Entry tags:
the future of social media?
This is something I've been thinking about recently, a result of thinking about how many people have fucked around and are now finding out (Trump, Stockton Rush, Elon Musk, arguably Putin though I'm not sure what that recent almost-coup was), and combining that with what's happening at Twitter and Reddit. Had some walk-and-talks with the spouse, and now I have a blog post about the future of social media that I am completely unqualified to write, but I'm writing anyway, since this is my journal. :P
Anyway, my core question is: if Social Media loses its current money streams, what might the future of social media look like?
Okay, let me back up a bit -- we all know that the internet isn't free, because *someone* has to pay for the server space and the computer programmers. First it was defense industry and universities, and then people either bought server space or you had a Geocities website that gave you 25mb for free but there was a banner ad, a floating ad, and a footer ad. Do y'alls remember waiting for images to load on dial-up? Paying for Email? I still remember when Youtube first showed up and I was like "but who's paying for all the server space and bandwidth of streaming video?" Or when I first got onto Tumblr and I was like "who's paying for all the image and video hosting?" Like, there *were* technological optimizations and innovations that made server space and bandwidth more efficient and cheaper, but at the end of the day, it still costs more money than goes into it from the user side.
For the past ~15 years, I feel like most of the internet is paid for by one of three things:
(a) advertising -- advertisers are promised extreme targeting and highly effective ad service. Basically that's what Google and Facebook made their money on.
(b) venture capital -- promising the venture capitalists that your company is going to be the next Facebook, use their money to run a massive deficit as you build your company, and do whatever it takes to convince the VCs to keep throwing money at you, for the promise of a future big payday
(c) corporate accounts -- provide a crucial service to a company flush with cash. These are the companies with 1000 employees, who are willing to pay Adobe or Slack or Google $600/year/user. Or provide server space for the company (AWS, Google Cloud)
( oops I wrote 1800 words about this )
Anyway, my core question is: if Social Media loses its current money streams, what might the future of social media look like?
Okay, let me back up a bit -- we all know that the internet isn't free, because *someone* has to pay for the server space and the computer programmers. First it was defense industry and universities, and then people either bought server space or you had a Geocities website that gave you 25mb for free but there was a banner ad, a floating ad, and a footer ad. Do y'alls remember waiting for images to load on dial-up? Paying for Email? I still remember when Youtube first showed up and I was like "but who's paying for all the server space and bandwidth of streaming video?" Or when I first got onto Tumblr and I was like "who's paying for all the image and video hosting?" Like, there *were* technological optimizations and innovations that made server space and bandwidth more efficient and cheaper, but at the end of the day, it still costs more money than goes into it from the user side.
For the past ~15 years, I feel like most of the internet is paid for by one of three things:
(a) advertising -- advertisers are promised extreme targeting and highly effective ad service. Basically that's what Google and Facebook made their money on.
(b) venture capital -- promising the venture capitalists that your company is going to be the next Facebook, use their money to run a massive deficit as you build your company, and do whatever it takes to convince the VCs to keep throwing money at you, for the promise of a future big payday
(c) corporate accounts -- provide a crucial service to a company flush with cash. These are the companies with 1000 employees, who are willing to pay Adobe or Slack or Google $600/year/user. Or provide server space for the company (AWS, Google Cloud)
( oops I wrote 1800 words about this )