The first part is here.

Earlier we started to discuss why visual content is dead and what’s replacing it, now let’s continue and see what causes it.

1. The Dominance of Mobile Devices

As of 2018, over 50% of all internet traffic is mobile, making mobile devices the main drivers of internet use. And where are mobile users spending most of their time?

That’s right. Inside apps like Slack, Facebook, Tinder, Telegram, etc — all of which rely on GIFs, emojis and stickers.

Unfortunately, most mobile devices make personalization difficult. Apple’s Animoji feature cuts recordings off at 11 seconds; Snapchat and Instagram’s filters are limiting; drawing and editing images on a mobile screen is inconvenient.

As a result, few users customize their content. We’re seeing more customization — and apps like WhatsApp make it easy to enrich images — but we’re far from the point of mass adoption.

For that to change, at least 1 of 3 things needs to happen:

Developers release more automated content customization tools in the vein of Animojis and Filters. Users delegate microcontent creation and personalization to apps or other people. Developers release more mobile device-friendly customization tools.

Mobigraph’s 2 apps — XPRESSO and Qugo — focused on points 1 and 3 by giving users new ways to customize on-the-go. As a result, the 2 apps got to 650,000+ users with little marketing: an example of users actively wanting more ways to customize mobile content.

Having said that, the above apps didn’t solve issue number two:

2. Most Users Can’t Personalize Their Own Content

Facebook has been around since 2015. This means users have been uploading their own digital content for over 10 years. Creating, editing and publishing images, and videos is an established process, especially for younger people.

The same can’t be said for personalized microcontent, which is very new. Filters have only been around for a couple of years; more advanced customization tools are even newer. As a result, few users know how to personalize their own content.

This is compounded by the technological limitations we covered above. Microcontent is complex enough to customize as is, but mobile devices make it even harder to work with. With their small screens and limited processing power, most people don’t have the know-how or the patience to personalize their own microcontent.

(Which is why something as rudimentary as adding text to an image or video is a popular web service).

Here’s a simple example. Telegram lets users populate messages with custom stickers/emojis. But since most people don’t have the patience or the know-how to prepare their own set, they just use other people’s images instead.

All of this wouldn’t be a problem if there was a centralized marketplace for content customization services. Many individuals and businesses actively hire photographers, illustrators and other visual artists for their “longform” content, so it makes sense they’d do the same with microcontent if they could.

Which leads us to problem number 3. To find out what it is — stay tuned.

To learn more about Mobigraph and their new app and blockchain protocol, just visit the official PEP Network website here.

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