Mega-platforms like Meta may dominate the media landscape, but all recent studies prove that communities tend to gather in increasingly niche and intimate spaces.
The latest report from Highsnobiety and BCG, "Navigating what’s next: a pulse check of the luxury consumer" from March 2023, is enlightening. Certainly, the panel is specific - individuals considered "cultural pioneers" who have, on average, 10 times more followers than the average person - but relevant for understanding the future new normal.
This audience mostly believes that there are too many users on Instagram or Facebook and prefers to gather in smaller, more affinity-based spaces. Expressions are diverse: private groups on WhatsApp, or Discord servers, or even sub-sub-sub discussion threads on Reddit.
The interest of these smaller spaces: discovering relevant trends around their interests (and thus increasing the social value of time spent with these groups). But also, to engage more personally with people with whom one cultivates a sense of trust.
This behavior should not be dismissed from the notion of psychological ownership, a concept well known to user experience specialists. The most obvious example is Spotify Wrapped, the playlist that the music streaming platform "offers" us every year; by consolidating each user's most listened-to titles in a nice digital environment (pleasant visuals, a format established for years), the user feels that they have something that belongs to them. A feeling similar to what one might have (for the less young among us) with an old audio cassette with all our favorite songs. Except that if the cassette hidden under the bed belonged to us (legally AND psychologically), what about a playlist on Spotify?
And that's precisely where psychological ownership comes into play: the time we invest in a platform pushes us to create a strong relationship with it. There is Team Spotify vs Team Deezer. User migrations between competitors are ultimately quite limited, which explains why, when TikTok copies a new feature from Instagram (or vice versa), there is little radical switch. Read a very comprehensive analysis on this subject below:
Li's Newsletter Building Psychological Attachment — Not Just Ownership — Into Web3 Hi readers, this is a piece that was published today on Harvard Business Review, about how ownership needs to be felt and received, not just technically granted. This element of "psychological ownership" is a key input into many web2 products' retention and success, and — I posit — is a missing ingredient for tokens and user-owned networks and products … Read more 8 months ago · 50 likes · 5 comments
Insularity around specific subjects, network effects still through platforms, creation of an emotional connection through repetition, experience mechanics: apps like BeReal do not hesitate to challenge the postulates of social media giants head-on. BeReal's promise on the App Store is clear:
BeReal is life, real life, and this life is without filters and without likes.
BeReal is your chance to show your friends who you really are, for once.
BeReal can be frustrating.
BeReal will not make you famous or known, if you want to become an influencer, you can stay on TikTok and Instagram.
More generally, there is a strong difference between social networks in Asia and their counterparts in the rest of the world. WeChat, LINE, initially based their development on how they could become essential in terms of instant messaging. By managing to become the ultimate socialization space (and therefore implementing very sophisticated mechanics of experience and psychological ownership), it became easier to add e-commerce, media, and entertainment bricks. Not so surprising that Meta is trying to connect WhatsApp to all its services, or that Elon Musk is attempting yet another gamble by trying to turn Twitter into an "everything app."
Word of the week: "Celibacy"
Already 193 million views on TikTok around the #celibacy trend. In short: users who decide to share testimonies of why they decide to steer clear of one-night love/sexual stories. A trend far from anecdotal as various studies tend to prove that young people have less sex than in the past. This does not mean that young people are not interested in others, but that they also want to control their choices. Everything is political, everything is personal.
Amazing links
I was able to discuss the notion of "liveness" for Culture RP, in-depth, and its links with resilience, leadership, and artificial intelligence.
Bulletin plunges us into the fascinating history of the stereoscope, a precursor to immersive worlds.
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