The End of Social Media.

And what comes next

If the title of this email seems hyperbolic, keep reading.

Last week, Instagram launched a major overhaul of the popular social media platform that effectively ended its original function as a photo-sharing app in an attempt to pivot to short-form video and make it into… a crappy imitation of TikTok?

The update has been widely panned by both media critics and mega-influencers like Kylie Jenner, who reposted the meme “Make Instagram Instagram Again. (Stop trying to be tiktok i just want to see cute photos of my friends.) Sincerely, Everyone. X”

While I’m not convinced that Kylie really wants to see cute photos of her friends so much as she wants all of us to see her cute photos of her, I do share her frustration with a shape-shifting platform willing to sacrifice its most dedicated creators in an endless attempt to imitate, acquire or blatantly rip-off any and all competition.

In short, this is about much more than entitled influencers (myself included) whining about how no one is seeing their posts. It’s about the end of “social media” as we know it - no exaggeration.

That’s why I’ve curated and summarized the best think-pieces I’ve found to help you better understand why this truly is the “End of Social Media” — and what comes next.

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A post shared by Marko Ayling (@markoayling)

The Main Idea

Until now, the platforms we call “social media” were digital reflections of our real-life social networks. Think about how you used to meet someone in person and “friend them” on Facebook.

Eventually, we were all sharing so much content that these platforms had to ditch the original chronological feed for something algorithmically defined. They started using “engagement metrics” such as likes, comments, and shares to help serve users the “best” content from within their social networks.

Similarly, Instagram originally was a way for us to see our friends’ pictures before it evolved into a way to follow creators we didn’t know personally, creating a new type of network known as the “follower model.” This model allowed people like me to earn a living by building an audience. But it also allowed people to start gaming the algorithm for their own benefit, and platforms soon found a host of problems inherent in the social network paradigm (more below).

By contrast, TikTok has quickly eclipsed both Facebook and Instagram by attempting to be something entirely different — not a ‘social media’ based off our friend group but a ‘recommendation media’ built upon an AI-trained algorithm focused solely on serving users the most engaging and captivating content, regardless of whether we follow the creator or not.

Personally, that’s why I prefer TikTok to Instagram. As a consumer, it’s constantly showing me new content based on my interests; and as a creator, it shows my content to people who don’t follow me yet, but who might love my work.

For users, the result is incredibly absorbing entertainment. And creators can quickly find their audiences and scale in ways that feel impossible on social media platforms.

Now Instagram is copying TikTok, and that matters. Because even though copying other platforms is nothing new for Facebook/Meta — they copied the “share” button from Twitter’s “retweet,” copied Snapchat to create “Stories,” and created IGTV to rival YouTube — all these platforms were still social networks.

But in trying to turn Instagram into TikTok, Meta is attempting to force a social network to become a recommendation algorithm. And people are pissed because that’s not what we signed up for. We joined Instagram and Facebook to keep up with friends - not see random content from people don’t know.

Earlier today I was shown a post of some random dude driving through a rainstorm, his text full of type-o’s indicative of what is clearly low-quality content that has seemingly nothing to do with my interests. It appears that in trying to prioritize smaller creators (like TikTok), instead of achieving equity, the result is just… well, shitty.

Smaller doesn’t mean better. And although social media certainly can be a popularity contest, many creators have accrued followings because they make quality content.

Instagram’s decision to abandon the very concept of social media both underlies Meta’s desperation to stay relevant as well as the shaky foundation upon which full-time creators build their careers. We live in a constant state of precarity in which the slightest change in the algorithm can sever the relationships we’ve built with our audiences — not to mention massive platform pivots like this one.

Which is why I decided to build this newsletter. You might not read every letter I write, but at least you receive every letter I send. I still retain a modicum of control over my relationship with my audience in an ever-shifting environment.

I wonder, now that these established creators are no longer able to reach their existing audience on Instagram, where will the go? Perhaps to the one place where their content might actually get seen by the people who want to see it. TikTok.

Will Instagram survive? Or has it just shot itself in the foot? Read on, and let me know what you think in the comments below.

Food For Thought

The End of Social Media - Why Friend Graphs Can’t Compete in an Algorithmic World

The best analysis I found was on the Substack newsletter, Every, where Michael Miganon argues that social media - as defined by networks modeled on “friend graphs” of our real-life social lives - come with huge costs for platforms and society.

On social media, problematic content can spread just as quickly as good-natured messages, networks lead to echo-chambers and group-think, and engagement metrics become popularity contests that drown out quality content from smaller creators.

Recommendation algorithms like TikTok distribute content based upon how well they capture attention and maximize engagement — regardless of the creator’s social clout.

That’s why TikTok is so addictive and popular. And why Instagram’s moves towards this model are so unpopular with the platform’s largest creators, whose hard-won social following is worth much less in this new paradigm.

In theory, this should make a better user experience. In social media, you see the content of who you follow — whether it’s good or bad. In recommendation media, you only see the most engaging content, resulting in a feed with very little waste.

It also means that with recommendation media, creators no longer have power over what is seen when - the platforms make that call. So creators can no longer guarantee that their audiences can see their work.

This is one of the main reasons I decided to start a newsletter, as a small tweak in the algorithm can alienate me from the audience I spent years building.

The Sunset of the Social Network

In Axios, Scott Rosenberg declares the Sunset of the Social Network to elaborate on this point, describing the goal of Facebook’s redesign as becoming “a kind of digital mass media.” Instead, says Rosenberg, it just “looks a lot like a mutant TV with an infinite number of context-free channels that flash in and out of focus at high speed.”

Which reminds me - aren’t you glad you subscribed to this newsletter instead of just scrolling endlessly for something worth paying attention to? If so, maybe share this newsletter with a friend. It really helps me out!

TikTok and the Fall of the Social Media Giants

Finally, author Cal Newport writes for The New Yorker that in trying to copy TikTok, Facebook is signaling the end of its decade-long monopoly on the ‘attention economy’ - and how that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe TikTok’s disruption of Facebook’s dominance will finally pave the way for the more open and democratic internet many of us envisioned a decade ago. In any case, I definitely recommend Cal’s book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.

Concluding Thoughts:

I have been on social media since the start. I downloaded Facebook my freshman year to connect with the woman who became my first girlfriend in campus.

Since then, I have been active on MySpace, Facebook, Wordpress, Twitter, Musical.ly, Periscope, Snapchat, Storie, Beme, Vine, and Clubhouse.

RIP.

Part of having a successful career on social media is being a first adopter and knowing how to pivot when necessary.

Personally, I see why Meta wants to copy TikTok. It’s a better platform than both Instagram and Facebook. That doesn’t mean either platform should attempt to be something they are not. But that won’t stop Zuckerberg from trying - because that’s the ethos of social media.

Creators are under constant pressure to jump from one trend to the next, platform to platform, trying to race each other towards relevancy. The motivation to create something you love is quickly replaced by the fear of being sidelined by the algorithm and falling into irrelevancy.

It’s exhausting.

Which is why I’ve decided to side-step this rat race and focus on writing. And the advice I’d give Zuckerberg is a piece of wisdom I learned from my own journey through social media:

Better to fail at originality than succeed at imitation.

But I don’t expect someone who ripped off his college buddies for the very idea of Facebook to take that advice so late in the game.

However, the deeper significance is the death of choice in who we follow. Of course, we’ll still have the option of clicking a ‘follow’ button or not. But this choice is becoming more implicit than explicit. Our choice is increasingly limited to a narrower selection of options pre-selected by an algorithm.

Is that good or bad? It’s hard to say.

But it does make me wonder what to read after I finish “Just Kids”: to dive into the best-selling memoir No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram or revisit Brave New World by Aldous Huxley?

In this algorithmically-defined, post-truth world optimized for attention-grabbing additive entertainment, perhaps a 90-year-old piece of fiction might ring more true than the real story of how Instagram came to be what it is today.

*Steps off soap box.*

What do you think? Share your comments below.