Users moving away from open social media to closed platforms: What does it mean?

Think you’ve got a pretty good handle on social media? Good! But it’s getting disrupted.

John McDermott of Digiday writes:

The social media pendulum is in full swing, and latest trends do not necessarily bode well for the likes of Facebook: Internet users — especially young ones — are starting to shirk large, inherently open social media platforms for the sanctity of more “closed” platforms that allow for more private, one-to-one and group messaging.

And that has potentially profound implications for social media distribution: If Internet users continue to shift their sharing activity to messaging apps, then brands and publishers will also have to shift their focuses away from Facebook and Twitter, and find ways to interject themselves into supposedly private conversations. Indeed, Twitter recently made it easier to use its direct-messaging feature, seemingly to combat this trend.

Leading this transition are WhatsApp and Snapchat, two multibillion-dollar businesses built upon allowing hundreds of millions of users send one another text, photo and video messages.

McDermott offers a closer look at four leading messaging apps—WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Snaphat and Kik—including “a breakdown of how people, publishers and brands are trying to take advantage of them.” He also takes a quick look at “the best of the rest,” Line, WeChat and Frankly.