Social media has been a fascinating experiment for civilization. Something in our DNA craves group interactions and the internet has created so many different ways to connect. The digital evolution from bulletin boards (old school method) through MySpace and AOL, to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, and TikTok has shown interesting patterns. I think they all go through the following growth stages:
Stage 1: Innocence
The early days are the best. It’s not too crowded. There are no ads, few trolls. Usage is passionate, rules are self-enforced and creativity is high. If only social media could stay at this stage forever.
Stage 2: The floodgates open
At some point, the secret is out and the unwashed masses arrive. The original users are quickly drowned out. All self-enforcement methods are overwhelmed. All scaling system are stretched to the limit. Trolls and arguments start to show up. Obviously, this is a shock to the system. Some early news outlets notice at this stage.
Stage 3: Ads & Money
With increased audience, valuations and expectations sky rocket and the VC want to capitalize on the wide audience. Ad systems get built super fast and questions about acquisition surface. Instagram was acquired for $1B – at the time they only had 13 employees! Some remained independent like LinkedIn only to be acquired later. TikTok is facing huge pressure to sell. Users at this stage start to see issues, but mainly are still flooding in.
Stage 4: Moderation and problems
Once acquisition happens or the ad system gets stabilized then the system starts to address scale issues. The most important issue is dealing with moderation. Because of US laws, it is extremely complicated to strike the right balance between free speech and dangerous speech. With poor moderation you get Nazis and hate speech and bullying. You can also end up with chaotic moderation like Reddit had for several early years. This stage additionally starts to plateau in growth and the cool kids are already looking for new places to go.
Stage 5: Exploitation and decline
Automatic posts from good natured marketing departments as well as Russian Troll farms appear en masse. You start to think that that the only thing the platform does it have robots talking to robots. It’s just spam and scams as far as the eye can see. Who uses Facebook anymore for serious group interactions? Twitter is almost totally unnatural in content. This exploitation fully ruins the system as advertisers realize that bots don’t buy products. With the slow exit of advertisers, the system loses money and becomes irrelevant. It takes another 10 years for the service to truly die.
Here are the stages of popular systems as far as I can tell:
- Stage 1: None that I know of
- Stage 2: Bluesky
- Stage 3: TikTok
- Stage 4: Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit
- Stage 5: Twitter, Facebook
Social media is going to continue to churn out new destinations. Each of them will continue to work through the stages. I wonder if anything will break the cycle?
Whatya think?