The social media platforms to look out for in 2024
There’s a belief that social media platforms have a life cycle of about seven years before they’re overrun by the next cool thing.
Think about it: Facebook was the first one, giving us the ability to track down friends, join community pages, and share cryptic posts to our timelines. (They were the days.) Then, Instagram came along and switched our priority to the visual medium, sharing updates like a photo album before being driven by brands and advertising. During the pandemic, TikTok exploded, giving many people a sense of community during a hard period, or simply something to do for hours.
2023 saw the arrival of Threads which experienced a huge spike of engagement and growth within its first two weeks before getting a flash of reality: people returned to Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Looking at the shifts of these platforms since the pandemic, and with some creeping into the space, we look at the top platforms to keep an eye on in 2024. We’re excited to see how these platforms develop or if they’ll flop.
Following their reduced engagement, Meta and Adam Mosseri have been working on updates to Threads to perhaps bring it back into public consciousness more in 2024. With X also on a downwards spiral due to Elon Musk’s impulsiveness and impatience, there could be room for Threads to take over this battle if played right.
Recent updates to Threads have included topics and hashtags, post editing (hallelujah), voice notes, and launching the desktop version for easy posting (for social media managers, at least!). You may have also seen it popping up on both Instagram and Facebook in the stream of your feed as suggested content, or in notification for posts you may like or that your followers have created.
We deepdived on YouTube Shorts recently and were intrigued by the growing potential on the platform. According to WARC, ad investment with YouTube is set to increase by 4% this year to over $30bn, doubling the rate of growth recorded in 2022. 57% of marketers said they expect their spend on YouTube to increase in the new year.
However, under 18s still spend 60% more time on TikTok, and Shorts has significantly less DAUs (still about 50m) compared to TikTok. As we go into in our previous article on Shorts, the exciting element about jumping on the new(ish) format is the experimentation, and testing and learning. Duplicate your Instagram and TikTok organic content or paid campaigns to Shorts and see how they do; optimise clips of long-form content to the 9x16 specs (AI can help with this!); and start building a strategy on what performs best for your brand.
Popular with a primarily Gen Z demographic, and almost at 50,000 users, Daylyy is “rewiring social media” according to the homepage of their website, offering users the opportunity to “casually share pictures and videos like a daily content journal” and satisfying people’s “hunger for authenticity.” Sound familiar?
It seems like the grown-up twin of BeReal, the Snapchat-cum-Instagram app that dropped in 2022 that had a strong stance on authenticity and an anti-social media message. The company reports that daily active users are still high but the hype has definitely fizzled.
Daylyy offers a chronological feed with posts from your friends as well as trending content.
Daylyy’s unique points? There are no vanity metrics, filters or algorithm, and no ads (yet — they will come, though.) The platform also promotes posting as much as you like without pressure or judgement, and one way this is done is only being able to share in the moment. It’s not possible to upload posts from your camera roll that may have been filtered or augmented, only happy snaps from where you are right now.
Daylyy is available to download on both iPhone and Android — let us know if you give it a go!
Which app are you most excited for in 2024?