Friday, December 21, 2018

Social Media Predictions for 2019

Here we are again...

This year I’m going to keep this short.

In the last 12-months, the powerhouses who run our social media lives have had it rough. Digital and search are changing and video is EVERYWHERE. Social is an integral part of our society but the customer (or product, depending on how sceptical you are) is starting to see through the veneer of its usefulness. Business is still loving it and spending billions on ads and Instagram influencer campaigns - thankfully - but what those post-Brexit budgets look like is anyone's guess. Legislation and regulation. Brace y’self Mark.

In the UK, come June, we will allegedly need a passport or credit card to prove ID if we want to view online pornography. The UK is the first country to take this (massive) step and yeah, they kinda slipped that one under the radar. The UK Gov. (see Conservative Party - who already introduced surveillance laws requiring, among other things, that ISPs store a record of every citizen’s browser history) wants to bring in legislation that addresses “the Wild West elements” of the internet, especially social media. Matt Hancock (our Minister for Culture and all things Digital) has said the fresh regulations will happen in the “next couple of years” to address things from sexual exploitation to cyberbullying.

Watch out for more political PR opportunities in the form of channel mistakes (like letting people publish pictures that might randomly offend a random someone, or failing to act quickly enough to take down extreme political or religious content). Then watch out for the politicians jumping on them to further justify slapping more restrictions on the industry and, ultimately, controlling the horizontal and the vertical.

More.

  • Stories and ephemeral content. Everywhere. Seriously, as far as the eye can see.
  • Nano-influencers.
  • Transparency.
  • Chatbots and Messenger conversations.
  • Voice recognition, AI and optimising for voice search.
  • Tik Toc.
  • Paying for things using social channels (like WeChat or Baidu).
  • Video/streaming (obvs) and channels being 'broadcasters'.
  • GDPR (in social).
  • Podcasting (yes, really).
  • TOR.
  • Conversations.
  • Gen Z.

Less.

  • Fake (uncited) news.
  • Fake influencers.
  • Traditional search engine optimisation.
  • Snapchat.
  • Internet Explorer.
  • Publishing any old bobbo.
  • Baby boomers.

Just a quick one this year. Good luck, folks, it’s going to be an interesting one.

Let’s be careful out there.