Today in Digital Marketing - Social Media in 2024: The Predictions

Episode Date: December 20, 2023

In this special year-end episode, Tod speaks with Andrew Hutchinson, head of content at SocialMediaToday.com, about Andrew's predictions for the year ahead in social media marketing..📰 Get our free daily newsletter📈 Advertising: Reach Thousands of Marketing Decision-Makers🌍 Follow us on social media or contact us.GO PREMIUM!Get these exclusive benefits when you upgrade:✅ Listen ad-free✅ Back catalog of 20+ marketing science interviews✅ Get the show earlier than the free version✅ Story links in show notes✅ “Skip to story” audio chapters✅ Member-exclusive Slack channel✅ Member-only monthly livestreams with Tod✅ Discounts on marketing tools✅...and a lot more!Check it out: todayindigital.com/premium·GET MORE FROM US🆘 Need help with your social media? Check us out: engageQ digital🎙️ Our other podcast "Behind the Ad"🤝 Our Slack community⭐ Review the podcast·UPGRADE YOUR SKILLS• Inside Google Ads with Jyll Saskin Gales• Google Ads for Beginners with Jyll Saskin Gales• Foxwell Slack Group and CoursesSome links in these show notes may provide affiliate revenue to us.·Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on Vancouver Island, Canada.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

What a year it has been. From the slow collapse of Twitter, to the rise of reels, to regulatory bodies in overdrive, the digital marketing industry is going into 2024 with a lot of uncertainty. Today, in our final episode of the year, we look at what is likely to come for our industry in the next 12 months. For that, I'm joined by Andrew Hutchinson. Andrew is the head of content at socialmediatoday.com. And I'm just going to say this, Andrew works harder than you. He writes more articles and does more coverage than is actually humanly possible. So it's become clear to me that there are at least four Andrews and one of them joins me from his office in Canberra, Australia. Hello, Andrew, number three. Hello, Todd. Thank you for having me.

Actually, if I had all the staff that are listed as working at social media today on LinkedIn, then definitely there would be many, many more of us writing. But no, there's only me. Fair enough. Maybe you're just more productive, incredibly productive AI. I don't know. So you do these annual predictions every year at socialmediatoday.com. And your accuracy rate, you say, hovers around 80%? Yep, about 80%.

Yep, that's what I would claim. Like, obviously, there's some variations within that. But yeah, 80%. That's good. That's a good number. It's usually my best prediction was back about, oh, maybe 20 years ago when blogs were a thing. And I got on National Public Radio in Canada and told the world that my opinion was that blogs were a fad and would die out. So I'm not good at this at all. That's why I bring you on. So I want to walk through all the

various social platforms and talk about where you see our industry going since you have such a front row seat to it. Let's talk about the big one, obviously, Meta got very drunk on the elixir known as AI. Surely, Andrew, they're bored of it by now and probably will stop their obsession with AI next year, right? No, I wouldn't have mentioned so. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg has always sort of latched on to the latest tech trends, whatever they may be. As you saw with Clubhouse, it was like,

oh, we should copy that stories, we should copy that. Part of that is obviously driven by business intent and making sure that they stay up to date with the latest trends. But also, yeah, he just likes new stuff. He likes the new technology. And there was lots of reports throughout the year that he was totally infatuated with artificial intelligence, even though they're still developing their metaverse,

and that was their big project last year, or two years ago, at least. AI became his big focus, and he put lots of teams onto AI because of the sudden push from ChatGPT and OpenAI, which accelerated everyone else's work. Meta and Google had both been developing AI for a long time. So yeah, that was their big thing this year was like, we need to jump on this train as well. It's getting a lot of momentum, a lot of popularity, so we're going to get onto it. So yeah, I expect that that will be a key driver of their push going forward, though I don't think they've come up with anything that's sort of revolutionary as yet. I

don't know that any of their projects right now are really attention grabbing away from the existing AI tools. But most companies that are developing AI are doing the same thing. It's basically just a chatbot. And what can we do with chatbots? So they're also using it for guiding their algorithms. And in that sense, obviously, it helps them a lot. But yeah, I expect there'll be a lot more AI stuff coming. Yeah, certainly on the ad platform side of things, AI or as it is sort of baked in as Advantage Plus, I think most media buyers will say it's doing fairly well. But I think you're right.

I think Zuckerberg in particular, but the company as a whole has a way of sort of focusing obsessively on a shiny new object. I mean, I remember prior to the metaverse, it was all about business messaging. It was going to be messaging bots, if you remember that. You know, it was all going to be these sort of – and, of course, we digital marketers just kind of hopped on board, and that kind of went by the wayside. Although, interestingly enough, now we're seeing celebrity AIs in Messenger, which I think you were not a fan of.

No, and that's exactly right. They already tried Messenger bots in 2016 it was this big messenger bot platform when they were trying to build out messenger um the idea at that stage was they'd seen the example of uh wechat and things like that in china where they've become such transformative and such uh important elements of their day-to-day life uh for chinese citizens that they were like cool if we can bring this to the Western world, we can make Messenger into the critical app. So there was a big push on Messenger bots. They also put games in Messenger

and they also put several other things. And then two years later, they were like, it's too cluttered, no one cares, let's scale them all back. So I don't know that there's a real sort of desire to speak to bots or to interact with bots in the way that they're anticipating. And this time around, they've obviously tried something different in celebrity based chat bots that are called

other names than what you know their names to be which is really odd because you see the picture of very odd isn't her name is billy yeah it's like well we know who kendall jenner is if you were coming up with a new character that would be different but we know exactly who usain bolt is so it's like i know that his name is not whatever he's listed as. And isn't there also an actual Billy, an actual Billie Eilish? And she's not mentioned as Billie? Yes, I think so, yeah. No.

And there's also what, there was a trainer that was Tom Brady, I think. And he's got some strange name. But yeah, it's an odd concept. It's trying to find a different way to use chatbots because really that's the main way that we're using AI at the moment is like this interesting, engaging thing that robots can sort of come back to us with reasonably human-like responses. So I think they thought if we get these celebrities in, then it'll feel like you're talking to a celebrity and that's what they're going for. But yeah, I just don't see that catching on. No, and I guess other than increasing the amount of time spent on the platform there's not really a lot of sort of

marketing opportunity there i mean one to be fair to meta i think one of the obsessions that they had um reels has done phenomenally well for them what do you think reels as a ad format and as a organic post format uh will be next year yeah i mean reels is is what's really dragged them back into the game i mean there was a point where both instagram and facebook were losing traffic obviously to tiktok um snapchat for younger users and they were it was going down quite quickly uh especially in-app engagement and even now people aren't posting as much original content as they used to but because they they've inserted more AI-recommended posts and you're getting these little videos in between,

people are getting more used to getting their entertainment from social apps. So when you're scrolling through Facebook, suddenly you see a video that is something that you might like and then you watch it and then that gets more engagement. So cumulatively, that's driven a big increase in Facebook usage over the last year and instagram as well so uh definitely reels will be a big focus because they're getting so much out of it um and as much as people are like well we don't want stuff from people we don't follow in our

feeds you probably watch it like everyone watches some of it right it gets pushed through and it doesn't matter what you say is different to what you do right everyone's still viewing this stuff when it comes through so even if you don't necessarily like it, and even though they built an algorithm because they said, we've got so much stuff to show you from all the pages that you follow every day that we couldn't possibly show you every post,

but we're also now going to put in more posts from other pages that you don't follow, which completely defies that logic. Despite that, it's driving engagement for them. So yeah, they're going to keep pushing it in. So anywhere they can show you more reels, the more they can get people to post reels, the more they can get people to post reels, the more they can get brands to post reels,

yeah, that's to their benefit. But the risk, as always, with any sort of trend that Facebook's jumping onto or that Instagram's jumping onto is that as soon as they lose interest, as soon as it stops being engaging, then all that money and time you've spent investing in creators and programs

to be able to create your own reels might go to waste because they don't care anymore. It moves on to the next thing. So there's always a risk once they start shifting to the next trend that you lose all the effort you've put in. But yeah, at the moment, definitely, I think they're going to keep pushing reels. Which I wouldn't mind if they shut it down or slow it down a little bit. I mean, I remember when Mark Zuckerberg went to try to buy Snapchat, it was turned away at the door

and then just basically copied Snapchat outright and built Stories in. And Stories became such a huge success on the Instagram side that Stories popped up everywhere. Like there's a tab in Messenger, in Messenger for Stories. Like who wants to see it there?

And Messenger has been one of, you know, they've always had this sort of family of four apps, right? There's been Messenger, Facebook one of, you know, they've always had this sort of family of four apps, right? There's been Messenger, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. This year, they added a fifth to their stable, and that was Threads, which was their attempt at, I guess, filling the void left by the former Twitter. Do you think they've got a shot at matching X's user numbers next year i would say they do uh i would say that uh threads is probably up to about 200 million users now they're up to 100 million

i think two months ago a month and a half ago they're up to 100 million and now they've opened in europe i don't think that's going to bring in a massive influx of users like when you hear that they've suddenly made it accessible in europe then it's like oh that should bring in you know millions millions more it should bring in based, millions more. It should bring in, based on the averages, about 20 million more users. But even that is still going to increase the number overall. So I'd say they're probably up at around 200 million now. That's monthly active users.

X claims to have 500 million monthly actives and 250 daily actives. So still got a way to go to get to the next level. But yeah, I think that it has a chance to beat to get to the next level um but yeah i think that uh it has a chance to to beat it and because they're getting more journalists and influential people posting on threads and especially because meta has made such an emphasis of getting celebrities to post on threads that brings more of their audience across um it does feel like it's gaining momentum as x is declining uh but that's also a gut feel because we don't know what x's user

numbers are because i don't know what they're telling us but i don't believe most of the numbers that we're getting from them there's conflicting and all over the place and then we don't have definitive numbers from meta on threads as yet but i'd say there's a good chance that it should be at least in parity and it should be able to carve its own niche if it can't you know supplant x completely well and one of the things that we're still waiting for from threads uh at least on the and it should be able to carve its own niche if it can't supplant X completely. Well, and one of the things that we're still waiting for from Threads, at least on the marketing side of things, are ads. Threads is very much an ad-free zone right now. Do you think it will be popular enough that they'll turn ads on next year?

Well, they've said it won't happen until it gets to a billion users. And that's their main aim for threads is that we reach a billion users and then we've got our own platform. So Meta's been pretty strong on that, that they won't start putting ads in there until it gets to a billion users.

I don't know how long that takes to get there. A monthly active, daily active? That must be monthly active users. I'd say it's monthly, yeah. Like a billion daily would be pretty extreme. But yeah, I expect that they should get about halfway there next year if they get to about 500 um they would be in competition with x it really like a lot of it does depend on what happens with um the x project and what goes on there like if advertisers keep you know withholding spend and

it keeps losing money its expenses are already down to the bare bones. It can't cut costs any further to sort of reshape that revenue. So if that's the case, then if X is not going to make a profit, at what point do the investors and other people start looking at it going, we can't keep pushing this? And that could become an existential problem. If that becomes a problem, then more X users come across the threads and threads becomes the bigger thing which is what meta is really building just in case as a safety net that i can catch more people coming you know

from x and scooping them up and putting into its own platform so i think there's a good chance that it could become really big whether it reaches a billion users obviously that's pretty ambitious but i also think that meta knows the industry better than anyone else they've got more experience they've got the knowledge of algorithms they've got the knowledge of systems what people engage with i think if anyone has a chance to do it then they do so uh yeah if they think it can happen i wouldn't be surprised if it can and and the foundation of threads of course built on instagram which has its own sort of minor frustrations but one of the advantages is that it made it fairly easy for them to crank up things like blocking and reporting. And it's

just sort of using that foundation. High end B2B sales don't happen through generic AI generated content. Want to sell a $20 shirt with a random Instagram post? Go for it. But to sell a $20,000 business service, you need a longer on-ramp. Social media is great for connecting and networking, but long-term evergreen website content is your paved path to high-end B2B sales. Whether your business makes $100,000 a year or $100 million, the second edition of Pamela Wilson's Master Content Books share her proven frameworks for crafting long-term evergreen content consistently. Plus the second editions, which you'll find at mastercontentbooks.com

cover the practical ethical use of AI tools to help your marketing team create better content faster. If you're ready to increase your website content ROI in 2024, buy and read Pamela's newly updated Master Content Books at MasterContentBooks.com. About X, though, briefly, you know, I mean, Elon Musk really wants to make this sort of the everything app, counting on subscription dollars being the main thing that will that that will keep the company afloat i think at this point given the the ad exodus do you think his plan will work no um like i think his plan might have worked when he originally came up with it in 2002 or whenever he first thought of this app his original plan was part of paypal which he originally called when PayPal took over his company. He wanted PayPal to become x.com.

So it wasn't called PayPal at the time. I can't remember what it was called, but his idea was that that would be called x.com and he would be the CEO, which eventually saw him ousted because they were like, no, we don't want to call it x. And he kept going on about how he wanted to call it x. And they were like, that's,

of all the things that you're going to hinge yourself on, the the fact that it has to be called x is with this weird sort of stance seemingly that saw him you know kicked out because they were just like no we need someone who's going to lead the company in the direction we want to go in so um yeah he's been pushing this idea for a long time he thought that paypal was only a half version of what it could have been he thought it could have had all these other social features and things like that in it which is what he envisions for x is that eventually it's going to facilitate payments and once it facilitates payments then people are going to be able to shop on there people are going to you know sell stuff on there people are going to be able to put all of their content on there and make money out of it so idealistically this all works but in

reality there's nothing to suggest that it actually will. So in terms of payments, for one, he has to get all the payment licenses, which Meta hasn't been able to get. Meta's been trying to get payment licenses in I don't see how he's going to actually do it, but he's got like 13 approvals, approvals in 13 states in America at the moment. So he's starting now to try and get those approvals. But even if he can, like, why is anyone going to pay for things on X? Like, we can already do all these. We can already buy stuff on other platforms, Amazon and things like that. And the idea, again, follows the same as how Meta followed WeChat in China.

His concept also follows the same thing, where so much of your daily interactions, your daily transactions are conducted on WeChat or other messaging apps in China. But Western consumers haven't shown any interest in actually doing that. I think it's actually a problem with the people feel more secure in going to a dedicated commerce app where you've got a bit more of a safety net, where there's a bit more trust behind the reviews that Amazon has and the processes in place if something goes wrong. And there's a bit more trust in Amazon, eBay, dedicated retails, as opposed to buying on social apps, because buying on social apps has has never really caught on no matter how many times each platform has tried it so again you're looking at it going well why why is this one going to work or why is it suddenly going to change once x has

payments i don't see why there's any reason that would suggest that there's going to suddenly be a huge success there other than elon just believing that his following is so massive that people would just do what he says. So maybe there's enough people who do that, but subscriptions haven't been very popular. So again, all the data we have would suggest that, no, this is probably not going to work out how you expect. And that's before you even get into his grander plans of where it's going to cover everything from dating to jobs

to every other possible function that could happen online, he believes is all going to be integrated in. But each of these things is all, you know, it's all half measures, basically. So, yeah, I don't think it's going to work. Yeah, he's certainly been obsessed by WeChat, I think, you know, which is the main model for, as you say, a lot of organizations.

And for whatever reason, just sort of porting that over directly misses the point of a different culture, you know, misses the point of different regulatory areas. One social channel or social platform that has learned that lesson rather the hard way, even though they keep hitting their head up against the wall with it, I think it's TikTok, where they have tried desperately to mirror the success of Doyin, which is the sort of the sister app in China, and go with a lot of live stream shopping and live commerce. They keep trying this. It seems month after month. It hasn't

really taken. I was interested to see in your piece on socialmediatoday.com that TikTok, you think is going to be branching out into even more sort of strange areas like food delivery you're talking about a nearby feed what do you see for tiktok next year yeah i mean that's doyen's already gone in that direction and you're exactly right they had such success with live stream shopping in particular in the chinese market that was like that's our model we're going to replicate that model with tiktok in west in the Chinese market that was like, that's our model. We're going to replicate that model with TikTok in the Western world. But for whatever reason, a lot of those Chinese trends, a lot of the trends in Asian markets don't translate to Western markets. I don't know why. I don't know what the definitive reasoning is. But

yeah, there's just a difference in culture, a difference in approach. And I think part of it is trust. I think the Chinese government has such control over their platforms that there's generally a lot more trust in the systems that are in place but again that's just anecdotal that's just sort of taking a guess at what it could be but um yeah tiktok as you say has been trying to pump the same thing put those live stream commerce you know i think live stream commerce was a nine billion dollar industry in china last year so it's like clearly if they can get over the hump and get people to actually buy stuff, that would be massive. They could lead it and it would be huge.

But no, it hasn't caught on here. But where Doyin did go next is into food delivery, enabling food delivery. And then you've got a nearby feed of local businesses, food delivery businesses and things like that. And over time, they've sort of been able to build upon that. So my prediction is based on, well, if that's worked there, I think that's probably what they'll try and do because they really want e-commerce to work. So they're going to keep trying ways to try and squeeze it in and get people spending money.

And people are spending money in TikTok. People are spending money to give donations to creators and things like that. It's just a matter of translating that into buying products and i mean tiktok's gone as far as building their own um delivery centers and building their own warehouses where they can make sure that deliveries are getting sent quicker and making deals with chinese retailers so they can make sure that you know specific products based on trends are coming into the tiktok system and selling them through the tiktok shop so they're trying every possible way they can. I don't know that it's going to catch on because, again, no one knows why Western consumers just don't have the same adoption

of in-stream commerce as Asian consumers have shown. But, yeah, they're going to keep trying it. And maybe if they can get past that next level, maybe if younger – I'm guessing they must be seeing trends among younger users in particular that more of them are spending more money and if over time once they get more money if they feel more comfortable doing that then they build it into an e-commerce platform but at the moment uh it's not really panning out the way they would hope and what they really hope uh is in china they've been able to give creators a pathway to making money and that keeps them aligned to the platform. So if they can't give creators more money, they've got their

creator funds and things like that, but that's not sustainable. So they really need some pathway to make sure that their creators keep getting paid. And that's another big reason, aside from the benefits for their business alone, why they keep pushing it. Three more social channels left. I want to talk about Snapchat, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Snapchat, you mentioned DM ads possibly coming to Snapchat in the new year. Are you hearing words of that? Or is that just you thinking that that's sort of where the general industry is going

and therefore Snapchat's probably going to end up there as well? I mean, it's conjecture to a degree. You're looking at the trends and trying to figure it out and think you know this is where it could go um i'd say that's an opportunity for snap snap's in a really difficult position because their their costs are so high like they've got so much storage costs especially with their all their ar projects and things like that that um that's compounding over time and because their costs are so high they're adding more users they're up to 400 million users for the first time this year, 400 million daily active users. And that's really good. But they're not seeing growth

in the US and they're not seeing growth in Europe. So despite them getting all of those new users in, the majority of them are coming from India. And those markets or the markets they're seeing more growth from India, Indonesia, some of the Central Asian markets, things like that, they're not as high spending as the US and European users. So they're not making as much money from these new people coming in. So as much as they're seeing growth and there's promise for the future, they're not making as much money right now. So they're in a really difficult spot in that they do have a good pathway towards making money in future, but they may not be making enough right now to give them enough

sustainability to build the projects that would enable them to make money out of the future users. So projects like their AR glasses and their third-party AR development platform, those have sort of been scaled back slightly this year as they've had to cut staff. They cut 150 staff, I think, earlier in the year to try and make sure they stay profitable. So they're sort of in a really difficult spot in that they have to decide whether they, to me, they have to decide whether they stay independent and maintain their own control

or whether they start partnering with other big players to potentially power their AR projects. I think that's an opportunity for Snap. But also, as I say, ads are going to be their big thing. How can they put more ads in? how can they get more ads coming through so that's where that concept comes from i think marketers don't realize how insanely popular snapchat is in certain in certain groups uh as you mentioned the u.s and canada australia the uk and so on um you know it certainly it and it's to me it seems like one of those apps where

you know people may sort of prevaricate they may move from one to the other but those who are the younger people especially who use snapchat are like insanely devoted to it do you think that that positions snapchat in a possible acquisition more like mark zuckerberg's tried to buy it once will he try again? I don't think Meta will because they're worried about antitrust lawsuits. Every time they try to take over a company, they get lots of trouble for it. And they don't really need it. They tried to take over Giphy two years ago and eventually they got blocked by the UK, whatever the commission is in the UK that blocks those type of things.

So yeah, they're facing more sort of pushback now because people don't want Meta to become monopolistic in that regard. But also, yeah, I don't know that there'd be big benefit to them doing it because they're already developing their own AR stuff. Where I think it would be of benefit is to a company like Apple who are trying to still make their own AR glasses. They've got their Vision Pro coming out next year, which is tethered and not really ideal for walking around. Also costs $2,500 or whatever it costs.

So I don't think that's going to be a huge success. But if they were to sign and start developing Snap Spectacles with them and funding that project, that might be a way for them to get into AR as well. But also they recently did a deal with Microsoft using OpenAI. Well, OpenAI is coming in through their chat, the MyAI chat system in Snapchat, and they're trying to work on other ways to integrate OpenAI. OpenAI is obviously owned by Microsoft essentially. So there could be a pathway there for maybe Microsoft takes over Snapchat

and then you've got all of Microsoft's funding. You're integrating OpenAI so it becomes the front, the social platform for OpenAI. And you can sort of start reaching that way. And especially because of its popularity with younger people, as you say, like my son's 13 and yeah, all of his friends, it's like, give me a snap when they meet new people. It's like, yeah, give me a snap.

So it's just such a universal thing amongst young people. They don't even consider other apps in that regard, where they connect and where they interact is on Snapchat. so that's still where it has such huge popularity it hasn't been able to hold that audience as they get older and that's a real challenge for snap is like how do we maintain that popularity with our older groups but because of that popularity and because they've got all the development pathways in place for ar there's so many opportunities especially with ar glasses coming up for them to be able to develop new AR projects. Maybe they could be a takeover target. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack,

fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Yeah. One of the areas that I, the platforms that I thought was sort of interestingly, maybe even a little slow on AI was Pinterest. Where do you see Pinterest fitting in? And they're sort of the underdog, aren't they? Sort of the black sheep of the social media family out there.

From a marketing perspective, where do you see them next year? Yeah, I mean, Pinterest is still doing well in terms of, like, it's not a social platform, essentially. It's a shopping platform, right? Like, they're not even trying to sort of be a social platform anymore. Over time, there's less and less social elements, and now it's just a shopping platform, right? Like it's not, they're not even trying to sort of be a social platform anymore. Over time, there's less and less social elements and now it's just a discovery platform, but it's still considered a social platform because that's how they started. But yeah, they've been working on AR stuff. Like Pinterest has not for a long time hit above its weight in certain areas like discovery and like filters. filters like they've got all the new filters for different hair types different skin types things like that which are pretty advanced and have even beaten google i think in some respects in terms of

shopping searches which google has then adopted there you know or change their systems to sort of align and make sure they keep up but and they do have a former google executive as their ceo so that makes sense but yeah they are developing or have been developing AR tools that are able to model products. And I think that's where they will continue to develop is developing those sort of 3D depictions of products so you can see what it looks like in your house. They've got a few things like that, but they've been able to sort of advance those things more than other platforms because of their focus on shopping specifically.

They've been able to come up with better tools in that regard and, as I say, hit above their weight to a degree in terms of the development resources they have versus Google. I think that they will continue to develop those things, looking at chairs and things, how they look in your home and whatever else. But I also think they're going to look to generative AI and how they can integrate chat bots and search tools and things like that i think it'd be pretty easy for pinterest to integrate uh a more sort of customized chat gbt type system for pinterest when you're looking for products but i think they're like product matching and their clothing matching and being able to upload uh pictures of things you like and then it shows you matches like their system is actually really good and because they've been again so focused on just products and artisanal products and highlighting you know smaller businesses I think they've they've

seen real success in that regard and I expect them to keep building in that way so the opportunities for retailers the opportunities for businesses are obviously they've got really good matching for products. And so if your product is something that aligns with the trend or something that looks like what people are buying, then it'll get more traction on Pinterest potentially. So for retailers, definitely, I think it's worth looking at. They've got a lot more users. I think it's 430, 450 million monthly active users. So it's like they've got a lot more users than what I think it's like 430, 450 million a month, the active users. So it's like, they've got a lot more users than what I think people realize. Yeah. And they certainly have been

spending a lot of time in body shapes and body skin tones. And they've, I think must have an entire division just looking at that. I mean, they've really grabbed onto that is, you know, this is a space that we won't want to own. And I think it's done really well for them. All right. Last LinkedIn, which Andrew, I don't know if you know this is a space that we won't want to own and i think it's done really well for them all right last linkedin which andrew i don't know if you know about this but linkedin these days have been seeing record levels of engagement yes they have they've been reporting which you call out every time you write a piece about them yes yeah i find it absolutely bizarre that they just keep saying these things. I guess it theoretically could be true.

But yes, every time LinkedIn is seeing record levels of engagement, every quarter, record levels of engagement. And it's like, I don't even know if they even try. It's just cut and paste from the last one. It's like record levels of engagement. Sometimes you get a slightly different update. Have you emailed them or asked them to see what the numbers are? You've seen how many articles I've written about it. I talk to people from linkedin uh i don't know if i specifically asked them about it um i guess they would just say no whatever i mean some of the other numbers are not right like they've got a chart of like how many active users and i think

they're up to 950 million now but it's like yeah but they shut down their china app in june and that's was 50 million users and then and i told them this and i said you know you had 50 million users in china so there's no way you've got 950 million like you can't have increased whatever however many million when you've cut down 50 million and they said yeah we understand that and they took china off the map and deleted the number but the actual overall number didn't decrease so i don't know yeah i've told them but uh yeah i guess they they do what they do but um yes record levels of engagement i mean it's always amusing to me to read your cover it's crazy yeah i mean it's good fun i guess to sort of highlight it again and just be like i try to break it down as much as possible and look at it go this

is what the numbers say this is what all the numbers we've got um But because it's part of Microsoft, we don't get a real specific breakdown of what their actual numbers are and what their engagement numbers are. We used to get much more data from LinkedIn when it was an independent entity. But because it's just part of Microsoft's overall report, yeah, you only get two lines. It's like, yeah, we're seeing 20% increase in feed engagement and record levels of overall engagement or whatever it is.

You know what I mean? It's like, okay. But they have been saying, like just recently, they've been reporting that their new collaborative articles, which are the AI-based prompts. So it's like, yeah, they just use an AI system to come up with a question related to content marketing. And then they send it out to all the people

who have got content marketing listed on their profile and say, say hey maybe you want to contribute your idea to this how do we generate ideas those have been driving heaps of traffic for linkedin and the benefit obviously for users is that it puts a badge on your profile if you contribute enough of them it'll say that you're an expert in content marketing when really it doesn't mean you're an expert in anything it just means you've contributed to their ai based articles so it's very low maintenance for them and they're getting lots of engagement which is not surprising but i don't know that like they say lots of people are reading them i don't know anyone would read them but um yeah driving lots of uh a big part of their record engagement yeah i've always thought that a lot of those sort of engagement elements on LinkedIn are a little, I don't know, sus, as the kids might say.

I think 80% of the engagement on LinkedIn, at least what I've seen under posts, are like, that's great, Sarah, and good job, Dave. And they look auto-written to me. However, that said, enough kicking them in the face. They are, as you mentioned, owned by Microsoft. So they have been using a lot of AI. But you specifically called out, I thought it was interesting, sort of the rise of live events as a marketing channel there. Where do you see that being next year? Yeah, I mean, I think there's lots of opportunity for LinkedIn to be able to utilize live events. I think it's benefited a lot from a lot of the business discussion shifting from

Twitter, now X, has probably shifted over to LinkedIn. And I think they've got a lot more opportunity to be able to capitalize on that. It's just at the moment, it's hard to find all these live events and things that are happening. So there are things happening within the LinkedIn system, a lot of video, a lot of live events, they're just hard to find. So it feels like an area of opportunity that could be something they could capitalize on. Like if they could really sort of highlight those live events and get more people involved, that feels like something that could help build it as an industry type thing, as a community type thing around your industry. So I feel like there's a lot more opportunity there they're not tapping into because

their discovery is just not that great or they're not highlighting it enough. And they've tried some other things, like they tried stories and things like that to sort of get some other elements in there. But I think what they really need to focus on is those specific areas that are professional development and professional association that could really align more businesses and more professionals to LinkedIn. So in that regard, I think there's a lot more opportunity in live events that they could really work on. And yeah, and video. Video is obviously the most engaging content format on

every platform. So if they came up with their own LinkedIn video tab, I feel like that would be an opportunity for them to highlight both live events and video. So I think that's something they should look into and probably will look into. But the biggest thing is, yeah, discovery and just making sure that people are aware that these things are happening. Andrew, this time next year, when we are once again face-to-face across a web meeting platform, what do you think will be the one big story that we will look back on 2024 and say, this was the big one this year? I mean, it's too easy to say x right it's too easy to be like there's going to be something bad has happened like as i said my my view on x is that's like it's not sustainable at the moment like the x's expenses especially with the debt that elon musk

has loaded into the platform for his 44 billion dollar or whatever the loans he had to build up to get that $44 billion. That means they have to pay back $1.2 billion in debt every quarter. So there's no way that it's going to make enough money to cover that. At the moment, with half its advertisers gone, X is looking like making maybe $2 billion per quarter when their costs are about $2 billion per quarter. And then you've got the extra costs on top of that of the debt load. So it's like they're going to be a billion down every quarter. And at some stage, it feels like that's going to be an existential thing. I feel like in the middle of the year next year,

like I think they should be able to get through the early part, but in the middle of the year next year, if Elon is not seeing or if X is not seeing the growth that they would hope, and that's what it feels like more than anything else is he's very uh optimistic his his sort of vision for how things are going to happen always seems very optimistic like this is all going to come together and it's like you realize there's so many things that have to come together to make that happen it's like yeah yeah it'll all be fine like it feels like he's very much like I think that's been a big

part of his success is that he's just so optimistic and so much like, yep, this is all going to happen. Like how many times has he said that Tesla's going to have full self-driving? He's been saying that for the last seven years. And it's like, it never happens, but it's very optimistic. It's like, no, no, we're going to get there. We're going to be able to fly to Mars. It's going to be no problem. Like all of these things are just like optimistic projections that despite never getting there, people will just go, yeah do and if he does make it that'd be amazing so again it feels the same with x it

feels like he's saying this is going to be amazing it's going to be the biggest platform in the world you know by 2025 we're going to have a billion users and no one's going to be able to live without and it's like i just don't see how that comes about so to me yeah when you're looking at money uh if he if he's going to stand on his principles of free speech and he's going to keep pushing advertisers away, I feel like in the middle of the year, it's going to be like we can't keep, like we're losing a billion dollars or more every quarter. We can't keep doing this. Like it's not going to work. And if that's the case, as some people have said, well, he could just fund it himself, maybe, but he's also losing a

billion dollars per quarter if he does that. Or he's going to make it a political statement where he's like the the the world's trying to shut us down because we're too much you know showing free speech because we're allowing too much free speech and it becomes this big um yeah grand political statement a very costly grand political statement that x shuts down but elon then parlays that into support for a right-wing conservative candidate in the election. And it's sort of the shutdown of X becomes a key moment within the election cycle that then becomes the rallying point for some of those people who are like, see, they're trying to shut down free speech. The only reason X shut down is because

the establishment and the whatever it is, whatever they're calling it now, the industrial complex, censorship industrial complex or something, trying to shut us down. And that becomes the thing that gets all these people fired up and they go, cool, we're going to vote for whoever Elon says, because he got shut down and we all believe in that. So that feels like the most obvious big story of next year. It feels like X. If I was going to predict i would say that

it's if it doesn't shut down it's it should have shut down you know what i mean like it's it's going to be costing so much money to prop it up that it's like you probably would have been better off just moving on from this but uh like i feel like the only way it's going to keep going is if you know it gets funded by elon and his endless stream of money from wherever he gets it from um other than that uh you know i think the the sales of Meta's new Ray-Ban stories have started to look promising. I think there's more signs there that they're going to actually be a thing. I would have said they weren't going to be a thing last year.

They definitely weren't a thing last year. But now with live streaming capability and you're starting to see some of the trends that are happening online and some of the TikTok trends and things like that of influencers wearing the glasses and able to film themselves in mirrors and things like that. And so there's new trends emerging based around that that I feel like could become a much bigger push to move towards those AR glasses that are coming from Meta in future.

And that, to them, will be pushing towards the Metaverse. I still don't see how that all fully aligns like ar and vr are two very different things but they see them all as one so i think that could be the other big push is that you start to see um meta shifting more towards ar glasses and wearables in that sense so if you're looking at potential key trends, I would say those are the two big stories that are going to be significant. AI, I still don't see as transforming as what people predict until we see the next stage of it where it's actually thinking for itself as opposed to just regurgitating stuff that's already online.

So I feel like over the next year, AI development is probably going to slow down a little bit as we see variations of what's already there. But I don't think it's going to be a big sort of turning point or definitely not as much as it has been over the last year. So yeah, I'd say those are the key trends I would expect. I feel more extremes about going into 2024 than in the past. So I'm like extremely excited as a marketer and also extremely terrified as a marketer. And I've felt those levels, that dichotomy before, but never so much, you know, I don't know, but the bipolar is the right term. But, you know, never so much being at the extreme ends of it.

It will certainly be interesting. Andrew Hutchinson is the head of content at socialmediatoday.com. Andrew, thank you so much. We will see you at least in a year, if not sooner. Excellent. Thank you for having me, Chuck. Andrew Hutchinson, if you want to dive deeper into Andrew's predictions, head to socialmediatoday.com and look for the piece called Social Media Trends 2024, 34 Predictions for Marketers, and make sure you bookmark that site. Andrew is always publishing news there.

And that will do it for us for the rest of the year. After 1026 episodes, the new year, we have some big changes ahead for the podcast changes. I know you will like, so stay tuned for that today in digital marketing is produced by engage Q digital on the traditional territories of the tsunami first nation on Vancouver Island. Our production coordinator is Sarah Guild.

Our theme is by Mark Blevis. Music licensing by Source Audio. Ad coordination by Red Circle. And though she doesn't usually get a credit because she's currently on mat leave, our associate producer, the intrepid Steph Gunn, who will be back next summer. So that's it for us. I'm Todd Maffin. Have a very restful holiday, friends. And I will see you next on January the 3rd.

Should old acquaintance be forgotten, never brought to mind? Should old acquaintance be forgotten, days of old like Zion?