I'm 20. Am I already too old for this? I use Twitter and Snapchat most days, though my contributions to either of those are limited in comparison to my consumption of others' content. I've deleted my Instagram account and haven't felt like I'm missing anything. My Facebook feed is filled with clickbait and auto-playing videos.
I think people are starting to recognize that your social presence catches up to you later on in life, and as a result are flocking to semi-private networks like Twitter (via private profiles), Instagram (again using private profiles) and Snapchat. Using these networks in such a way removes the anxiety of posting to a large audience, and in some cases (Snapchat) you can easily control the audience who sees your posts. I think this is really valuable. The other commonality between these apps is that none of them require your real name - you can choose to mask your identity, or make yourself easily discoverable publicly (especially Twitter). Oh yeah, and none of these apps require that you sign in with Facebook. I think asking for a Facebook login is just about the laziest way to attempt to harvest data about your users, and it's not as though they no longer recognize this (or at the very least, it's yet ANOTHER app asking for you to associate your account with your Facebook account.)
Monetization in apps of the future will rely on creative new ways of associating non-identifying data. This will mean relying more on the information the user generates vs. the information they give us explicitly (Who are your friends? Where did you go to school? etc). It should be an interesting next few years for the big players like Facebook. It's certainly been interesting seeing Snapchat rise to such success with such a simple concept. I think there's a potential to "Snapchat-ize" every major feature of Facebook into many wildly successful apps. Now, what's more important than photos?
> Using these networks in such a way removes the anxiety of posting to a large audience
What I've noticed about Twitter and Instagram is that because they're semi-private it means people get WAY more upvotes on their content. Thus, for a younger generation, they'll flock to the networks where their voice is heard the highest. Kids get sick of "Sally Cheerleader" getting 135 likes and "SOOO BEAUTIFUL" comments from everyone else in their school. As this group ages they'll see the value in LinkedIn/FB when non-anonymity can potentially means real cold hard cash in their pockets and the cycle will repeat itself.
> Monetization in apps of the future will rely on creative new ways of associating non-identifying data.
I disagree. For the last 15 years we've been asking publishers to "get more creative" with advertising. All that means is that Forbes now gives you a 15 second ad before clicking through to it's content. There's nothing creative about that. I do however think many app vendors will start charging for their apps as opposed to relying on advertising in the future.
I think people are starting to recognize that your social presence catches up to you later on in life, and as a result are flocking to semi-private networks like Twitter (via private profiles), Instagram (again using private profiles) and Snapchat. Using these networks in such a way removes the anxiety of posting to a large audience, and in some cases (Snapchat) you can easily control the audience who sees your posts. I think this is really valuable. The other commonality between these apps is that none of them require your real name - you can choose to mask your identity, or make yourself easily discoverable publicly (especially Twitter). Oh yeah, and none of these apps require that you sign in with Facebook. I think asking for a Facebook login is just about the laziest way to attempt to harvest data about your users, and it's not as though they no longer recognize this (or at the very least, it's yet ANOTHER app asking for you to associate your account with your Facebook account.)
Monetization in apps of the future will rely on creative new ways of associating non-identifying data. This will mean relying more on the information the user generates vs. the information they give us explicitly (Who are your friends? Where did you go to school? etc). It should be an interesting next few years for the big players like Facebook. It's certainly been interesting seeing Snapchat rise to such success with such a simple concept. I think there's a potential to "Snapchat-ize" every major feature of Facebook into many wildly successful apps. Now, what's more important than photos?