Social networks and the companies that run them are seemingly never out of the spotlight at the moment. Whether its pressures from high above to protect users through to new trends breaking through, the land of social media is continuously evolving.
A fine example of this evolution recently came in the form of Tesla and Donald Trump who have both gone public with plans to build their own social networks in recent weeks. And they’ve both certainly had their critics, many of whom believe they’ll struggle to lift off without the sheer scale of the major platforms. But, despite the two seemingly having very little in common, I actually believe they both have a high chance of success. A worrying thought perhaps when you consider Trump found himself rightly removed from Twitter for using the platform to incite violence and share extremely questionable views to millions of people on a daily basis.
However, to elucidate why I think these networks might have a chance of succeeding, we need to dig into the two main reasons why I think both are onto a winner in building their own social networks. The first of these is passion. At the very heart of it, both Donald Trump and Tesla have a core audience who are passionate. At the last US Presidential Election, Trump supporters backed him by the tens of millions. And the demand for Teslas shows no sign of slowing down, showing just how popular the car brand has become.
The second reason is a slightly more interesting one – commonality. Put simply, each community will have lots of other things in common that are completely unrelated to Tesla or Donald Trump.
In Trump’s case, some of these might be politically contentious. But equally, they may not. Whilst it’s impossible to know without looking at the data, commonalities between Trump’s often vociferous supporters could range across anything from predictable areas like, say, gun control or immigration, to surprising things like taste in music or preferred auto brands.
In Tesla’s case, we can safely assume interests in green technology would rank highly. But they may also find shared interest groups springing up in cryptocurrency, manga, memes and music. Or even completely counterintuitive areas that you’d never think to list. The brand in itself has become synonymous with other interests.
And these commonalities are something we’ve learned a lot about at Disciple over the last year.
Some examples include BLKOUTUK, a community for black bi, gay and trans men to get together and share about their challenges. Some exciting interesting and potentially exciting commonalities for this group include entrepreneurship and policy advocacy.
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Then on the entertainment side, one of our communities is for fans of country music star Luke Bryan – and their commonly shared interests include Nascar and BBQs.
This is a phenomenon that social giants like Facebook have recognised for a long time, and they’ve been able to exploit it using smart algorithms to target ads. So, for example, let’s say you once commented on a picture of a bike, and you’ve never interacted with any content about football. Facebook knows you like bikes and doesn’t know if you like football or not. Facebook can send you ads on products you’ve never expressed an interest in, just because of interest from lots of people who like the other things you like. The network now knows there’s a high probability that, as a bike-liker, you’ll like football too. Now extend this principle across millions of different, disparate, interconnected interests, and you’ve got an interest targeting algorithm. Common interests and behaviours have been integral to enabling businesses to raise their profile through the network, whilst also making it vast sums of money.
So, both interpersonal connections and commonalities between groups are crucial if a digital network is to be successful. But now, ironically, some experts think Facebook may be throwing away their competitive advantage in this space in pursuit of higher content engagement.
In a recent conversation with Lex Fridman, Deep Work author Cal Newport made the case that content is starting to take priority over connection on some networks – and that actual communities of people are connecting elsewhere. Facebook is pursuing attention at all costs, with hour upon hour of hypnotising but shallow content. But as this content takes up more and more on-screen real estate, they are providing less and less opportunity to connect with other humans. The very essence of a social network might actually be eroding.
And now competition is heating up. Brands and celebrities like Tesla and Trump are starting to realise they don’t necessarily need the huge major platforms in order to access their niche audiences. Private communities not only help in building stronger connections, but also long lasting ones; as they are a world away from noisy attention-seeking platforms like Facebook.
Take fitness influencers as a more real-world example. Many of those we speak to everyday often find they might get thousands of likes for their photos on Instagram – but relatively little actual interaction with their followers outside of that. The value the influencers are getting from the engagement is actually quite low.
But when they build their own communities, all of a sudden conversation explodes between all of their members, who start to realise all the things they have in common. Instagram may be providing the scale at the top end of the funnel – but the real connection and commonality is happening in their own private network. That’s where the real power is.
And this same process is happening across thousands of diverse interest and passion areas every day as this trend picks up pace. So, far from flopping for want of the millions of eyeballs provided by the major platforms – I believe it’s likely that Tesla and Donald Trump will blaze a trail for many other brands and celebrities, who’ll realise real connections can be made better outside of what we know to be the traditional social networks but instead in a self-contained, passionate community.
