The Future of Social Networking

Let’s talk about the future of social networking, and what exactly we mean by that. Overall, your future online is…more security, less ads, decentralized, and open source (transparent).

What is Social Networking?

It’s a vague term, that’s what. Here we’re not talking about networking events. We’re not talking about LinkedIn Connects, although that’s a step closer.

Let’s get specific.

We’re talking about the infrastructure of all these social platforms. The core principles that govern things like social media, online sharing, and online business platforms. The future of social networking determines the rules of the game.

Hint: People don’t like to be scammed, annoyed, censored, or not know who they’re dealing with. So, you can expect the market to pick up on that, and provide an experience that matches it.

The Current Trends in Social Networking

Don’t know anything about how the earth is moving and shaking under your Facebook feet?

Let’s catch you up, fast and easy.

Transcript: Social media is about to change and unless you follow the tips in this video, you’re not gonna do well. Hey, everyone, I’m Neil Patel and today, I’m gonna break down seven social media predictions that’ll come true in 2019. Before we get started, make sure you subscribe to this channel. That way, when I release more marketing tips like this, you’ll get notified. Question, how many of you have noticed that your social engagement has dropped? If it has, leave a comment below with yes. If it hasn’t, leave a comment with now. I bet you almost all of you are gonna leave yes as a comment because it has and here are the predictions that you need to follow to get that engagement to go back up. Prediction number one, all these social networks are gonna prefer video in 2019. LinkedIn now has live, there’s YouTube Live, there’s Facebook Live. Facebook loves video. Instagram even likes videos more than images now and they’re gonna push on that harder and harder and the reason being is they wanna take over the television networks. They’re all doing YouTube TV and Facebook wants to broadcast NFL and football and all this kinda stuff. They all want their slice of offline media and that’s why they’re pushing so hard on video so you need to start creating video today. Doesn’t have to be studio based quality video. You can just bust out your phone and start filming. That’s how effective it will be. The second prediction I have for you is brands will have more weight. There’s this big issue of fake news. It’s not just even on the social sites. It’s even with sites like Google. They’re tired of pushing fake news. They’re not doing it on purpose but the way that they’re gonna solve this is by focusing more on brands. Brands will have more weight because they know brands are less likely to push out fake news. So you need to build a brand and that usually requires taking an omnichannel approach. Being at offline events, conferences, speaking, all this kinda stuff will help build up your brand and your corporate brand so that way you’re gonna start doing better on the social web. The third prediction I have for you is likes and shares won’t mean much. It’s all gonna be about comments. LinkedIn wants comments, Facebook wants comments, Instagram. They’re all gonna move towards this. So the more comments you get, the better off you are. In your content, you’re gonna have to encourage people to leave comments. You’re not gonna like it. You may feel that they’re getting tired of it but it’s okay ’cause it works and that’s gonna be the difference between getting double, triple the amount of views. It’s easy to click a Like button. It’s much harder to leave a comment and they’re not just gonna look at comments like yes or nos. They’re gonna want in-depth comments. So the more in-depth comments you have, the better off you’re gonna be. The fourth prediction is advertising’s gonna get tougher. Yeah, you all know costs are gonna go up but the reason it’s gonna get tougher is because it’s gonna move into branded. Right now, there’s so many affiliates who are still doing somewhat well and they’re making millions of dollars from Facebook and all these social sites through ads but it’s getting tougher and tougher. You know why? It’s because companies like Coca-Cola are like, yeah, let’s run branded campaigns with our polar bear and what are we gonna base it off of? Of yeah, we’re getting more likes to our polar bear. That’s what big corporations do and as they do that, it’s gonna make advertising harder and harder for you because brand dollars are much bigger than dollars that affiliate marketers are willing to spend to get a ROI. The fifth prediction I have for you is social media platforms will all have similar algorithms in 2019. What you’ll find is as you drive traffic to your website, it gets harder and harder. Some of these social sites still make it easy but they’re not gonna wanna keep having that. Why, because the longer they keep ’em on their own social platform, the more money they make. They don’t wanna drive traffic to your site. They wanna keep ’em on Facebook. They wanna keep ’em on LinkedIn. They wanna keep ’em on Instagram. That’s what benefits them the most. That’s how they make the most ad dollars. You wanna drive traffic to your site? Pay ’em for ad dollars. That’s what they want and that’s what’s gonna happen. The sixth prediction, people will stop using all of the social platforms out there. Individuals are gonna start focusing their time and efforts on the main social networks. You already know people that are using Snapchat less and less and are using Instagram more. There’s just too many options out there and there’s not enough time in the day. For that reason, they’re just gonna focus on the social networks that they like so you’re gonna have to figure out how to market to people on different channels. So yeah, as a business, you may target all of ’em but you’re gonna figure out how to do campaigns and how to create content that works for each social network because what people like on Instagram, they may not like on Facebook. So you can’t just take your content and regurgitate it and put it on all the networks out there. That’s what’s gonna change in 2019. It’s gonna suck but that is gonna become the reality and the last prediction I have for you is there’s not gonna be too many newcomers. When you see these newcomers blowing up, they’re gonna get killed off. Why, because all the other popular ones are just gonna take their features, copy ’em and try to crush ’em and yeah, some of ’em still get some traction but people are still gonna stick with the major social networks out there that they already use because there’s too many options and if you want help growing your social traffic in 2019, 20 or any other year, check out my ad agency Neil Patel Digital where we can help you with that and if you enjoyed this video, like it, share it, comment below and I’ll answer your questions if you’re confused on anything. Thank you for watching.

That video, while centered on social media, will give you some insight into social networking (which is usually not spoken about directly, for some reason). Remember, social media is just one means of social networking.

Now let’s talk about another development in social networking. Blockchain.

What is Blockchain?

You may have heard of the scammy and confusing bitcoin. Well, I agree with the second part. It’s a different animal, and “blockchain” makes about as much sense as “refrigeratorlasso”.

Let’s make one thing clear. Bitcoin is not blockchain. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency(digital-only money that uses encryption) that has a blockchain built into it. It’s a fundamental aspect of bitcoin, but they are different things.

The point is, your company can utilize blockchain in a way that doesn’t have any special internet-type money attached.

Email used to be confusing too. Still is, actually. How many people really know how it works on a technical level, and could readily explain it? The point is, blockchain is still young. We can simplify it by looking at what it does and how to use it.

Here the benefits:

Decentralized – No tech giant CEO changing the rules on you when their bottom line says so. No single point of authority that makes all the decisions and keeps personal tabs on the vault.
Less Ads – Facebook and Google are the gatekeepers of when and if you see ads, for the most part. If the users are in charge, and not the guy in pin-stripes, who’s getting a big cut, then we won’t see ads shoved in our faces as much.
More security – The unique infrastructure (called “blockchain”) is incredibly more difficult to hack or hijack. For hackers it means countless rapidly moving targets, and they have to hit them all at the same time to get in…kinda.
Open Source – This means more security and mainly privacy. Still ticked about all those companies you trusted that stole your data, lied about it, and are very rich because of you? Open source makes conspiracy much tougher because there’s no more theory about it.

And here’s a good place to start learning all about blockchain: 101blockchains

How Do You Know This Will be a Thing?

So many wanna-be empires rising and falling. So much controversy. And who really knows the future?

I’ve got a simple and undeniable metric for you. It’s called, “advancing technology moves forward, not backwards”

Whether it’s through blockchain or not, one thing we all know is that technology doesn’t go backwards. Remember that time when all those online blogs switched over to handwriting every post and mailing them out through the post office? Me neither.

The bullets above are simply improved ways of doing things. They solve problems. They aren’t means of growth, they are growth.

Currently Rising Decentralized Social Media Platforms

Not sold? I don’t blame you.

New tech companies and platforms are born and die every day. But it’s the overall trends here that we should pay attention to.

Here’s a list and some graphic stuff to convince you that everything I say is official and correct.