The contemporary social network market is a battlefield. The biggest websites and apps continually evolve, occasionally lifting features from one another like some covert operation: Facebook is ubiquitous, pulling 2.2 billion monthly users and infiltrating just about every corner of digital society; Twitter, despite its attempts to shift and change, is still a platform of bitesized information; Instagram has morphed into a pseudo-blogging app for creatives, and Snapchat is trying to be a lot things to a lot of people—a news app, a chat app, a “story of me” blog—all on top of its self-destructing photo core.
Of those four, Snapchat is the newest. It launched in 2011 and its popularity exploded in the following years. It had a unique premise and was light on features, making it easy to understand and quick to use. Nowadays, the app is a crowded mess with a history of bad decisions. A poorly-conceived news screen, reorganisations of the stories and chat features, and a general lack of direction have burned a lot of users. Why am I telling this story? Because Snapchat isn’t alone in failing to move forward without huge glitches. It’s the poster child of apps gone wrong.
Each of the “core” social networks has had their fair share of issues, ranging from poor app design to refocused direction, to political and ideological hang-ups. And yet, until Facebook’s new scandal about mis-selling personal data, it seemed that nothing could knock them off their pedestals. On the other hand, numerous competitors have popped up and some have all but disappeared with equal speed:
Vero
When Lauren reported on Vero last month, it was still enjoying a few minutes in the spotlight. An appealing “free entry” offer and a unique take on activity and media sharing made Vero an exciting compromise between the quick-fire nature of Twitter and the share-everything omnipresence of Facebook. But it didn’t last. Few users made the switch, and not enough big creators and influencers were on it to make it worthwhile in the first place. An esoteric UI and limited on-boarding process didn’t help acquaint newcomers, either. The final nail in the coffin came when users noticed a clause in the Vero’s terms and conditions that gave the company ownership over everything posted on the app. It didn’t matter that most other websites are doing the same thing—people were looking for a reason not to switch to unfamiliar territory, and this was perfect. Vero was done.
The chimera of social media. The patchwork monster. Trigger’s broom, if the broom was a content aggregator. Though it was never intended to be a social network, its users have brute-forced it into some kind of blogging and sharing platform. Fandoms have found safe haven here, and it continues to be a home of “aesthetic”. Taking elements from RSS apps, Evernote, Reddit, Pocket and physical catalogues, Pinterest is quite unlike any other website or app around.
Mastodon
As a direct competitor to Twitter, Mastodon was unlikely to attract users in their droves. Besides a poor choice of name, Mastodon is also vastly more complicated than its predecessor for very little gain. Users are granted more control over their space and whose content they see, but it does a terrible job of explaining how a Twitter user should get accustomed to these features. To top it off, there isn’t a dedicated, official app for the platform, making App Store searches messy and confusing. As Twitter the Company continues to shy away from the controversies surrounding Twitter the App, it’s prime time for something better and more responsive to bust in. Mastodon is not that.
Peach
Peach never really got anywhere. Just four days after it launched in 2016, it was declared dead by most of the internet. It debuted relatively low on App Store charts, and only dropped from there. Yet somehow, it remains functional in 2018. Not quite a social network and not quite a messenger, Peach took a “best of both worlds” approach to its design and somehow missed the mark on both sides. Its app-only focus immediately locks out a large portion of global social media users, and its failure to differentiate itself from the pack has me questioning its purpose from the get-go.
Snapzu
Instead of moving in on strong, established territory, Snapzu rose to prominence in 2015 when then-Reddit CEO Ellen Pao caused a spate of controversies on the site. The result was a mass exodus of users to competing platforms, including Snapzu. Unfortunately, the amount of new traffic put immense strain on Snapzu’s servers and invite system, making it practically inaccessible for a week or two. By the time most of its functions were stable again, Reddit’s userbase had forgotten about the whole controversy and gone back to using their beloved website—Snapzu was left by the wayside before most people even got around to using it. It’s still chugging along today, with a solid base of dedicated communities. However, it still doesn’t have a dedicated app (or many third party ones, for that matter) and does very little to explain why you should use it over Reddit at all.
Tumblr
Older, bigger and ostensibly wiser than the others on this list, Tumblr has had its ups and downs throughout the 2010s. Many of the site’s problems are recent ones, attributed mostly to its acquisition by Yahoo in 2013. Changes to how NSFW content is displayed (or not displayed, in some cases), mobile app redesigns and an overall misunderstanding of what Tumblr is have led to a few missteps. And as I mentioned before, Instagram has made some distance in occupying a lot of Tumblr’s space. Though it is solely focused on image and video, it’s become a central platform for fandoms.
Google+
Another one that isn’t technically dead, but Google’s embattled social network was practically doomed from the start. The company’s erratic creation and abandonment of their products, a lack of meaningful direction behind the platform and misguided attempts to force users onto it instilled a poor opinion of Google+ early in its life. It’s kept alive by solid Google account integration and a nicely-designed Android app, but the web experience leaves a lot to be desired. It’s just too complicated for the average user, and does little to set itself apart.
So what exactly is the forward movement here? The “next big thing” in tech is augmented reality, but it’s so amorphous and away from the public eye that social media really isn’t a consideration there. The same goes for virtual reality, which is in a price range beyond the average user. Facebook, in its partnership with Oculus, is making moves to create affordable VR, but even then the question remains: why should anyone care to leave platforms that really aren’t falling apart anyway? Until they go totally belly-up or compromise their core functions, nobody is going to be abandoning Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or the countless other social networks in operation today—no matter how much political malaise they find themselves embroiled in.
