I remember a time when I memorized the phone numbers of my friends. Not having to look up the address book to talk to them was, in some ways, an internal acknowledgment of the importance of our friendship. I do not claim to be an old school romantic but I do wonder whether cellphones, and later social media, have robbed us of those recurring tests of affinity. My predilection for talking on the phone or meeting in person does not seem to have withered despite the ubiquity of digital communication. The march of progress, however, cares little for such sentimentality. People, far more pragmatic than me, are experiencing the world and their networks through the screen of social media. Recently, I have attempted to test how this screen influences perceptions on both sides.
I experimented with two different social media platforms this year: Instagram and X (formerly known as Twitter). You are probably familiar with both of them. Instagram started out as a photo sharing app that has now evolved into a video and advertising platform. X/Twitter started out as a text microblogging platform that now, under new management, appears to want to do everything. Each medium of communication, be it letters or telegrams or text messages or any of the myriad social media platforms, develops its own etiquette. This etiquette is a function of the capabilities of the underlying technology but communication is, ultimately, a reflection of the participants. Social media is remarkable in that it blurs the line between the private and the public, the discrete and the permanent. In so doing, it subtly influences the participants. This article is an attempt at articulating that influence.
A Brief History
Many may attribute Facebook‘s popularity to being one of the first platforms to stay connected with friends, to share text and photos, and a way for friends to ‘like’ such posts. Friend requests, when approved, meant that both the person sending the request and the one receiving the request became ‘friends’ with each other. ‘Likes’ inevitably became an indicator of popularity and influence. Facebook Pages eventually spared celebrities and organizations from having to become friends with everyone who wanted to keep up with their posts. It allowed them to share updates and collect likes without having to acknowledge each of their followers as friends. Most social media platforms have since been built on measuring popularity (‘likes’) and influence (‘follows’).
These platforms soon evolved to offer paid advertising by monetizing user attention. Revenue being a function of attention meant that a platform was incentivized to increase the amount of time a user spent there. The most common solution, and quite straightforward too, was to show users content they might like. And how did the platform know what to show a user? By studying what the user viewed and interacted with the most. Most significantly, these platforms started to show content to a user even from accounts they did not follow. This content, alongside select content from accounts they followed, is what most users started seeing on their main ‘feed’. You could say that this departure from intentional consumption of content is when social media started to become less personal and more … inauthentic.
Not all content is created equal. If the social media platform’s objective was to maximize user attention, wouldn’t they want to show content that had been highly rated by other users? After all, with millions (or billions) of users generating content, it became untenable for such platforms to manually curate content. The solution was to tap into the built in popularity and influence metrics (likes and follows). The more likes a piece of content generated, the more chances it had of being shown to an increasing number of users. Given a choice between two pieces of content that both score the same on all metrics apart from the number of likes, which one was more likely to be shown to a user?
You might be familiar with the term ‘viral content’. It refers to posts that steadily accumulate likes as they are shown to more and more people. People who have experienced their own content going viral are familiar with the rush of excitement it generates. It is not far fetched to imagine that they would try and replicate it. Many would try to emulate it. This tendency, to post content to generate likes and thereby increase reach, has turned many users into performers. Most performers adopt a persona or a niche to inspire confidence in their future ability to generate similar content. Social media has made actors of us all. Some have adapted to this while others have not.
Similarities
Mechanical
While there are plenty of social media platforms, I want to share my experience on two in particular: Instagram and X/Twitter. First, let’s look at the similarities between them. Both Instagram and X/Twitter enable users to follow other users. Both platforms feature a user’s content on that user’s home page in reverse chronological order. Such content may be shown to the user’s followers as well as those that may be interested in that content. Users can ‘like’ content which then increases its chances of being shown to more users. Users can ‘share’ the content with other users they know either within the platform or on external platforms.
On both platforms, it appears that the default ‘feed’ shown to the users is a mix of content from users they follow and similar popular content from other users. Engagement (likes, shares, amount of time viewed, etc.) seems to determine the likelihood of whether a user’s post will be shown to their followers and other users. Automatic discoverability tools to find real world friends and acquaintances do exist but they require access to the phone contacts list. These platforms also recommend accounts that the user may find interesting based on what they post and interact with. Manual search options also exist to find specific users.
Algorithmic
If a user is content with only keeping in touch with close friends, then both platforms offer the tools to do so. However, depending on how many accounts that user follows, they may not be shown all of the content they missed since they last logged in. ‘Feed’ settings may influence whether they are shown content from users they don’t follow.
On the other hand, promoting oneself or one’s business is an entirely different story. Fundamentally, these platforms want to gain some level of confidence about the kind of content a user posts. The more similar content they post, such as only art or only poetry or only statistical research, the easier it can categorize their content. Higher engagement with a well categorized user’s posts pushes their content to more and more users, thereby increasing reach and following.
This was echoed by my observations of my own engagement with other users. I noticed that whenever I followed users that were personally unknown to me, I did so because I could narrowly categorize their content. I expected to see the same kind of content from them in the future. It is worth wondering whether the platforms condition us to associate users with specific kind of content or whether we subconsciously expect only specific kind of content from people we personally don’t know. Without a personal connection between users, the interaction between them can become transactional.
All of this is colored by the platforms’ apparent desire to keep a user browsing through content. This makes business sense because the more content a user sees, the more ads they can be served. What a user is presented is also influenced by what the platform thinks may be interesting and what other similar users find to be engaging. Without intimate knowledge of the underlying algorithms, it is difficult to say with absolute certainty what a user should post to increase reach and gain following. But many savvy social media wizards have become adept at spotting trends and quickly adapt their techniques to maximize reach.
Over time, I observed that the content I was shown had many things in common, particularly in the way they were presented. I go into more detail in the following sections, but, pardon my dismissive tone, it often feels like watching trained circus performers desperately putting on a tightly choreographed show. There is an eerie homogeneity in presentation. The different ‘hooks’ used to increase engagement are similar. It is astonishing to witness content, from users across the world, optimized into such uniformity.
Salience
Instagram is a sleek media sharing social media platform with a wide range of options to configure a user’s experience. It is hard to deny that it looks professionally and competently made. This polish inspires confidence and it is no wonder that it has become an important promotional platform for large organizations and small businesses alike. While it started out as a photo sharing app, it has since evolved by adding a plethora of features, some of which were similar to its competitors.
Its newest fixation appears to be with short form videos called ‘reels’. I call this a fixation because I see videos being recommended to me far more than regular posts or photos. My reels always reach a larger audience than my posts. This fixation seems to have been in response to TikTok‘s popularity. Nevertheless, I am surprised by Instagram‘s ‘all in’ bet on video content.
I like video content now and then, but going through video after video on the home screen is exhausting. Most of these videos fight their way into the feed after winning the likes contest by being aggressively engaging, and often using the same trending techniques that maximize user engagement. Multiple jump cuts and similar music tracks are two of the most common techniques. Like I said previously, the homogeneity is astonishing. It is also painfully obvious that many videos are videos only because Instagram rewards such content with increased reach. I often see videos from some art accounts that are simply spliced clips of them working on art pieces at different stages of creation. Neither do I learn anything about their technique, nor do I get to see the finished piece for more than a second.
Art and music are my hobbies and I use Instagram to occasionally share some of my work. I noticed that Instagram gives new users a generous push, at first, by showing initial content to a large number of other users. However, the performance of this early content determines the reach of subsequent content. I think that I confused the algorithm by posting both art and music. I am also disappointed with the platform’s ability to connect small accounts with each other. Content that I see on the main ‘feed’ and the default search tab is usually from accounts with upwards of 50k followers. These users simply do not have the bandwidth to interact with all of their followers. This reinforces my belief that Instagram prioritizes consuming content over connecting with similar users.
Instagram is a perfectly suitable platform to keep in touch with real world friends. If a user wants to promote themselves, or their business, or simply connect with new people, then they must:
- Make high quality and professional content right off the bat. A gradual improvement in quality of content, as would be expected from a novice content creator, is unlikely to be rewarded on the same curve. Early success determines future success.
- Start posting after acquiring a substantial following to maximize initial engagement. Starting with a built in audience on social media appears to be a far more effective strategy than hoping that a new account will be rewarded by the algorithm.
- Post more videos than photos
- Limit to one type of content (art, music, cuisine, etc.) per account
With all that said, however, I am enjoying my time on Instagram. It has prompted me to practice art and music regularly. I am, slowly but steadily, connecting with like minded users. I would be delighted if you were to visit my profile page.
X/Twitter
X/Twitter is an infamous microblogging platform where each post is limited to 280 characters (except for paid subscribers). Brevity is a virtue. But there is a thin line between brevity and sloganeering.
Alongside its character limit, X/Twitter introduced the concept of reposts/retweets or quotes to social media. Reposts/retweets and quotes were and continue to be common in traditional internet forums but on a social media platform, they give a certain degree of power to the users to determine what goes viral. In other words, the users have greater influence in increasing a fellow user’s reach compared to Instagram, for example.
I get the impression that politics and culture are the most discussed topics on X/Twitter. On this platform, there is a significant presence of political leaders and cultural influencers from around the world, with the usual camp followers comprised of political operatives, thought leaders, and propagandists. Political rhetoric can be brief and witty, and on this platform it sometimes is, but political discourse usually devolves into empty sloganeering devoid of substance and nuance. I often wonder whether it is simply a reflection of the audience or whether it is a response to algorithmic incentives.
Since Twitter‘s takeover and subsequent rebrand, it has tried to take steps to incentivize user engagement on its platform. They’ve broken the 280 character limit for subscribers. They pay certain subscribers a share of ad revenue in return for generating high engagement content. Concurrently, moderation of content appears to have been … loosened. Many users have capitalized by engaging in incendiary rhetoric to drive further engagement on their posts. It has dialed up the tension on the platform to a fever pitch and exacerbated all of the behavioral conditioning problems introduced by modern social media algorithms. By submitting significant amounts of their attention to social media, people are susceptible to having their worldviews warped by what they see there. And I wonder how many users have the discipline to intentionally curate the content they consume.
X/Twitter was, and in some ways continues to be, a unique platform. The emphasis on brevity and user driven virality helped it carve a niche for itself but many of the platform’s recent changes seem to be correcting against what made it unique. The toxicity rampant on the platform discourages meaningful discussion. Bots appear to be running amok and it is difficult to determine how many real users are engaging with content. It is hard for me to take this social media platform seriously in its current state. If a user wants to connect with friends, they can likely find them on more competent platforms. If a user wants to promote themselves or their business, they still have to contend with the challenges of growing an audience, from scratch, on social media in 2024.
Your Mileage May Vary
Note that these are simply my experiments with starting from scratch on a couple of social media platforms in 2024. Your experience may differ based on when you started, how many users you are already connected with, and whether you have a built-in audience going in. Preserving your identity in the face of communal trends and algorithmic pressure is sure to be a test of will.
But as I often say, human ingenuity will always shine through. I wish you the best of luck in your social media adventures!