The Golden Age. An era that was much revered and usually looked back upon fondly. According to Wikipedia, “the Golden Age denotes a period of primordial peace, harmony, stability, and prosperity.”
The term has been applied and adopted across many disciplines over the years. For example, the Golden Age of Television was an era in the United States from the late 1940’s through around 1960. It was during this time that live television production was a staple. After this, most television shows were taped for later broadcast.
The Golden Age of Hip Hop music put the spotlight on artists such as LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys and Run D.M.C. from the mid-80’s to the early 90’s. These are the rappers that influenced hip hop unlike any others.
There’s a Golden Age of comic books, Golden Age of radio, Golden Age of automobiles and many more references to a time when innovation, originality and passion were the driving forces in each industry and genre.
When the Internet first brought us social media circa 2003 via Friendster and then in 2005 with MySpace, we saw a foretaste of the kind of engagement and interaction that was to come. More than just creating a website or visiting a chat room, social sites promised real connection and community for all.
Facebook promised to connect students on various campuses like never before. Twitter taught us how to speak in 140-characters or less via a welcoming conversation that never ceased. And while now members of the Social Media Graveyard, Google +, Vine and Friendster all provided connection and community that was enjoyed by millions. The Golden Age of Social was where startups created tools to bring us together… to give everyone a voice.
But even with the dearly departed aside, Facebook is not the Facebook initially created by Zuckerberg et al in that Harvard Dorm. It’s not even the one I remember using in 2008, 2012 or 2016.
Twitter is not the Twitter that I wrote about in my 3-book series, Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time (2009, 2010, 2014).
And while there are dozens of other social media sites, once you put Facebook’s monopoly (with the flagship product, Instagram and WhatsApp) along with Twitter and LinkedIn to the side, you aren’t left with other major players that appeal to adults.
Sure, there’s Snapchat and Tik-Tok, each with a respectable audience, but those apps are designed for kids and the next generation. They are in it for different reasons. Which actually brings me to my conclusion.
The Golden Age of Social Media ™ ended in early 2018, triggered by the Cambridge Analytica scandal in which the personal data of millions of Facebook users was sold and used for political ads without their knowledge. The end of the era had already been signaled by other issues surrounding the social space, but when this particular scandal surfaced in the public square, the the death knell sounded.
Things would never be the same.
We could turn back the clock to a time when social media was exciting and new. Millions of people were able to participate in the public square, freely and openly. Ideas were shared and the platforms encouraged this notion.
Twitter was a veritable bastion of free speech. Facebook reconnected us with old high school buddies and helped us discover others in our family tree. YouTube’s endless hours of daily uploaded video was a sandbox of expression and creativity.
All social became a hub for discovering your tribe and provided many opportunities for new tribes to form. It was all about connecting and community.
But whereas Twitter was once based on source code that encouraged third-party application development to augment its own service, that’s no longer the case. Twitter’s rules for using their API are quite strict and they managed to squash creativity and community by building a walled garden around their previous-open platform.
Facebook used to allow you to message every person who liked your business PAGE! Imagine being able to send DMs to people in this manner? Yes, it was a thing.
There were no ads. There were no autoresponder bots. The site showed you what YOU wanted to see, rather than what Facebook’s algorithm determined should be on your feed.
Today, hashtags trending on Twitter are less likely to be there because they are popular then because that it what the editors at Twitter want you to see. Content suppression and manipulation have become the norm, and that does not have the best interests of the users at heart.
The fact is that none of the social giants care about their customers as individuals any longer. The only care about total active user numbers and how many devices they can infiltrate and influence. They are serving either investors and the share price of their companies, or they are serving the politics or social desires of the leadership who steer the ship. With human beings wanting to control messaging and results, it’s no surprise that this insidious, Orwellian behavior has become epidemic in Silicon Valley.
For those in business, it’s getting harder and harder to reach a target audience and use social media profitably. Some have cracked the code. Others have failed miserably at great costs. But with organic reach in the toilet, businesses must spend money to compete in the social space. It hasn’t always been this way.
We are all being tracked like never before. We are being manipulated into choosing sides. We are being censored by those who have taken on the role of moral arbiter. And I’d guess that most of us don’t even know when it is happening. We’re more likely to think “this is fine”.
During the golden age, people weren’t focused on becoming social “stars”, as is the case with today’s YouTube, Snapchat and Tik-Tok. People just wanted to connect and network. Sure, there were opportunities to build a loyal customer base, but it wasn’t the driving factor for so many.
Twitter, Facebook and YouTube regularly ban individuals and groups who don’t meet their one-sided criteria for what should be allowed on their platform. In the case of YouTube, they exert heavy-handed control by “demonetizing” channels which don’t suit their vision for the platform.
Privacy and personal data is being captured and sold to such a degree that security experts are sounding all the alarms. A Chinese corporation, based in a country that is not any friend of freedom or personal liberty, owns Tik-Tok, a platform that millions of children are now using to secure their fifteen minutes of fame.
There are certainly arguments that these companies can do whatever they want to do with their platforms. And I understand that argument. But it doesn’t mean their approach is good, moral or responsible. And it doesn’t change the my point.
The last vestiges of the Golden Age are gone.
Now this doesn’t mean social media is dead. On the contrary, billions of people engage on various sites and apps every day. Apps and platforms can come and go. But any way you look at it, it’s not the good old days. Those are over.
And whatever comes next, those days will never return.
Is the best yet to come? Perhaps. And if so, I believe it will come in the form of decentralized social media applications. We’ve already seen that the current powerhouses cannot be trusted with our data, our businesses or as the judges for what should or should not be allowed in public conversation.
Disruption is coming. Perhaps it will usher in a NEW Golden Age of social media. Only time will tell.