Girl sharing on social media using smartphone

Where Social Media is Headed: The Biggest Trends to Watch For

2016 has been a year bombarded with trending social media apps. It’s also worth noticing how the products which were launched with a specific niche start blending into one another once they hit the crowd. Let me explain this now. For example, Instagram was always a great place for us to share our pictures or amazing videos having some really cool features until Snapchat launched “Memories”. Following the trend, Instagram started “Stories” and gave their users a platform to use much “Snapchat like” content. Now, it would be wrong to say that this is the only case where in we see a blend of ideas. Just like Snapchat, Facebook is also testing some changes in the Messenger. So, I think 2017 will witness certain fairly huge changes to the social media apps as a result of the war to become one of the “go to” platforms.

FACEBOOK

With around 1.8 billion monthly users and $7.01 billion revenue during the third quarter of 2016, Facebook has turned 2016 to another record setting year. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights.

New Launches

  • Business
    Having many platforms to sell or buy items, Facebook has become a convenient marketplace to discover new items and accordingly buy/sell items as well.
  • Reactions
    Now Facebook enables you to express your views to the posts through a set of Emojis.
  • Facebook Live
    Trending the most, “Facebook Live” is a platform provided by Facebook where in the users can share live videos and broadcast them to anyone in the world. Check out this very useful and interesting article about how to use Facebook Live.
  • Instant Articles
    Instant Articles are interactive articles on Facebook which can be loaded up to 10 times faster.

Search Progress

Though Google still leads with the number of searches per day, Facebook is showing a tremendous growth in this aspect too. Recently, Mark Zuckerburg has revealed that Facebook now sees 2 billion searches per day.

AR and Filters

In 2017, we are likely to see Facebook becoming a strong competition in the AR space since Pokémon Go and Snapchat selfie lenses have already shaken the masses with the augmented reality (AR). Facebook has already started experimenting with a variety of lenses and masks while sharing live videos.

INSTAGRAM

Instagram has also hit around 500 million monthly users. So, 2016 has been a great year for Instagram as well. Below mentioned are some of the highlights.

New Launches

  • Marketplace
    Instagram now includes certain analytical tools with the help of which we can create ads and buy/sell accordingly within the app itself.
  • Instagram Stories
    Similar to the Snapchat stories, we can post pictures/videos on Instagram and create stories which disappear after 24 hours.

SNAPCHAT

Snapchat certainly has enjoyed its fast growth in today’s competitive market and digital world and has gone mainstream in a big way. With the amazing platforms which Snapchat brings in, it has given a major setback to major top guns like Facebook. So, how far has Snapchat come? It accounts to around 158 million daily active users and 301 million monthly active users and the average number of snaps per day is around 2.5 billion. Now that sounds like a great deal. Doesn’t it?

New Launches

  • Memories
    You can share your pictures and videos and create stories on Snapchat.
  • Spectacles
    Now you can re-live a moment on Snapchat by recording a snap like sunglasses! You simply have to tap the button and it will start the recording as and how you want.

PINTEREST

Some years ago, we used to pin our notes to the bulletin board or may be pin notes to our fridge. Who would have imagined that pinning to be done digitally? Now, you can pin pictures digitally on a social networking app called “Pinterest”. I would say that Pinterest has turned out to be one of the most helpful social media sites around.

Most popular Pinterest categories for men:

  • Technology
  • Food and Beverages
  • DIY
  • Humor
  • Gardening
  • Clothes

Most popular Pinterest categories for women:

  • Home Décor
  • DIY and Crafts
  • Home feed
  • Food and Drink
  • Holidays and Events

I believe in 2017, we are going to witness some really cool and entertaining stuff as the creators seek to connect with the passionate audiences in an authentic manner. Thank you so much for reading and I hope you must have found some interesting takeaways to keep an eye on in 2017 and beyond.

Kumarpal Shah

Kumarpal Shah is a blogger by choice and content developer by passion. He is running SellHuge, a Digital Marketing and SEO firm in Ahmedabad, India. As someone who strongly believes in social media and its positive benefits, you can find him learning and experimenting about it. Follow him on Twitter @KumarpalKp.

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