(Credit:
Illustration by James Martin/CNET)
When you think of social media these days, you probably think primarily
of Facebook and Twitter, and perhaps Instagram. But while those services
have massive -- and growing -- user bases, they're of course not the
only games in town.
The world of social media is filled with other services, and millions of
people get a daily fix without ever going near Facebook or Twitter.
There are big general networks like Tagged, and plenty of smaller,
purpose-built ones like Path or celebrity-focused ones like Lady Gaga's
Little Monsters. There's even a revamped MySpace.
So what does 2013 hold in store for the world of social media? Only time
will tell, naturally, but CNET put on its prognosticator's hat and took
a stab at a few predictions for the year ahead.
1. MySpace relaunches; no one cares
If all goes as planned, sometime in the next few months a
fully revamped MySpace will launch,
attempting to lure in a hip, young audience with a media-centric theme
and an ownership that includes celebrities like Justin Timberlake.
The company knows it will never again be as big as it once was, but
launch it will. And the collective response will be crickets. Though
MySpace's new senior management knows they can't compete with Facebook
as people's primary social network -- they expect that it will be
integrated with both Facebook and Twitter and focus on music -- it's still hard to understand why anyone needs a new MySpace.
After all, Facebook, with its Spotify partnership, already makes it easy
to listen to and share music. And Facebook and Twitter both give
musicians easy ways to connect with fans. So the entire rationale for
relaunching a beleaguered brand whose raison d'etre has been superseded
by bigger, stronger rivals, is hard to figure.
And users will come to the same conclusion. Though there may be a little
bit of excitement as Timberlake and others lend their names and glamour
to the new MySpace, that will quickly wear off as everyone realizes no
one cares.
2. Twitter-Instagram photo rivalry continues to develop
A major 2012 story, which just happened to take place in the closing weeks of the year, was the
intensifying battle
between Twitter and its former ally Instagram. Twitter had seemingly
hoped to buy the photo-sharing service itself, but saw its hopes dashed
as Mark Zuckerberg swooped in with what turned out to be $715 million
worth of cash and stock and
bought Instagram
for Facebook. In the process, Twitter lost its shot at a huge amount of
revenue potential, not to mention being able to bring tens of millions
of passionate and committed new users instantly into the fold.
In the wake of the Facebook-Instagram acquisition, Twitter began rolling
out a set of fresh features that seemed intended to mimic the Instagram
experience. That effort included making relevant photos show up atop
Twitter search results; creating a more consistent mobile experience;
and, then, most important of all, releasing its own
photo-filtering tools.
But Instagram still boasts some significant advantages over Twitter when
it comes to photo-sharing and creating and sharing artistic
photography. Perhaps the most obvious is the extremely passionate -- and
fast-growing -- community it enjoys. Still, Twitter has its own massive
user base, and the potential to leverage it as its tools improve.
Twitter needs to make its mobile photo experience even better and more
focused than it is. It might even find that one way to attract more
photographers is to add a photo tab to the current set of tabs: Home,
Connect, Discover, and Me.
To date, Twitter has released eight free filters, and that number will
have to increase and get closer to Instagram's 18. That would help
Twitter users see photo-sharing as a major part of what they choose to
use the service for. Twitter is a force to be reckoned with, but the key
question is whether it can work rapidly enough to catch up to Instagram
before it's too late.
3. Tout breaks out
In some circles,
Tout
is already a household name. The video-sharing service, which lets
users quickly create and share 15-second clips, has become a favorite of
athletes, news stations, and others. But many people have yet to even
hear of it.
That could change in a big way in 2013. Though the company doesn't seem
to spend much on marketing, it has a loyal fan base, which uses the
service consistently and smartly and are known to see their Twitter
followings go up at faster rates than normal Twitter users.
And why not? If a picture's worth a thousand words, then a short video
must be worth far more than that. Tout is easy to use, and it's easy to
embed a tout in a tweet, and who doesn't think a short video can say
more than 140 text characters?
So far, though, despite being the service of choice for things like
basketball star Shaquille O'Neil announcing his retirement, Tout has yet
to break through. This could be the year that changes, as more and more
people realize the value of creating and sharing 15-second videos. It
turns out you can say a lot in 15 seconds, and as people learn that,
they'll have a service at the ready to help them get their messages out.
4. Bigger bucks for Twitter
Almost since its inception, despite its rapid growth, Twitter has
had to fend off questions about its financial prospects. It was always
seen as a great service, but few could see how it would make money. Now
its critics are quieting down as it has beefed up its advertising
platform.
But investors have put $1.16 billion into Twitter, according to
Crunchbase, and it's certain those VCs want the microblogging giant to step up its
revenue machine. And soon.
How does it do that? It can continue doing what it began to get good at
in 2012: getting brands involved, and deeply involved at that, while not
making users unhappy by watering down the service with ads.
Plus, it could develop easier ways to place ads. Google became a
financial juggernaut when it answered that problem, in part with
self-service ads, and brands wanting to place ads on Twitter would
surely like to have an easier experience. As well, Twitter needs new
ways to make sales.
Fortunately, the company appears to take these challenges very
seriously, and is investing real time and energy into how to take the
next step. One advantage it has over Facebook is that mobile is just as
good a platform for advertising on Twitter as the Web. That could bode
very well down the line.
5. Facebook buys RockMelt?
Facebook has built a platform that offers users almost any tool you
can imagine, from timelines to chatting to photo-sharing to groups, and
so on. But one thing it doesn't have is its own browser, either for the
Web or for mobile.
Google, of course, has a browser, Chrome, that it leverages to gather
data on what people are looking for, to boost advertising, and generally
to keep millions of users tied to Google in ever more ways.
While Facebook could build its own browser -- and could conceivably be
doing so -- it could choose instead to buy one that's already developed
and that has already proved attractive to users, as well as one that was
created specifically to integrate well with Facebook.
To those who follow such things, that browser is RockMelt.
Built as the browser for social, this Chromium-based tool is designed
to easily work with Facebook and Twitter, yet it can also browse the Web
normally. Its special sauce, however, is surely the way it seamlessly
integrates social elements of Facebook.
As far as anyone knows, RockMelt's not for sale, and there's been no
public indication that the company wants to sell, or has interest in
selling to Facebook. But then again, RockMelt and Facebook share
investors (Andreessen Horowitz), public relations firms (Outcast), and a
sense that Facebook is at the heart of the social experience.
Bringing RockMelt in house would give Facebook a browser of its own, and
one that might come at a reasonable price. Why would Facebook want to
have a browser? Because it would suddenly have access to far more
information about users' behaviors, and could potentially keep users
inside an all-Facebook fence, and away from its competitors, especially
Google. Plus, RockMelt has an
iPad version.