and will continue to be a major focus.

Privacy concerns and data security compliance will need major investments from US-based entities if they want to continue to operate in jurisdictions that are investing in passing laws to protect their citizens’ rights.

Rapid-Fire Platform Predictions for 2024:

Threads will continue to add functionality. Adding in-app scheduling will be a game-changer. An API is coming, which will mean third-party app integrations including off-platform scheduling. Improvements in accessibility tools like Alt Text and Voice Messaging have already made the app much more usable and this trend will continue. The addition of translations will be a big step forward. Threads doesn’t have much of an identity currently. It hasn’t distinguished itself with any unique features.

X will try to woo back advertisers. There will be more focus on video on X and a shift toward payment systems, transaction management, and banking. There has been no indication that there will be new data security hiring. The prediction is that X usage will continue to flag, and the company will be less and less profitable in future.

TikTok will keep its focus on online commerce and expanding messaging services but will face more regulatory challenges in multiple jurisdictions. Keep an eye on The Creativity Program and improvements in search features as the platform continues to challenge Google as an information source.

WhatsApp’s universal inbox will be a model for all other platforms that are trying to capitalize on the shift to dark social.

LinkedIn will continue to grow its user base and reap the benefits of the expanded features they’ve rolled out in recent years. They are planning to add AI-integrated features.

Facebook is still hurting financially from the failure to launch of the Metaverse, but their Ad-Free subscription has seen decent uptake and their investments in messaging and acquisition of WhatsApp are paying off.

Instagram is too noisy with bot activity and poorly targeted ads which is driving users away. Whether or not they have more to offer in 2024 than continuing to clone the popular features of other apps is yet to be seen.

YouTube’s robust content moderation has continued to serve it well in terms of attracting and retaining advertisers. It’s a place where brands feel safe, but the modes of moderation have had the effect of stifling creativity. We’ve all seen the creators trying to have a serious conversation about certain topics who’ve had to dance around the issue by using euphemistic language to avoid de-monetization. This creates a poorer experience for the audience and hopefully YouTube will be able to build some nuance into their automated content moderation tools with improvements from machine learning tools.

Pinterest has put a huge investment into its augmented reality virtual try-on tool, but it’s not quite ready for primetime yet.