Facebook & Twitter Are Committing Platform Suicide: This is How TikTok Killed the Social Media Giants…. The tech giants walked right into TikTok’s trap
Social media is dying.
TikTok has spun the tech world into chaos over the past four years, and social media as a concept will likely be the biggest casualty.
For decades, Meta has enjoyed a conspicuous lack of competition.
TikTok came out of nowhere and challenged the social media giants with its stunning virality, just like Facebook unseated Myspace in the mid-2000s.
Facebook launched in 2004. Its only real competition was the vulnerable Myspace. Ironically, Facebook dethroned Myspace by offering social media without ads. It took Facebook eight years to reach 1 billion users in 2012.
Having one billion users is a colossal feat.
But TikTok did the same in just five years, reaching 1 billion users on September 27th, 2021.
This will go down in history as the day the world changed forever.
Let me explain.
History
In the 2000s, Facebook had a crucial role in our lives connecting friends and family. They were better than anyone else. Over the years, that role mutated. Facebook sought profits above all, adopting an engagement-based business model.
They invented the “share” button in 2012 to compete with Twitter’s then-new “retweet” feature. The combined “like” and “share” buttons opened up a new world of virality and feedback.
Users could “thumbs up” or “share” content they enjoyed.
Content that got the most “reactions” was prioritized in people’s feeds. They knew what we liked — what we would buy.
They sold our attention to advertisers.
The engagement model was unpopular and dangerous.
Reprehensible people weaponized the news feed’s engagement algorithm to spread lies and hateful content.
Changes
Now, the company doesn’t know what to do with these buttons. They’re debating eliminating them.
They’re killing the News Feed, which was revolutionary when Facebook introduced it in 2006. They‘ve eliminated the last shred of the “friends and family” model that drove their success, the Friends List Feeds feature.
They’re abandoning the “friends and family” model entirely to compete with TikTok.
On YouTube,
Lincoln W Daniel
covered how Facebook can win back its users after a decade of scandals, saying the best action for Meta is to return to the friends and family model that won them success in the first place. He’s right.
Instead, Facebook and Instagram are pivoting to become TikTok clones while Mark Zuckerberg sinks more money than any project in history into a boring metaverse that no one wants.
Meta wants to imitate TikTok by providing short-form video content.
In a word, entertainment.
This will be their undoing.
Entertainment
In ancient warfare, if you wanted to capture a city, you had to punch through its towering walls and conquer it from the inside.
Military geniuses exploited internal strife to get people to open the city gates so they could fight in the open. Without the defensive fortifications to hide behind, a city was doomed. It’s analogous to what’s happening in the tech world.
Since their inception, the network effect inflated the switching costs for social media sites. A social platform is useless to one person. As more people join, it derives its value from users’ connections on the platform.
You stay on Facebook — through countless outrageous scandals — because all your friends are there. Leaving the platform means leaving behind your precious contacts.
Companies have repeatedly tried to sway users away from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, but users refuse to leave places their friends and family are.
By forcing social media companies to compete on their turf — entertainment — TikTok has led the giants out of their castles and to the slaughter.
YouTube and TikTok are entertainment sites; Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are social media sites. There’s a tremendous difference.
Nobody’s on YouTube or TikTok because their friends are there.
Anyone can entertain people.
Meta perfected the art of connecting people.
Now, by phasing out the News Feed — the last relic of the “friends and family” model — Meta is announcing its own suicide.
Decline
The competition in entertainment will be considerably higher. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter won’t be able to compete with YouTube and dozens of TikTok clones.
Entertainment is fleeting — social connections are enduring.
Fads pass as quickly as they come into style. Fashion churns by the quarter. Every three months, a completely new idea of what’s “cool” crops up, unseating the old.
Battling for the crown in the world of entertainment is like Game of Thrones.
There are other competitors in entertainment, like Netflix, Peacock, Paramount+, and Amazon Prime, vying for people’s attention.
These companies’ decline began when TikTok hit 1 billion users in September of 2021. That’s not a coincidence.
Social media was diagnosed as terminal when TikTok hit 1 billion users, radically reshaping the environment. Everyone is fighting each other for users’ attention, but you can only stare at one screen at a time.
Tech stocks have plummeted.
Facebook struggles to capture new users. Meta’s reputation repels young people. After enjoying a near-decade as a monopoly streaming provider, Netflix now has other entertainment sites to compete with.
Meta and Twitter have entered a death spiral.
If they don’t compete with TikTok, TikTok will continue to siphon off valuable young users who drive trends and make a platform “cool” to be on.
If they compete with TikTok, they must compete in unfamiliar territory where TikTok has a half-decade of experience.
Returning to the “friends and family” model would save social media companies. But they refuse. They’d rather gamble on free speech gimmicks and metaverse god complexes.
By Joe Duncan
Everyone is fighting each other for users’ attention, but you can only stare at one screen at a time.
