What comes after Facebook?

At the end of October, Facebook made a surprising announcement: young people between the ages of 18 and 25 are increasingly running away from the network. Although the network is gaining in absolute numbers and continues to grow, it is doing so in other target and age groups. As surprising as this was in the Swiss and German media, 13-year-old Ruby Karp blogged on the trend platform Mashable.com on August 11: "I'm a teen living in New York. All of my friends have social networks (...) but lately, I've been noticing something different. Facebook is losing teens, and I think I know why. " / "I'm a teenager from New York. All my friends use social networks (...) but lately, I've been noticing something different. Facebook is losing teens, and I think I know why."

Reason number one: Uncool

The first reason: networks are becoming increasingly outdated. Which young people want to be on the same site as their parents, teachers or even grandparents? While Facebook has grown in the 40+ user group (up 40 percent since 2010), according to a study by the US research institute Pew, 42 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds and 34 percent of 30 to 49-year-olds said they spent less time on Facebook every day last year than before. In addition, Facebook has not done itself any favors with its constant layout improvements, nor with the changing privacy settings. If something becomes too complicated, young people prefer to turn their backs on it.

Reason number two: Alternatives

The second reason is even more trivial: the alternatives have increased - massively. The network currently has around 300 social media platforms. These include veterans such as Twitter (short messages) or Foursquare (check-ins), newcomers Pinterest (online collections) or Tumblr (micro-blogging) and, above all, Instagram. The service corresponds to the absolute self-image of today's youth: show me what you do and I'll tell you who you are. Not much writing, just photos, no complex security and privacy settings (private or public) and very little text. Facebook also recognized this trend when it bought Instagram for USD 1 billion in 2012.

The hidden champions

But which networks are now in the second and third tiers? It is becoming increasingly clear that victory will be decided on the cell phone. For the over 30s and older among us, a website in the classic sense is still a point of contact with an orientation factor. Including navigation and a classic structure. However, the generations after us are already very fond of Whatsapp and Snapchat. Whatsapp transforms the personal address book into a chat room in which pictures and videos can be easily shared, locations transmitted and status messages distributed. Snapchat has specialized in a particular niche: with the Snapchat app, images can only be made available for a certain period of time, from 5 to 60 seconds, it is up to the sender how long the message can be seen. If a screenshot is taken, the sender receives a message. It was only in mid-November 2013 that the founder of Snapchat turned down an offer of USD 3 billion from Facebook. Why is Facebook interested in Snapchat? The latter recently beat Facebook in the daily photo-sharing competition, i.e. more users upload photos via Snapchat than via Facebook: specifically 400 million so-called "snaps" per day, compared to 350 million on Facebook. However, the Facebook figure does not include the images from Instagram (around 55 million).

Next generation networks

Where is the journey heading in this highly competitive and often confusing market? The trend is clear: social - local - mobile. People want to be informed internationally, but they want to interact locally with people who share the same interests as they do: There's Riffer (for guitarists), Goodreads (for book fans), Redkaraoke (you guessed it) and Nextdoor (for the neighborhood). All apps and websites can be easily found and tested. Even though most networks currently have large users in the USA and Germany. So if networks are to be increasingly personal, local and above all mobile, two networks are well on their way to overtaking Facebook & Co or being acquired by them. These two newcomers are already champions in the USA and the question remains as to when they will roll into Europe and Switzerland: Path.com and Highlig.ht (note the division of name and domain). The special thing about it: both are apps, not websites, and allow the user to set up and expand their own small local network. Path.com is an app that allows users to track their entire daily routine - including when they get up and go to bed. Highlig.ht, on the other hand, relies entirely on the "sixth sense". The app shows when highlighters are nearby, which friends and interests you have in common (even if you are not friends with them) and when friends come into the vicinity, the app notifies me automatically. Big Brother with a stalking function sends its regards. But here, too, each user decides for themselves whether to participate or not.

Opportunities for entrepreneurs and companiesn?

What does this mean for entrepreneurs and companies? Do we now have to multiply and rewrite all our marketing plans? No. Because Facebook and Twitter will continue to be the dominant networks, at least until 2015. SMEs would do well to observe the market and analyze which target group really makes sense in which network. For brands and consumer goods, however, this means that even classic online campaigns will work less and less, simply because users are withdrawing from access. With personal, localized networks, ads are effectively being switched off more and more. Through ambassadors and sponsored stories on a large scale, shared across all networks (as Red Bull has already done with Stratos), the cards will be reshuffled once again from 2014.

Author: Roger Basler

Roger Basler is a business economist FH, Head of Marketing at Preloved and an independent Company architect. He specializes in business development, new media, social commerce and digital marketing.