For my last post on linkedIn “Where am i going to be on social media in 5 years?” I looked at recent algorithms changes, alongside recent product changes and new features, and platform growth to determine which of the social media platforms I will focus on over the next few years. I also predicted the fall of Google+, Tumblr and probably Twitter, and the continued rise of mobile first darlings Snapchat and Instagram.

The changes to these platforms own algorithms — that determine what gets shown in each user’s news feed — and the changes to product (or the addition of entirely new features) over the past 12 months is what makes it hard for marketers to keep up. So as a means to explain why I’ve picked the 5 I have, and to also help you, this post will go into more detail what the changes are, what they mean for the platforms themselves and social media as a whole.

80% of social media time is spent on mobile devices and there has been a large focus lately on visual, live, and interactive content. The four social media sites I will look at in this post are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and quickly touch on Snapchat.

The News Feed

Behind each social platform is some kind of content feed/stream and what users see is determined by the sites algorithm. In its basic form (which Facebook had to start with) are three factors, these are; Relationship (between post creator and post viewer), Engagement (on post so far) and time/decay (how old the post is).

Today’s most popular social networks now have an algorithm-based feed in the effort to create better experiences for their users. It started with Facebook in 2006, Twitter in 2015, and now Instagram has joined them by switching from a chronological feed to an algorithm-based feed too.

Facebook

The average Facebook user has 350 connections, Mark Zuckerberg Facebook CEO says that each user gets exposed to more than 1,500 stories each day, but an average user only gets to see about 100 stories a day on their News Feed. In the beginning Facebook’s algorithm was a lot simpler, however as the platform has grown it has become more complex, and their are now many factors taken into account to determine which content each individual wants to see.

It’s hard to imagine social media platforms without some kind of ‘Like’ feature. It is what allowed the engineers at Facebook to measure user’s interests in certain friends’ posts or certain types of content. What maybe surprising to know is that Facebook went a whole six years without it. While Facebook was first launched in 2004, it wasn’t until April 2010 that Zuckerberg announced the like feature at the F8 Developer Conference in San Francisco. One of the big feature changes of late has been the introduction of a Reaction button, taking ‘Liking’ to another level. The reaction button not only provides the viewer more ways to express themselves emotionally, it also allows Facebook to rank each piece of content more precisely based on those reactions.

Once every post that could potentially show up in your feed has been assigned a relevancy score, Facebook’s sorting algorithm ranks them and puts them in the order they end up appearing in your feed. Marketers should know that ads are also given relevancy scores, too. That way, Facebook can show users only the ads that could matter most to them — which allows for a better experiences for both Facebook users, the businesses who are paying for to advertise to them, and also those making the effort to produce valuable content. It’s calculated based on the positive feedback (video views, conversions, and so on) and negative feedback Facebook expects an ad to receive from its target audience.

Through studies and surveys, they found that many users were concerned they were missing important updates from friends they cared about the most. In response to these concerns, they began changing the News Feed algorithm to give more control to the users themselves. Facebook started this change last year, when they began giving priority (in the form of higher relevancy scores) to posts from friends over the Pages they follow and promotional posts.

In 2015 Facebook started monitoring how much time users spend viewing certain posts, which of course can vary on content type, and be affected by factors such as internet speed, length of post or video etc, but the engineers at Facebook are of course aware of this. One of the most interesting things happening right now on Facebook is Video. Also last year Facebook started to measure video engagement… Like turning on the audio, switching to full-screen mode, or enabling high definition. Meaning that if you turn up the volume on a video or make it full-screen, the algorithm will interpret that as you enjoying the video, and will show you similar videos higher up in your feed.

Twitter

Your Timeline is a stream of tweets, from the users that you follow, that shows up on your account home page when you first log in. It used to be that your Timeline was made up of every single tweet from every user you follow, in chronological order. But the guys at Twitter found that, similarly to what was happening on Facebook, users felt like they were missing all the best tweets from the people they care about most.

The algorithm that will re-order your timeline is based on the one that ranks tweets for the “while you were away” feature that Twitter introduced a year ago. The best way to think of the new timeline is as an expanded version of this feature. Spend an entire day away from Twitter, and when you open the app again, you’ll see highlights from the day. If you open it up a few times a day, you’ll see a handful of “while you were away” style sections breaking up the chronological tweets. And whenever you pull down to refresh your stream, it’s back to the regular, reverse-chronological timeline.

The ‘while you were away’ feature was introduced last year as a first attempt to rid users of whatever FOMO (fear of missing out) they may have been feeling from the chronological nature of the original Timeline. Basically, it’s a recap of some of the best tweets you may not have seen otherwise. Similar in part to Facebook’s algorithm it is also determined by user engagement.

The newer “Show me the best Tweets first” feature, is a little more similar to Facebook’s News Feed. This feature actually changes the content on your Timeline based on a tweet’s relevancy, rather than listing tweets chronologically.

By default, Twitter’s algorithm puts the tweets it thinks you’ll find most interesting at the top of your Timeline, still recent and in reverse chronological order. These tweets are chosen based on accounts you interact with most, tweets you engage with, and much more. The rest of the tweets will be displayed right underneath, also in reverse chronological order.

CEO Jack Dorsey promises to not shift completely away from Real Time, which has been its core and what many believe as Twitter’s USP.

Instagram

Instagram is the newest to an algorithm based feed. Initially the only tweak made since its acquisition by Facebook was to the “Explore” tab to display posts specifically tailored to each user. Before that change, the “Explore” tab had only showed the most popular posts across all Instagram users instead of specific users.

Even more recently, there have been rumblings about an impending change to Instagram’s algorithm that’ll alter your Instagram feed pretty drastically. A post to Instagram’s official blog on March 15, 2016 said, “To improve your experience, your feed will soon be ordered to show the moments we believe you will care about the most.” As with Facebook, the goal of this change is to improve user experience. After all, Instagram reports that people miss 70% of the content on their Instagram feeds on average.

These changes have not started to roll out yet however I expect that Instagram’s algorithm will work on the three fundamentals I mentioned at the start of this post — Relationship (between post creator and viewer), Engagement (on post so far) and time/decay (how old the post is).

The Product (Changes and New Features)

I believe social media is becoming more and more visual, live and interactive. Many of the top sites I have been watching and plan to focus on over the next 5 years have added new features to emphasis this shift. Below I will discuss each — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat’s recent product changes/additions and what they mean for the platforms.

Facebook

Facebook video has become so big it has fastly become a major competitor to Youtube. If you are not posting natively to Facebook, but are producing for Youtube, you must start publishing here too. One thing that has me really interested in video is how much Facebook have committed to Facebook Live in such a short period of time. Last year saw new platforms such as Periscope (owned by Twitter) and Meerkat appear, however I believe Facebook Live will take this concept to an entirely new level. Facebook Live could mean so much more than individual live chats, in fact Facebook has already opened up the API (invited technology companies and developers to build with it). This could mean Live sports with multi camera angles streamed on Facebook, intimate group performances by artists, as it happens breaking news broadcasts from individuals on the scene within moments of an event taking place… and, so, so much more.

Facebook live

Facebook have also very recently started paying publishers directly to produce exclusive content, I have also heard rumours of tip jar type button whereby users give money to a broadcaster (publisher or individual) if they feel inclined to do so. I have also read that Facebook may go down to route of in-stream advertisements, like we have on our TV screens.

You only need to look at the video above to see how interactive an experience this could be between superstar/influencer and their fans, with comments and responses live on feed. Snapchat stories is possibly the second largest platform for ‘almost live’ content, however with video calls now in what they call ‘Chat 2.0’, and that they had live broadcasting of the last Oscars, I am sure live story streaming is not too far away.

One thing about Facebook Live that has been relatively overlooked is ‘Live Maps’. Due to Twitter not really going anywhere of late, this could potentially take away from one of Twitter’s key features….

Twitter

Recent algorithm changes have frighten the loyalists, I see why some changes have been made but many articles about this state that people can also opt-out of them anyway. Allowing users to opt-out to me seems like too much of a safe move, or kind of cowardly, it just doesn’t fill me with much confidence for the platform. If 50% opt-out, and 50% stay with the changes, sure you can probably see which is working better as a split test, however, it is not really driving the platform forward. It just screams slow evolution of the product, something Twitter has struggled with or maybe hasn’t been a priority for the past 4–5 years.

Since Twitter acquired Periscope the app has stayed separate, Facebook live however will have icons placed throughout the platform (app and desktop). In just a couple months Live has gone from launch to a massive part of a Facebook user’s experience, from both broadcasting to viewing this form of content. The part of Facebook Live i feel is dangerous to Twitter is ‘Live Maps’.

Twitter has forever been known and loved by its users for being able to get Live ‘as it happens’ news, I too have spent hours on Twitter for news, one moment that stands out for me is having Sky news on the telly in the background (for audio manly), whist also watching my Twitter feed when the Boston Marathon bombing took place. Twitter won, and ever since I have followed major stories there, and even live minute by minute commentary on sporting events. Facebook Live Maps will have a massive impact on this, instead of a live stream of tweets (with limited characters), instead you can go onto Facebook Live Maps, search the location and see the bubbles from Live streams — the larger the bubble to more people are viewing the stream — you click one, and get as it happens video of the events from individuals nearby.

Instagram

Maybe due to the fact Facebook video has been so successful, Instagram have made several changes lately which show a shift or greater weight on Video content. Firstly the video limit is now 60 seconds, up from 15. Also views are now the main metric, highlighted over likes — the video publisher can still see the likes total.

As mentioned above Instagram is just rolling out its first major algorithm change, one i am sure it will add more weight to video in users home feeds. Instagram have also announced the explore section of the app will highlight video too. See picture below

This change will draw users attention to video, having more of the screen (real estate). What’s interesting to me is that Vine recently announced it will start highlighting what they will call ‘channels’, and with Snapchat stories having ‘channels’ within the discover section, is Instagram following suit? Will instagram start highlighting channels and even paying publishers to produce content like Facebook?

Snapchat

For me this is the most interesting platform right now, although I have just created my personal brand account, I have been on Snapchat (to just friends and family) for a few years now. It has completely changed since I first adopted it a couple years ago, and there are a few new things that excite me.

Snapchat recently updated its chat side to the app, what they are calling ‘Chat 2.0’. It’s not all about pictures any more, and Chat 2.0 is a serious contender to like likes of Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Skype and even Facetime… no seriously!

The other side to snapchat which used to be your feed of direct (one to one) snaps is now Snapchat Stories. This recently had a major change which has only boosted the already high user attention stories have. Snapchat stories used to have a clicking problem, when you finished viewing one you used to have to subsequently click on another one to watch it. Now stories are seamlessly integrated, meaning that users are less likely to pick and choose content and just tap (not scroll) through the entire content instead.

If you are completely new to Snapchat, then it also has a ‘Discover’ section to the stories part of the app, where Snapchat has several mainstream publishers producing content for the app. They also have daily streams whereby they highlight an event and show Snaps from around the world.

I believe the changes to these platforms algorithms, alongside the product changes of late show a shift towards Visual, Live, and Interactive content. There are a few other changes to the product side of these social media platforms, however I have chosen to highlight these because I believe that now more than ever, individuals and brands need to become more like media companies to win with their social media marketing.

Have something to say? Please comment below or email me — youngstapreneur @ gmail.com