Social Media in 2024: The Predictions

[00:00:00] What a year it has been, from the slow collapse of Twitter to the rise of reels to regulatory bodies in overdrive. The digital marketing industry is going into 2024 with a lot of uncertainty.

[00:00:14] Today, in our final episode of the year, we look at what is likely to come for our industry in the next 12 months. For that I'm joined by Andrew Hutchinson. Andrew is the head of content at socialmediatoday.com and I'm just going to say this, Andrew works harder

[00:00:30] than you. He writes more articles and does more coverage than is actually humanly possible so it's become clear to me that there are at least four Andrews and one of them joins me from his office in Canberra, Australia. Hello Andrew number three.

[00:00:44] Hello Tod, thank you for having me. Actually if I had all the staff that are listed as working at Social Media today on LinkedIn then definitely there would be many, many more of us rotting but no, there's only me. Fair enough. Maybe you're just more productive

[00:00:58] being incredibly productive AI I don't know. So you do these annual predictions every year at socialmediatoday.com and your accuracy rate you say hovers around 80%? Yep about 80%. That's what I would claim. Like obviously there's some variations within that but yeah 80%. That's good. That's a good number.

[00:01:18] My best prediction was back about maybe 20 years ago when blogs were a thing and I got on national public radio in Canada and told the world that my opinion was that blogs

[00:01:27] were a fad and would die out. So I'm not good at this at all. That's why I bring you on. So I want to walk through all the various social platforms and talk about where you

[00:01:38] see our industry going since you have such a front row seat to it. Let's talk about the big one obviously Meta got very drunk on the elixir known as AI. Surely Andrew they're bored of it by now and probably will stop their obsession with AI next year right?

[00:01:55] No, I mean Mark Zuckerberg is always sort of latched onto the latest tech trends whatever they may be as you saw with Clubhouse it was like oh we should copy that stories we should copy that part of that is obviously driven by business

[00:02:10] intent and making sure that they start to date with the latest trends but also yeah he just likes new stuff. He likes the new technology and there was lots of reports throughout the year that he was totally infatuated with artificial

[00:02:20] intelligence even though they're still developing their metaverse and that was their big project last year or two years ago at least. AI became his big focus and he put lots of teams onto AI because of the sudden push from

[00:02:33] chat GPT and open AI which accelerated everyone else's work. Meta and Google had both been developing AI for a long time so yeah that was their big thing this year was like we need to jump on this train as well it's getting a lot of

[00:02:47] momentum a lot of popularity so we're gonna get onto it. So I expect that that will be a key driver of their push going forward though I don't think they've come up with anything that's sort of revolutionary as yet I don't

[00:02:59] know that any of their projects right now are really attention grabbing away from the existing AI tools but most companies that are developing AI are doing the same thing basically just a chatbot and what can we do with chatbot

[00:03:12] so they're also using it for your guiding their algorithms and in that sense obviously it helps them a lot but yeah I expect there be a lot more AI stuff coming. Yeah certainly on the ad platform side of things AI or as it is

[00:03:27] sort of baked in as advantage plus see I think most media buyers will say it's doing fairly well but I think you're right I think Zuckerberg in particular but the company as a whole has a way of sort of focusing

[00:03:37] obsessively on a shiny new object I mean I remember prior to the Metaverse it was all about business messaging it was gonna be messaging bots if you remember that you know it was all gonna be these sort of and of course we

[00:03:49] digital marketers just kind of hopped on board and that kind of went by the wayside although interestingly enough now we're seeing celebrity AIs in messenger which I think you were not a fan of. No and that's exactly right they

[00:04:03] tried messenger bots in 2016 it was this big messenger bot platform when they were trying to build out messenger the idea at that stage was they'd seen the example of WeChat and things like that in China where they've become such

[00:04:16] transformative and such important elements of their day-to-day life for Chinese citizens that they were like cool if we can bring this to the Western world we can make messenger into the critical app so there was a big push

[00:04:27] on messenger bots they also put games in messenger they also put several other things and then two years later they were like it's too cluttered no one cares let's scale them all back so I don't know that there's a real sort

[00:04:38] of desire to speak to bots or to interact with bots in the way that they're anticipating and this time around they've obviously tried something different in celebrity based chatbots that are called other names than what

[00:04:50] you know their names to be which is really odd because you see the picture of very odd isn't her name is Billy yeah it's like well we know who Kendall Jenner is if you were coming up with a new character that

[00:04:59] would be different but we know exactly who Usain Bolt is so it's like I know that his name is not whatever he's listed as and isn't there also an actual Billy an actual Billy Eilish and then she's not mentioned as Billy yes I

[00:05:11] think so yeah no and there's also what there was a trainer that was Tom Brady I think he's got some strange name but yeah it's an odd concept it's trying to find a different way to use chatbots because really that's the

[00:05:25] main way that we're using AI at the moment is like this cool you know interesting engaging thing that robots can sort of come back to us with reasonably human like responses so I think they thought if we you know get

[00:05:36] these celebrities in that will feel like you're talking to a celebrity and that's what they're going for but yeah I just don't see that catching on no and I guess other than increasingly amount of time spent on the

[00:05:46] platform there's not really a lot of sort of marketing opportunity there I mean one to be fair to met I think one of the obsessions that they had reals has done phenomenally well for them where do you think reals as a

[00:06:00] ad format and as a organic post format will be next year. Yeah I mean reals is what's really dragged them back into the game I mean there was a point where both Instagram and Facebook were losing traffic

[00:06:13] obviously the TikTok Snapchat for younger users and they were it was going down quite quickly especially in app engagement and even now people aren't posting as much original content as they used to but because they've inserted more AI recommended posts and you're getting these

[00:06:29] little videos in between people getting more used to getting their entertainment from social apps so when you're scrolling through Facebook suddenly see a video that you know is something that you might like and then you watch it and then that gets more

[00:06:39] engagement so cumulatively that's driven a big increase in Facebook usage over the last year and Instagram as well so definitely reals will be a big focus because they're getting so much out of it and as much as people like well we don't want

[00:06:52] stuff from people we don't follow in our feeds you probably watch it like everyone watches some of it right it gets it gets pushed through and the it doesn't matter what you say is different to what you do right everyone's still viewing this stuff when it

[00:07:03] comes through so even if you don't necessarily like it and even though they built an algorithm because they said we've got so much stuff to show you from all the pages that you follow every day that we couldn't possibly show you

[00:07:11] every post but we're also now going to put in more posts from other pages that you don't follow which completely satisfies that logic. Despite that it's driving driving engagement for them so yeah they're going to keep pushing

[00:07:22] it in so anywhere they can show you more reals anyway the more they can get people to post reels the more they can get brands to post reels yeah that's to their benefit but the risk as always with any sort of trend or that Facebook's

[00:07:34] jumping onto or the Instagram's jumping onto is that as soon as they lose interest soon as it stops being engaging then all that money and time you've spent investing in creators and programs to be able to create more reals might go to waste because they don't care anymore

[00:07:47] it moves on to the next thing so there's always a risk in once they start shifting to the next trend that yeah you lose all that all the effort you've put in but yeah at the moment definitely I think they're going to keep pushing

[00:07:57] reels. Which I you know I wouldn't mind if they if they shut it down or slow it down a little bit I mean I remember when Mark Zuckerberg went to try to buy Snapchat it was turned away at the door and then just

[00:08:07] basically copied Snapchat outright and built stories in and stories became such a huge success on the Instagram side that stories popped up everywhere like there's a tab in Messenger in Messenger for stories like who wants to see it there and Messenger has been one of

[00:08:22] of you know they've always had this sort of family of four apps right there's been Messenger Facebook Instagram and WhatsApp this year they added a fifth to their stable and that was threads which is their attempt at I guess filling the void left by the

[00:08:38] former Twitter do you think they've got a shot in matching X's user numbers next year I would say they do I would say that threads is probably up to about 200 million users now they're up to 100 million I think two months ago a month and a half

[00:08:53] ago they're up to 100 million and now they've opened in Europe I don't think that's going to bring in a massive influx of users like when you hear that they've suddenly made it accessible in Europe then it's like oh that should bring

[00:09:02] in you know millions millions more it should bring in based on the averages about 20 million more users but even that is still going to increase you know the number overall so I'd say they're probably up at around 200 million now that's monthly active users X claims to have 500

[00:09:18] million monthly active and 250 daily active so it's still got a way to go to get to the next level but yeah I think that it has a chance to to beat it and because they're getting more journalists and influential people posting on threads

[00:09:31] and especially because Meta's made such an emphasis of getting celebrities to post on threads that brings more of their audience across it does feel like it's gaining momentum as X is declining but that's also a gut feel because we don't know what X's user numbers are because

[00:09:47] I don't know what they're telling us but I don't believe most of the numbers that we're getting from them they're conflicting and all over the place and then we don't have definitive numbers from Meta on threads as yet but I'd say there's a good chance that it should

[00:09:59] be at least in parity and it should be out of carbits own niche if it can't you know supplant X completely well and one of the things that we're still waiting for from threads uh at least on the marketing side of things um are ads threads is very

[00:10:14] much an ad for your zone right now do you think it will be popular enough that will that they'll turn ads on next year well they've said it won't happen till it gets to a billion users and that's their main aim for threads so we reach a billion

[00:10:28] users and then we've got our own platform so Meta's been pretty strong on that that they won't start putting ads in there until it gets to a billion users I don't know how long that takes to get there I'm not really active

[00:10:38] daily act that must be monthly active users I'd say it's monthly yeah like a billion daily would be pretty extreme but um yeah I expected they should get about halfway there next year if they get to about 500 um they will be in

[00:10:51] competition with X it really like a lot of it does depend on what happens with um the X project and what goes on there like if advertisers keep you know withholding spend and it keeps losing money it's expenses are already down to the

[00:11:05] bare bones I can't lose it can't cut costs any further to sort of you know reshape that revenue so if that's the case then yeah if X is not going to make a profit at what point do the investors and other people start looking at it

[00:11:19] going we can't keep pushing this and that could become an existential problem if that becomes a problem then more X users come across the threads and threads becomes the bigger thing which is what matters really building just in case as a safety

[00:11:30] net that I can catch more people coming you know from X and um scooping them up and putting into its own platform so I think there's a good chance that it could become really big whether it reaches a billion users obviously that's

[00:11:40] pretty ambitious but I also think that meta knows the industry better than anyone else they've got more experience they've got the knowledge of algorithms they've got the knowledge of systems what people engage with I think if anyone has a chance to do it then they

[00:11:52] do so uh yeah if they think it can happen I wouldn't be surprised if it can and and the foundation of threads of course built on Instagram which has its own sort of minor frustrations but one of the advantages is that it made

[00:12:05] it fairly easy for them to crank up things like blocking and reporting and it's just sort of using that that foundation high end B2B sales don't happen through generic AI generated content want to sell a $20 shirt with a random Instagram post go for it

[00:12:20] but to sell a $20,000 business service you need a longer on ramp social media is great for connecting and networking but long term ever green website content is your paved path to high end B2B sales whether your business makes $100,000 a year or 100 million

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[00:12:59] if you're ready to increase your website content ROI in 2024 buy and read Pamela's newly updated master content books at mastercontentbooks.com about X though briefly you know I mean Elon Musk really wants to make this sort of the everything app counting on subscription dollars

[00:13:21] being the main thing that will that will keep the company afloat I think at this point given the ad exodus do you think his plan will work? No like I think his plan might have worked when he originally came up with it in 2002 or whenever he first

[00:13:40] thought of this app his original plan was part of PayPal which he originally called when PayPal took over his company he wanted to take he wanted PayPal to become X.com so it wasn't called PayPal at the time I can remember what it was called but

[00:13:52] his idea was that that would be called X.com and he would be the which eventually saw him asked it because they were like no we don't want to call it X and he kept going on about how you want to call it X

[00:14:01] and they were like that's of all the things that you're gonna you know hinge yourself on the fact that it has to be called X is with this weird sort of stance seemingly that saw him you know kicked out because they were just like no we

[00:14:12] need someone who's gonna lead the company in the direction we want to go in. So yeah he's been pushing this idea for a long time he thought that PayPal was only a half version of what it could have been he thought it could have had

[00:14:22] all these other social features and things like that in it which is what he envisions for X is that eventually it's gonna facilitate payments and once it facilitates payments then people are going to be able to shop on there people are gonna you know sell

[00:14:35] stuff on there people are gonna be able to put all of their content on there and make money out of it so idealistically this all works but in reality there's nothing to suggest that it actually will so in terms of payments for one he has to

[00:14:47] get all the payment licenses which meta hasn't been able to get like meta's been trying to get payment licenses in every country for 10 years and they can't do it so if meta can't do it I don't see why Elon who's a very vocal critic of all

[00:14:59] the authorities and regulators who are in charge of these approvals I don't see how he's gonna actually do it but he's got like 13 approvals approvals in 13 states in America at the moment so he's starting now to try and get those approvals but

[00:15:13] even if he can like why would it why is anyone gonna pay for things on X like why we can already do all these we can already buy stuff on other platforms Amazon and things like that and the idea again follows the same as how meta

[00:15:26] followed WeChat in China his concept also follows the same thing where so much of your daily interactions your daily transactions are conducted on WeChat or other messaging apps in China but western consumers haven't shown any interest in actually doing that I think it's actually a problem with the

[00:15:43] people feel more secure in going to a dedicated commerce app where you've got a bit more of a safety net where there's a bit more trust behind the reviews that Amazon has and the process is in place if something goes wrong and there's

[00:15:55] this there's a bit more trust in yeah Amazon eBay dedicated retails as opposed to buying on social apps because buying on social apps is never really caught on no matter how many times each platform has tried it so again you're looking at it going

[00:16:09] well why why is this one gonna work or why is it suddenly gonna change once X has payments I don't see why there's any reason that would suggest that there's gonna suddenly be a huge success there other than Elon just believing that his following is so massive

[00:16:23] that people would just do what he says so maybe there's enough people who do that but subscriptions haven't been very popular so again all the data we have would suggest that no this is probably not going to work out how you expect and that's

[00:16:38] before you even get into his grander plan to where it's going to cover everything from dating to jobs to every other possible function that could happen online he believes is all going to be integrated in but each of these things is all you know it's all half measures

[00:16:53] basically so yeah I don't think it's gonna work Yeah he's certainly been obsessed by WeChat I think you know which is the the main model for as you say a lot of organizations and for whatever reason just sort of porting that over directly misses the point

[00:17:09] of a different culture you know misses the point of different regulatory areas one social channel social platform that has learned that lesson rather the hard way even though they keep hitting their head up against the wall with it I think it's TikTok now where they have tried desperately

[00:17:24] to mirror the success of Doyin which is the sort of the sister app in China and go with a lot of live stream shopping and live commerce they keep trying this it seems month after month it hasn't really taken I was interested

[00:17:37] to see in your piece on social media today dot com that TikTok you think is going to be branching out into even more sort of strange areas like food delivery you're talking about a nearby feed what do you see for TikTok next year

[00:17:54] Yeah I mean that's Doyin's already gone in that direction and you're exactly right they had such success with live stream shopping in particular in the Chinese market that was like that's our model we're going to replicate that model with TikTok in west in the

[00:18:06] western world but for whatever reason a lot of those you know Chinese trends a lot of the trends in asia markets don't translate to western markets I don't know why I don't know what the definitive reasoning is but yeah there's just a difference in culture a difference in

[00:18:20] approach and I think part of it is trust like I think the Chinese government has such control over their platforms that there's generally a lot more trust in the systems that are in place but again that's just anecdotal that's just sort of taking

[00:18:32] a guess at what it could be but yeah TikTok as you say has been trying to pump the same thing put those live stream commerce you know I think live stream commerce was a nine billion dollar industry in China last year so it's like clearly if they

[00:18:44] can get over the hump and get people to actually buy stuff that would be massive they could lead it and it would be huge but no it hasn't caught on here but where do I end dingo next yet is into food delivery enabling

[00:18:57] food delivery then you've got a nearby feed of local businesses food delivery businesses and things like that and over time they've sort of been able to build upon that so my prediction is based on well if that's worked there I think that's probably what they'll try and do

[00:19:10] because they really want e-commerce to work so they're going to keep trying ways to try and squeeze it in and get people spending money and like people are spending money in tick tock people are spending money to give donations to creators like that it's just a

[00:19:22] matter of translating that into buying products and I mean tiktok's gone as far as building their own delivery centers and building their own warehouses where they can make sure that deliveries are getting sent quicker and making deals with Chinese retailers so they can make

[00:19:36] sure that you know specific products based on trends are coming into the tiktok system and selling them through the tiktok shop so they're trying every possible way they can I don't know that it's going to catch on because again no one knows why

[00:19:49] western consumers just don't have the same adoption of you know in stream commerce as you know Asian consumers have shown but yeah they're going to keep trying it and maybe if they get over if they can get past that next level maybe if younger like that I

[00:20:03] can guessing they must be seeing trends among younger users in particular that more of them are spending more money and if over time once they get more money if they feel more comfortable doing that then they build into an e-commerce platform but at the moment it's not really

[00:20:17] panning out the way they would hope and what they really hope is in China they've been able to give creators a pathway to making money and that keeps them aligned to the platform so if they can't give creators more money they've got their creator funds

[00:20:30] and things like that but that's not sustainable so they really need some pathway to make sure their creators keep getting paid and that's another big reason aside from you know the benefits for a business for their business alone why they keep pushing it

[00:20:42] three more social channels left I want to talk about snapchat Pinterest and LinkedIn snapchat you mentioned DM ads possibly coming to snapchat in the new year are you hearing words of that or is that just you thinking that that's sort of where the general industry

[00:20:57] is going and therefore snapchats probably going to end up there as well I mean it's conjecture to a degree you're looking at the trends and trying to figure it out and think you know this is where it could go I'd say that's an opportunity for snap

[00:21:09] snaps in a really difficult position because they're costs are so high like they've got so much storage cost especially with their all their AR projects and things like that that that's compounding over time and because their costs so high they're adding more users they're up

[00:21:22] to 400 million users for the first time this year 400 million daily active users and that's really good wow but they're not seeing growth in the US and they're not seeing growth in Europe so despite them getting all of those new users in the majority often they're coming from India

[00:21:37] and those markets or the markets are seeing more growth from India Indonesia some of the central Asian markets things like that they're not as high spending as the US and European users so they're not making as much money from these new people coming in

[00:21:50] so as much as they're seeing growth and there's promise for the future they're not making as much money right now so they're in a really difficult spot in that they do have a good pathway towards making money in future but they may not be making enough

[00:22:03] right now to give them enough sustainability to build the projects that would enable them to make money out of the future users so projects like their AR glasses and their third party AR development platform those have sort of been scaled back slightly this year as they've had to

[00:22:18] cut staff they cut 150 staff I think earlier in the year to try and make sure they stay profitable so they're sort of in a really difficult spot in that they they have to decide whether they to me they have to decide whether they stay independent

[00:22:32] and maintain their own control or whether they start partnering with other big players to potentially you know power their own their AR projects I think that's an opportunity for snap but also as I say this ads got to be their big thing

[00:22:44] how can they you know put more ads in how can they get more ads coming through so that's where that concept comes from I think marketers don't realize how insanely popular snapchat is in certain in certain groups as you mentioned the US and

[00:22:58] Canada Australia the UK and so on you know it certainly and it's to me it seems like one of those apps where you know people may sort of pervericate they may move from one to the other but those who are the younger people especially who

[00:23:12] use snapchat are like insanely devoted to it do you think that that position snapchat in a possible acquisition more like Mark Zuckerberg tried to buy it once will he try again I don't think Meta will because they're worried about antitrust lawsuits like every time they try

[00:23:30] to take over a company they get lots of trouble for it and they don't really need it like they try to take over Giffy two years ago and eventually they got blocked by the UK whatever the commission is in the UK that blocks those type of things

[00:23:41] so yeah they're facing more sort of pushback now because people don't want Meta to become you know monopolistic in that in that regard but also yeah I don't know that there be big benefit to them doing because they're already developing their own AR stuff

[00:23:53] where I think it would be of benefit is to a company like Apple who are trying to still make their own AR glasses they've got their Vision Pro coming out next year which is tethered and not really ideal for walking around also costs $2,500 or whatever it costs

[00:24:08] so I don't think that's going to be a huge success but if they were to sign you know and start developing snap spectacles with them and funding that project that might be a way for them to get into AR as well but also they recently did a deal

[00:24:20] with Microsoft using Open AI or Open AI is coming into through their chat the my AI chat system in Snapchat and they're trying to work on other ways to integrate Open AI Open AI was obviously you know owned by Microsoft essentially so there could be a pathway there

[00:24:37] for you know maybe Microsoft takes over Snapchat and then you've got all of Microsoft's funding you're integrating Open AI so it becomes the front for the social platform for Open AI and you can sort of start reaching that way and especially because of its popularity with younger people

[00:24:51] as you say like my son's 13 and yeah all of his friends it's like give me a snap when they meet new people it's like yeah give me a snap so it's just such a universal thing amongst young people they don't even you know

[00:25:01] they don't even consider other apps in that regard where they connect and where they interact is on Snapchat so that's still where it has such huge popularity it hasn't been able to hold that audience as they get older and that's a real challenge for

[00:25:13] Snap is like how do we maintain that popularity with older groups but because of that popularity and because they've got all the development pathways in place for AR there's so many opportunities especially with AR glasses coming up for them to be able to develop new AR projects

[00:25:27] maybe that could be a takeover target let's be honest retros can be boring and if you're the organizer you know it's more than just running a meeting you have to synthesize and categorize themes get the team involved design next steps and make it all a fun safe space

[00:25:42] where teammates want to participate Miro is the visual collaboration platform that helps you run effective engaging and actionable retrospectives we use Miro at our agency to map out a client's messaging for our engagement team that can be complicated a lot of if-vents but making it visual

[00:26:01] and sharing it directly with our client sped things way up plus our side can share spitballing ideas with private mode the client doesn't get to see our thoughts until we've decided on the approach whether you work on the marketing side or in product design engineering or UX

[00:26:18] bring your team together on Miro and your first three Miro boards are free when you sign up today at Miro.com that's three free boards at Miro.com and online marketplace integration Yeah One of the areas that I- the platforms that I thought was sort of interestingly

[00:27:33] maybe even a little slow on AI was Pinterest where do you see Pinterest fitting in? And they're sort of the underdog aren't they? It's sort of the black sheep of the social media family out there from a marketing perspective where do we-

[00:27:44] where do you see them next year? Yeah, I mean Pinterest is still doing well in terms of like it's not a social platform essentially it's a shopping platform right like it's not they're not even trying to sort of be a social platform anymore over time

[00:27:58] there's less and less social elements and now it's just a discovery platform but it's still considered a social platform because that's how they started but yeah they've been working on AR stuff like Pinterest is for a long time hit above its weight in certain areas like discovery

[00:28:11] and like filters like they've got all the new filters for different hair types different skin types things like that which are pretty advanced and have even beaten Google I think in some respects in terms of shopping searches which Google has then adopted there or changed their systems

[00:28:28] to sort of align and make sure they keep up but and they do have a former Google executive as their CEO so that makes sense but yeah they are developing or have been developing AR tools that are able to model products and I think that's where they

[00:28:42] will continue to develop is developing those sort of 3D depictions of products so you can see what it looks like in your house they've got a few things like that but they've been able to sort of advance those things more than other platforms because of their focus

[00:28:58] on shopping specifically they've been able to come up with better tools in that regard and as I say hit above their weight to a degree in terms of the development resources they have versus Google I think that they will continue to develop those things looking at chairs

[00:29:12] and things how they look in your home and whatever else but also I think they're going to look to generative AI and how they can integrate chat bots and search tools and things like that I think it would be pretty easy for Pinterest to integrate

[00:29:24] a more sort of customized chat GBT type system for Pinterest when you're looking for products but I think they're like product matching and their clothing matching and being able to upload pictures of things you like and then it shows you matches like their systems actually really good

[00:29:41] and because they've been again so focused on just products and artists and products and highlighting smaller businesses I think they've seen real success in that regard and I expect them to keep building in that way so the opportunities for retailers the opportunities for businesses

[00:29:56] are obviously they've got really good matching for products and so if your product is something that aligns with the trend or something that looks like what people are buying then yeah it'll get more traction on Pinterest potentially so for retailers definitely I think it's worth looking at

[00:30:12] they've got a lot more users I think it's 430, 450 million a month the active users so it's like they've got a lot more users than what I think people realize yeah and they've certainly been spending a lot of time in body shapes and body skin tones and they've

[00:30:28] I think must have an entire division just looking at that I mean they're they've really grabbed onto that as you know this is the space that we won't want to own and I think it's done really well for them all right last LinkedIn which Andrew

[00:30:40] I don't know if you know about this but LinkedIn these days have been seeing record levels of engagement hmm yes I have the rumor point which you call out every time you write a piece of them yes yeah I find it absolutely bizarre that they just keep

[00:30:57] saying these things I guess it theoretically could be true but yes every time LinkedIn is seeing record levels of engagement every quarter record levels of engagement and it's like I don't even know if they even try it's just cut and paste from the last one it's like

[00:31:11] record levels of engagement sometimes you get a slightly different update have you emailed them or asked them to see what over the numbers are you've seen how many articles I've written about it I talked to people from LinkedIn I don't know if I specifically asked them about it

[00:31:23] I guess they would just say no whatever I mean some of the other numbers are not right either like they've got a chart of like how many active users and I think they're up to 950 million now but it's like yeah but they shut down their China

[00:31:36] app in June and that was 50 million users and there and I told them this and I said you know you had 50 million users in China so there's no way you've got 950 million like you can't have increased whatever however many million when you've cut down 50 million

[00:31:49] and they said yeah we understand that and they took China off the map and deleted the number but the actual overall number didn't decrease so I don't know yeah I've told them but yeah I guess they do what they do but yes record levels of engagement I mean

[00:32:05] it's always amusing to me to read your cover it's crazy yeah I mean it's good fun I guess to sort of highlight it again and just be like I try to break it down as much as possible and look at it go this is what the numbers say

[00:32:15] this is what the all the numbers we've got but because it's part of Microsoft we don't get a real specific breakdown of what their actual numbers are and what their engagement numbers are we used to get much more data from LinkedIn when it was an independent entity

[00:32:26] but because it's just part of Microsoft's overall report yeah you only get two lines it's like yeah we're seeing 20% increase in feed engagement and record levels of overall engagement or whatever it is you know I mean it's like okay but they have been saying like yeah

[00:32:40] just recently they've been reporting that their new collaborative articles which are the AI based prompts so it's like yeah they just use an AI system to come up with a question related to content marketing and then they send it out to all the people who

[00:32:55] have got content marketing listed on their on their profile and say hey maybe you want to contribute your idea to this how do we generate ideas those have been driving heaps of traffic for LinkedIn and the benefit obviously for users is that

[00:33:09] it puts a badge on your profile if you contribute enough of them it'll say that you're an expert in content marketing when really it doesn't mean you're an expert in anything it just means you've contributed their AI based articles so it's very low maintenance for them

[00:33:21] and they're getting lots of engagement which is not surprising but I don't know that like they say lots of people are reading them I don't know anyone would read them but yeah driving lots of a big part of their record engagement yeah I always thought

[00:33:34] that a lot of those sort of engagement elements on LinkedIn are a little I don't know sus as the kids might say I think 80% of the engagement on LinkedIn at least what I've seen under posts are like that's great Sarah and good job Dave and just like

[00:33:50] and they look auto written to me like it it seems very however that said enough kicking them in the face they are as you mentioned owned by Microsoft so they have been using a lot of AI but you specifically called out I thought was interesting

[00:34:04] sort of the rise of live events as a marketing channel there where do you see that being next year yeah I mean I think there's lots of opportunity for LinkedIn to be able to utilize live events like I think it's benefited a lot from

[00:34:17] a lot of the business discussion shifting from Twitter now X has probably shifted over to LinkedIn and I think they've got a lot more opportunity to be able to capitalize on that it's just at the moment it's hard to find all these live events

[00:34:29] and things that are happening so there are things happening within the LinkedIn system a lot of video a lot of live events that is hard to find so it feels like an area of opportunity that could be something they could capitalize on

[00:34:40] like if they could really sort of highlight those live events and get more people involved that feels like something that could help build it as an industry type thing as a community type thing around your industry so I feel like there's a lot more opportunity there

[00:34:51] they're not tapping into because their discovery is just not that great or they're not highlighting it enough and they've tried some other things like they tried stories and things like that to sort of get some other elements in there but

[00:35:02] I think what they really need to focus on is those specific areas that are of professional development and professional association that could really align more businesses and more professionals too LinkedIn so in that regard I think there's a lot more opportunity in live events that they could

[00:35:18] really work on and yet and video in like videos obviously the big the most engaging content format on every platform so if they could if they come up with their own LinkedIn video tab I feel like that would be an opportunity for them to highlight both live events

[00:35:31] and video so I think that's something they should look into and probably will look into but the biggest thing is yeah discovery and just making sure that people are aware that these things are happening Enter this time next year when we are once again face to face

[00:35:45] across a web meeting platform what do you think will be the one big story that we will look back on 2024 and say this was the big one this year I mean it's too easy to say X right it's too easy to be like there's going to be something

[00:36:02] bad has happened like as I said my my view on X is that's like it's not sustainable at the moment like the X's expenses especially with the debt that Elon Musk has loaded into the platform for his $44 billion or whatever the loans he had to

[00:36:18] build up to get that $44 billion that means they have to pay it back at $1.2 billion in debt every quarter so there's no way that it's going to make enough money to cover that at the moment with a half its advertisers gone X is looking like

[00:36:31] making maybe $2 billion per quarter when their costs are about $2 billion per quarter and then you've got the extra cost on top of that of the debt load so it's like they're going to be a billion down every quarter and at some stage

[00:36:45] it feels like that's going to be an existential thing I feel like in the middle of the year next year like I think they should be able to get through the early part but the middle of the year near next year if Elon is not seeing

[00:36:54] or if X is not seeing the growth that they would hope and that's what it feels like more than anything else is he's very optimistic his sort of vision for how things are going to happen always seems very optimistic like this is all going to come together

[00:37:07] and it's like you realize there's so many things that have to come together to make that happen it's like yeah yeah a little bit fine like it feels like he's very much like I think that's been a big part of his success is that he's just so optimistic

[00:37:18] and so much like yeah this is all going to happen like how many times he said that Tesla's going to have full self-driving he's been saying that for the last seven years and it's like it's never happens but it's very optimistic it's like no no

[00:37:29] we're going to get there we're going to be able to fly to Mars there's going to be no problem like all these things are just like optimistic projections that despite never getting there people would just go yeah but if we do and if he does make it

[00:37:40] that'd be amazing so again it feels the same with X it feels like he's saying this is going to be amazing it's going to be the biggest platform in the world you know by 2025 we're going to have a billion users

[00:37:50] and no one's going to be able to live without and it's like I just don't see how that comes about so to me yeah when you're looking at the money if he's going to stand on his principles of free speech and he's going to keep pushing advertisers away

[00:38:03] I feel like in the middle of the year it's going to be like we can't keep like we're losing a billion dollars or more every quarter we can't keep doing this like it's not going to work and if that's the case as some people have said

[00:38:14] well he could just fund it himself maybe but he's also losing a billion dollars per quarter if he does that or he's going to make it a political statement where he's like the world's trying to shut us down because we're too much you know showing free speech

[00:38:26] because we're allowing too much free speech and it becomes this big yeah grand political statement a very costly grand political statement that X shuts down but Elon then parlays that into support for right-wing conservative candidate in the election and it's sort of the shutdown of X

[00:38:43] becomes a key moment within the election cycle that then becomes a rallying point for some of those people who are like see they're trying to shut down free speech the only reason X shut down is because you know the establishment and the whatever it is

[00:38:57] whatever they're calling it now the industrial complex censorship industrial complex or something trying to shut us down that becomes the thing that gets all these people fired up and they go cool we're going to vote for whoever Elon says because he got shut down

[00:39:09] and we all believe in that so that feels like the most obvious big story of next year it feels like X if I was going to predict I would say that if it doesn't shut down it's it should have shut down you know what I mean like it's

[00:39:21] it's going to be costing so much money to prop it up that it's like you probably would have been better off just moving on from this but like I feel like the only way it's going to keep going is if you know it gets funded by Elon

[00:39:32] and he's ended the stream of money from wherever he gets it from other than that you know I think the the sales of Metta's new Ray-Ban stories have started to look promising I think there's more signs there that they're going to actually be a thing

[00:39:47] I would have said they weren't going to be a thing last year they definitely weren't a thing last year but now with live streaming capability and you're starting to see some of the trends that are happening online and some of the TikTok trends and things like that of

[00:39:59] influencers wearing the glasses and able to film themselves in mirrors and things like that and so this there's new trends emerging based around that that I feel like could become a much bigger push to move towards those AR glasses that are coming from Metta in future and that

[00:40:15] to them will be pushing towards the Metaverse I still don't see how that all fully aligns like AR and VR are two very different things but they see them all as one so I think that could be the other big push is that you start to see Metta

[00:40:28] shifting more towards AR glasses and wearables in that sense so if you're looking at potential key trends I would say those are the two big stories that are going to be significant AI I still don't see as becoming trans as transformative is what people predict

[00:40:45] until we see the next stage of it where it's actually thinking for itself as opposed to just regurgitating stuff it's already online so I feel like over the next year AI development is probably going to slow down a little bit as we see variations of what's already there

[00:40:59] but I don't think it's going to be a big sort of turning point or definitely not as much as it has been over the last year so yeah I'd say those are the key trends I would expect I feel more extremes about going into 2024 than in the past

[00:41:12] so I'm I'm like extremely excited as a marketer and also extremely terrified as a marketer and I've felt those levels that dichotomy before but never so much you know I don't know if bipolar is the right term but you know never no never so much being at the

[00:41:28] extreme ends of it it will certainly be interesting Andrew Hutchinson is the head of content at socialmediatoday.com Andrew thank you so much we will see you at least in a year if not sooner excellent thank you for having me Tom Andrew Hutchinson

[00:41:42] if you want to dive deeper into Andrew's predictions head to socialmediatoday.com and look for the piece called Social Media Trends 2024 34 for 34 predictions for marketers and make sure you bookmark that site Andrew is always publishing news there and that will do it for us

[00:42:01] for the rest of the year after 1026 episodes the new year we have some big changes ahead for the podcast changes I know you will like so stay tuned for that today in digital marketing is produced by Engage Q Digital on the traditional territories of the Tuneimic First Nation

[00:42:16] on Vancouver Island our production coordinator is Sarah Gild our theme is by Mark Blevis music licensing by Source Audio ad coordination by Red Circle and though she doesn't usually get a credit because she's currently on Mat Leave our associate producer the intrepid Step Gun

[00:42:31] who will be back next summer so that's it for us I'm Todd Mappin have a very restful holiday friends and I will see you next on January the 3rd