Hanne Caspersen
Creative Director, Visual Trend Analysis

Is social media the new opium for the people? Are we getting addicted? At least our compulsion to continuously update our status and tweet has been responded to with some new signage: ‘in case of fire, please leave the building before tweeting about it’ and ‘please look where you walk, don’t update your FB status now’. The social media moment, when somebody notices your presence and responds can be addictive because it flatters your ego. However it remains an odd feeling to be interrupted in real-life conversations when people instantly check reactions when a Twitter @mention flickers on their smart phone.

Where do we live most? Social media is our second life, and our existence and response-rate has become vital to social inclusion in many circles. And Facebook, with its imminent new Timeline app , is promising to become our companion from birth to death − a digital red thread recording important moments through your entire life. A sort of Museum of Me+.

But recent American research has found that already the first signs of fatigue are surfacing. A recent study published by Gartner puts numbers to it: 31% of ‘aspirers’ (younger, more mobile, brand-conscious consumers) indicate that they are getting bored with their social networks. Social sites are being used less often by 24% of respondents, compared to when they initially signed up, while only a young and tech-savvy group (37%) stated that they were using the sites more often.

Social media is also increasingly branded, which in many cases doesn’t add value to people’s social media experiences. However in a recent study by TNS Digital Life 54% of people admit that social media is a good place to find out more about products and brands. TNS also talks about ‘digital waste’, as being the pollution in the social media space caused by misguided brand presence − the race to the social media space without having a clear idea of who to talk to and how. It leaves behind traces of dead or inactive social media pages − branded pages on Facebook or Google+ that don’t get updated anymore, probably because of the lack of a long term social media strategy by many companies.

So we should not let ourselves be blinded by social media marketing, it will increasingly become difficult to catch the attention of the social media consumers. And the big question is who are they and who they will be in the near future? We will need to innovate and diversify to keep their attention.

13 December 2011