Social Media Is Going Smaller
Nearly two decades ago, Facebook exploded on college campuses as a site for students to stay in touch. Then came Twitter, where people posted about what they had for breakfast, and Instagram, where friends shared photos to keep up with one another.
Today, Instagram and Facebook feeds are full of ads and sponsored posts. TikTok and Snapchat are stuffed with videos from influencers promoting dish soaps and dating apps. And soon, Twitter posts that gain the most visibility will come mostly from subscribers who pay for the exposure. Social media is, in many ways, becoming less social.
The change has implications for large social networking companies and how people interact with one another digitally. But it also raises questions about a core idea: the online platform. For years, the notion of a platform — an all-in-one, public-facing site where people spent most of their time — reigned supreme. But as big social networks made connecting people with brands a priority over connecting them with other people, some users have started seeking community-oriented sites and apps devoted to specific hobbies and issues.
“Platforms as we knew them are over,” said Zizi Papacharissi, a communications professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
The shift helps explain why some social networking companies, which continue to have billions of users and pull in billions of dollars in revenue, are now exploring new avenues of business. Twitter, which is owned by Elon Musk,
Seeking an online community without sponsored content.
has been pushing people and brands to pay $8 to $1,000 a month to become subscribers. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is moving into the immersive online world of the metaverse.
Some users are now gravitating toward smaller, more focused sites. These include Mastodon, which is essentially a Twitter clone sliced into communities; Nextdoor, a social network for neighbors to commiserate about issues like local potholes; and apps like Truth Social, which was started by former President Donald J. Trump and is viewed as a social network for conservatives.
“It’s not about choosing one network to rule them all — that is crazy Silicon Valley logic,” said Ethan Zuckerman, a professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “The future is that you’re a member of dozens of different communities, because as human beings, that’s how we are.”
Twitter did not have a comment about the evolution of social networking. Meta declined to comment, and TikTok did not respond. Snap, the maker of Snapchat, said that although its app had evolved, connecting people with friends and family remained its primary function.
In 2019, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, wrote in a Facebook post that private messaging and small groups were the fastest-growing areas of online communication. Jack Dorsey, a founder of Twitter who stepped down as its chief executive in 2021, has pushed for decentralized social networks that give people control over the content they see and the communities they engage with. He has been posting on Nostr, a social media site based on this principle.
Over the last year, technologists and academics have also focused on smaller social networks. In a recent paper titled “The Three-Legged Stool: A Manifesto for a Smaller, Denser Internet,” Mr. Zuckerman and others outlined how future companies could run small networks at low costs.
They also suggested the creation of an app that allows people to switch among the sites they use. One such app, called Gobo and developed by MIT Media Lab and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is set for release this month.
The tricky part for users is finding the small networks because they are obscure. But broader social networks, like Mastodon or Reddit, often act as a gateway to smaller communities. When signing up for Mastodon, people can choose a server from an extensive list, including those related to gaming, food and activism.
Eugen Rochko, Mastodon’s chief executive, said that users were publishing over a billion posts a month and that there were no algorithms or ads altering people’s feeds.
One benefit of small networks is that they create forums for specific communities, including people who are marginalized. Ahwaa, founded in 2011, is a social network for members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community in the Persian Gulf where being gay is deemed illegal. Other small networks, like Letterboxd, an app for film enthusiasts to share their opinions on movies, are focused on special interests.
Smaller communities can also relieve some social pressure of using social media, especially for younger people. Over the last decade, stories have emerged, including in hearings in the U.S. Congress, about teenagers developing eating disorders after trying to live up to “Instagram perfect” photos and through watching videos on TikTok.
The idea that a new social media site might come along to be the one app for everyone appears unrealistic, experts say. When young people are done experimenting with a new network — such as BeReal, the photo-sharing app that was popular among teenagers last year but is now losing millions of active users — they move on to the next one.
More small networks are likely to come. Last year, Harvard University, where Mr. Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004 as a student, began a research program devoted to rebooting social media. The program helps students and others create and experiment with new networks together.
One app that emerged, Minus, lets users publish only 100 posts for life. The idea is to make people feel connected in an environment where their time together is treated as a precious and finite resource, unlike traditional social networks.
“It’s a performance art experiment,” said Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of law and computer science at Harvard who started the research initiative. “It’s the kind of thing that as soon as you see it, it doesn’t have to be this way.”