Posted by In the past few years, the emergence of social media has been an enormously disruptive influence on traditional media. It has also affected the way we communicate with each other every single day.
But, have you ever taken a moment to think about how technology is changing social media?
According to a Digital 2020 July Global Statshot report, as of July 2020, social media users have grown by more than 10%, taking the global total to 3.96 billion.
Source: Digital 2020 July Global Statshot Report
The emergence of each new technology used in social media is transforming them.
If you are thinking, “How does it affect your brand?”
Then think again!
Source: broadbandsearch.net
The times spent on social media have been increasing dramatically and businesses are depending more on it for visibility. But, is it possible to have a consistent social media strategy for 100 percent results?
To find the answer we need to first understand how technology is the technology and having a consistent strategy will have what kind of impact.
Today, what we are seeing is a new conception of Social created by technology.
What does it mean?
For instance, to be social in a virtual world is not the same as being social in the physical world. In a virtual world being social is possible without having a true face-to-face or one-to-one interaction. This is one example of the impact new technologies are having on our social life.
There are also some ideas floating around in Silicon Valley of combining full-immersion VR experiences with social media. Here, a user will be able to choose their avatar to represent themselves–and communicate with people using fictional identities.
Similar to that, in this blog post, we will cover some major technologies used in social media in 2021.
- Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR)
Virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) technology are still futuristic in many respects. But with this technology used in social media, various developers are getting closer to permeating them in this market.
In the past, many experiments have often failed, however, it’s only a matter of time before consumers will be able to adopt this technology. Naturally, this will also include the adoption of social media.
For example, the New York Times released an AR social app that had the highest downloading rate in the AR niche. The report said that on average, a user spends up to 14 minutes on this app’s AR presentations which is significant.
However, these technologies have a way to go before we can see them everywhere. The reason behind this is that the development of a VR app is not as expensive, rather its viewing set is. Hence, people might have to wait a little longer before it becomes more affordable.
This is one of the biggest barriers preventing VR from becoming a part of daily life.
In the future, as this technology will advance and its accessories will become more accessible it will enter mainstream social media. These technologies will provide a better and improved viewing experience.
Then the social media platforms will start to adapt to the AR and VR technology for images, videos, and more.
- Chatbots
Social media in 2021 will make strides in communications that are predominantly between consumers and businesses. But we’re not done yet.
In the coming time, with the increasing application of artificial intelligence-powered chatbots technology, it will become even more pervasive. Today, businesses will not be able to live without it.
However, AI-powered chatbots are improving and learning new stuff every day. We’re going to see more than just voice-activated options.
Besides, we will also see more personalized chatbots that sound more and more similar to actual human beings. They will be able to handle more requests through audio and messaging apps.
In the future, chatbots will become a huge part of our everyday interaction.
- Power BI Dashboard
In 2000, according to a study conducted by Microsoft, a person’s average attention span has gone down from 12 seconds to 8 seconds.
In the social media market, everyone is competing for attention. In order to do that, influencers are constantly relying on numbers. But too much data can be dangerous and you might miss out on important information.
Hence, the Power BI dashboard can be of great help. By combining social media with the Power BI dashboard, you will be able to create dashboards for social media monitoring and analytics.
A Power BI dashboard example can be Cheetos’s social media monitoring dashboard. It has helped the company to understand its product’s quality, sales and marketing, crisis control, and audience opinion.
Another Power BI dashboard example that can boost social media can help in identifying new opportunities and insights. Through dashboards, you can also compare your paid vs organic keywords to identify actual CPC incurred using AdWords and estimated CPC shared by SEMrush.
- Facial Recognition Technology
Today, facial recognition technology used in social media platforms are making the most of it. You will find so many social media in 2021 that use AI-powered face recognition technology for tagging, face filters, and other identification.
According to Statista, the facial recognition market is projected to grow by seven billion U.S. dollars by 2024 from an estimated 3.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2019.
Let’s take an example of some of the social media giants who use this technology:
- Facebook uses face recognition to analyze photos, videos, profile pictures, and tags in the media.
- Instagram uses face recognition technology to recognize users in photos, videos, and camera experiences. They might also use it for templates.
- Twitter uses face recognition for its algorithm.
- YouTube uses face recognition to gather faces for its database and delete existing images.
- LinkedIn face recognition aims to change how people interact with each other in their day to day lives.
With facial recognition, Facebook can retrieve all the images, even though users have not tagged others in the photos. This has been made possible with metadata that can recognize a person’s face and then provide the details about them from their social media.
However, face recognition technology is predicted to be more helpful for security agencies and other business establishments than an individual user. Even though it would be nice to ask Facebook to show you all photos of your children or friends through the years.
Obviously, privacy remains a huge concern faced by tech giants. But the question is whether we will be able to balance the data-collection with the privacy concerns.
- Radio Frequency Identification or RFID
Currently, Radio Frequency Identification or RFID tags are used in stores to scan a large variety of products for billing and identification. However, their main purpose is to collect data regarding purchase, consumption, and stock levels.
Social media platforms can utilize the data collected from RFID tags. This will allow them to see the purchasing choices of people which can be useful for more product reviews.
Currently, social networking technologies pay attention to the cookies on the local machine. Then they give you advice on purchasing or content which is based solely on customers’ behaviours.
Social media in 2021 can leverage this by expanding them to better understand the purchasing or content consumption activities of people who are similar to you.
For instance, Disney is already taking full advantage of RFID by embedding these chips in their Magical Kingdom wristband. By providing guests with these chip-enabled wristbands, they can track their movements and understand long wait lines, traffic patterns, and customer behaviours.
This data can help them enhance their user experience by minimizing congestion and creating more fluid purchasing opportunities.
Will technology change social media in 2021?
We know that the technology used in social media is inevitable. Hence, it is only normal that social media is impacted by technology.
Currently, social media giants including Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram are influencing technology development.
Innovation is the key to a better user experience and most of these platforms depend on that. And, it analyzes would conclude that it has contributed to the development of engineering.
Technologies have an undeniable effect on social media websites and applications. As the younger generation has already been exposed to technology, you do not have to convince them to use it.
Owing to technology, we will have more advantage over social media.
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