Every single year we see that huge changes appear in social media. This is normal since the interactivity automatically means that changes are requested by users. We even see the government having to take strong actions like banning social media before university entrance exams. The entire world is aware of social media and its influence in business and in human interaction.
Getting back to the main subject at hand, there are so many different changes that appeared in 2016 in social media. We simply cannot talk about all of them. We even have bespoke app development companies that have invested heavily into improving social media integration in business software.
The big changes that need to be mentioned are the following.
Mainstream Live Streaming
In 2015 we did not have many live streaming options. In 2016 it seems like every single social media website has some sort of streaming service available. For instance, Periscope has over 15 million users and you surely already saw hundreds of announcements of Facebook users going live. Every single Facebook user can actually use a mobile device to start live streaming.
Companies now broadcast conferences live on the internet and we even see some firms offering paid streaming services at a pay per view rate through YouTube.
Smart Snapchat Use
There is no social media website in 2016 that has as much attention on it as Snapchat. This network is growing at an incredible pace and nothing seems to be able to stop it. That is because people can so easily create 100% unique content that will disappear whenever you want it to. This basically brought in the many users that did not want to store files with cloud technology. We even see huge companies like Heineken and McDonald’s using Snapchat these days.
Video Is The Content King
Static content is continuously losing popularity these days. Video content is what is much more important and what stands out on social media. Facebook has been seeing over 360% increases in videos posted by users. Average daily views are actually growing every single day for videos and are going down for the static content.
Virtual Reality Is Gaining Traction
The recently launched Pokemon Go application is mixing virtual reality with our reality and integrating social media in order to create a really interesting interaction that is already huge. At the same time, we see Oculus Rift finally starting to be used with many different announcements made about this year. Virtual reality content starts to be created, with The New York Times even jumping the wagon. While we are still just starting out, the first steps are quite interesting and social media is surely going to be connected pretty soon with the use of virtual reality.
Social media seems to be changing at a slow pace but the truth is that we do not even realize how huge the changes are. You will surely love absolutely everything that appears so you will not realize the fact that something changed. That’s how great social media is at the moment.
