The Axios article Sunset of the Social Network suggests that the rise of TikTok is leading to the demise of social media as we've known it. Key quote:
"Mark last week as the end of the social networking era, which began with the rise of Friendster in 2003, shaped two decades of internet growth, and now closes with Facebook's rollout of a sweeping TikTok-like redesign."
Facebook's TikTok redesign is based on adding a TikTok-like recommendation algorithm to their existing social graph algorithm.
The best description we've seen of this change, and its likely impacts, is Medium's The End of Social Media, which describes TikTok's approach as "recommendation media." Key quote:
"In recommendation media, content is not distributed to networks of connected people as the primary means of distribution. Instead, the main mechanism for distributing content is through opaque, platform-defined algorithms that favor maximum consumer attention and engagement."
In other words, social media users see content generated by their friends and social connections.
With recommendation media, algorithms distribute content based on the user's likelihood of becoming engaged in the content - regardless of the content's source.
Not everyone is happy with this shift. Trevor Noah, for example, says Instagram now "sucks" due to its use of recommendation algorithms.
And reality stars Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian are telling Instagram to “stop trying to be TikTok.”
The shift to recommendation media has major implications for small businesses and independent workers using social media for marketing.
Building large audiences of followers will become less important while designing content to appeal to recommendation algorithms will become more important.
It will also mean spending more time and effort building and cultivating customer communities while using recommendation platforms like TikTok and Instagram (and soon, Facebook) to find new customers.
We think traditional social media will survive. The use case - connecting friends, family, customers and people with like interests - is too strong not to.
But the rise of recommendation media will change the marketing game for small businesses and independent workers.
