The Decentralization and Disruption Coming To Social Apps
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I firmly believe that by 2025, social apps like the ones above will look completely different.
In particular, social media apps (Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook), dating apps, and LinkedIn will see the most change over the next 3–5 years. Let’s look at each one of these individually.
Social Media Apps (Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook)
Right now, these apps are already facing the most scrutiny by the government that they have ever seen. Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey already had a rough ride testifying on Capital Hill the other week, and it didn’t feel like it went well for him. As for Facebook, who owns Instagram, it looks like the FTC is very close to filing an antitrust case against the $775 billion company.
So no good news on their end, but for the consumers, this is a positive. Government regulation against both these companies could help stop the spread of disinformation, social media addiction, and depression linked to social media.
This will also open up the market. I believe in the next 3–5 years, we will see at least two new social media apps or networks come into the scene and take some of the market. They are probably being created right now and this is the perfect time.
Dating Apps
When Tinder and Bumble were released I believe this was the “first wave of innovation”. No one had ever seen dating apps on phones before like these two, but now they are kind of old. Soon, I think we will see the “second wave of innovation”. This new wave will be an drastic improvement on the existing products, which by no means are the best. These new applications will remove the stigma from “meeting on a dating app”, they will improve the post match experience, and they will overall make the experience more comfortable for users.
Oh boy, I’ve been waiting to write this sentence. LinkedIn sucks. LinkedIn is like trying to put a person who speaks German, a person who speaks French, and a person who speak Spanish in a room and telling them all to speak English. The incentives are not aligned, and all those people have different objectives. LinkedIn is a place where millions of users have different jobs with different objectives, yet the tools are all the same.
What we are going to see is a decentralization of Linkedin. In 5 years there will be 3–6 smaller “Linkedin-like” platforms that will each be worth $10 billion each. They will each fit a different niche within the professional market and the users will be happy.
