[nowherebeen]

Social products all have a lifetime value and it’s incredibly short. The same thing will also happen to TikTok one day. I suspect we will learn in the coming decades that social media companies are very profitable in the short term, but not so in the long term, say 20 years, unless the keep introducing new viral social products.

[dopeboy]

I think this is a lazy conclusion and needs more depth. What’s huge - seismic really - is that people actually prefer to know more about strangers than friends. On average, these strangers tend to be personalities and as a result are more entertaining / interesting / provocative than my typical friend. Combine this with the average person posting less about their life and you end up with a serious problem.

Twitter first rode this trend, but TikTok really exploited it specifically with the medium of video and their algorithm to serve content.

Networks effects were once seen as the ultimate moat and one reason why FB could never be taken down. But it turns out if the content people “trade” on their “marketplace” is poor, all the network effects in the world won’t save you.

[nowherebeen]

What you are describing is the broadcast model. Instagram is moving towards that model to compete with TikTok but that is exactly why people stopped using it because it’s no longer the Instagram they were using.

Influencers (aka personalities) are only entertaining for a short period of time. They have constantly churn out new content to keep engaging users. It is because user don’t know them and are less attached.

Therefore as long as TikTok has influencers that can continue to make new content, it will keep attracting new users. But I suspect that this is also not long term sustainable. People, both influencers and users, will get burned out eventually.

Your argument that network model dies because of broadcast model is just one part. My argument still stands that eventually people will get tired of a social media product and move on to the next ones.

Not sure how my observations are lazy though considering your does not provide anymore insight that others didn’t already know… it’s already been reported on Rolling Stone, Venture Beat, etc back in July. Aren’t you just regurgitating their idea with offhand keywords?

[dopeboy]

I take that back the "lazy" comment - my mistake. In my defense, I haven't read those articles and came up with these ideas on my own.

Agreed re broadcast model - that's an important distinction too vs the classic follower model. This is why, despite my best efforts, I still see content from strangers on my twitter feed. They know it drives engagement.

> People, both influencers and users, will get burned out eventually.

I disagree - because the space here is endless. Influencers will churn out and users will move on to the next one. I don't think users will get burned out - their tastes will evolve. Each phase of life has its own content pool. I'll describe my own journey here: I got married this past year. In the lead up to that, there were tons of wedding planning videos. Now I get served a lot of married couple w/no kids content. That'll probably keep changing as I move through life.

[nowherebeen]

> I got married this past year. In the lead up to that, there were tons of wedding planning videos. Now I get served a lot of married couple w/no kids content. That'll probably keep changing as I move through life.

This is an interesting observation. You are arguing that your taste for content will change preventing you from getting tired of the product.

My argument is more along the lines of the medium. People get bored of photos because it’s old and so they move on to short videos.

Both are non-conflicting. I do see how your argument will prolong the lifecycle of the product.

[dopeboy]

That's possible - video is definitely more enticing than photos and there's data out there to back that up among the general population. Perhaps people will get bored of videos one day - we'll see.

[bg24]

Why bother building a network when the whole world can be your network.

[yogthos]

This is a problem for commercial social media companies. Companies need to make profit to operate, and once they stop being able to show growth then investments start to dry up. There is also no clear revenue model aside from ads and mining of user data.

The situation is quite different in open source world. The only factors that matter for an open source platform are having enough people who are willing to develop it, run servers, and post content. Once the platform reaches enough users to be sustainable then it can exist indefinitely without need for growth or any significant funding.

We can look at Mastodon as a case study. It builds on top of all the work done by GNU Social and the OStatus protocol. GNU Social languished in obscurity for many years, but Mastodon was able to build on this work and create a much larger social network. Now, there's a whole federation of different platforms using ActivityPub protocol that grew out of OStatus. Fediverse will likely outlive every single commercial social media platform in existence today.

[UweSchmidt]

I think it's the opposite: lifetimes for well-established social products are getting longer. People left digg for reddit because of a redesign, people stay on Twitter despite an ideologic shift from left to right! Nerds switch platforms over minor perceived slights and switch Linux distributions over license-philosophies or systemd-controversies; normies stay with the herd, with the audience, with the likes and clicks.

[babyshake]

It would be interesting to see a major player in the space really embracing the fashion and seasonality of their products and succeeding with that strategy.

[specialist]

Like the CPG, dating, porn, gaming, and clothing industries?

Some categories of brands can be long lived. Coca Cola and Disney.

Some categories of brands are mayflies. Pop music, TV, fast fashion.

My hunch is the average lifecycle of social media brands and MMORPG properties are roughly the same. Say 5-10 years?

[kodisha]

WOW would like to have a word.

[Ekaros]

WoW is the outlier that destroyed the genre. Looking at games released after it isn't pretty picture. Those before it fare better.

[specialist]

Mosdef. Ravelry and metafilter are my go to examples of outliers. By what magic are they sustaining themselves?