Social Media Trends: Where It’s at and Where it’s Headed

Statistics show that nearly 3 in 4 U.S. adults use social media networking sites. This isn’t a trend that’s expected to be going away anytime soon, either. As sites like Facebook and Twitter continue to dominate, social media usage will likely increase to even higher numbers. But the landscape is changing nonetheless, with social media networks adopting new technologies and features. Today we’re going to explore some of these social media trends.

Longer Tweets

Twitter has distinguished itself from other social media networks by being the only network that limits user content to 140 characters or less. However, this distinguishable characteristic may soon be eliminated, as the Big Blue Bird has expressed desire to increase the character limit of its users’ tweets. This isn’t going to be a minor increase, either. According to various reports, Twitter is considering increasing its tweet limit from 140 characters to 10,000 — a transition that would likely occur sometime later this year.

More Video on Facebook

Another social media trend to watch is the increased usage of video content on Facebook. Back in November 2015, Facebook reported approximately 8 million video views per day. Granted, that falls short of YouTube, but it still ranks among the leading platforms on which to watch videos. Facebook has also added a video tab, as well as the ability for businesses and brands to post multiple videos at once. All of these features signal an increasing emphasis on video content for Facebook.

E-Commerce on Social Media

Would you purchase a product that was advertised directly on social media? If so, you aren’t alone. Social media networks like Facebook and Twitter have been experimenting with internal “Buy” buttons, allowing brands to promote and sell their products directly through the network. So instead of having to leave the site to make a purchase, users can buy products straight from their social media accounts. Whether or not this feature takes off and gains mainstream popularity, remains to be seen. In any case, you can expect to see more e-commerce transactions being made on social media.

Search Engine-Friendly Content

Social media networks have acknowledged the importance of delivering SEO-friendly content. After all, it’s in their best interest for search engines to index and rank users’ content accordingly, as this drives more traffic to their networks. You can expect to see more social media content being displayed in the search results, ranging from Facebook status updates to Google+ messages, YouTube videos, and Twitter tweets. And assuming Twitter proceeds to increase the character limit of its tweets to 10,000, the search engines will likely respond by indexing more Twitter content in their search listings.

What kind of social media trends to you expect to see more of? Let us know in the comments section below!