Technology comes at us in waves. We catch a glimpse of it building – far out on the horizon – not knowing exactly its size and impact. Some much bigger and faster than others – but all swell and develop. Give it time and that wave gets more defined as it approaches – and we can begin to see its shape, size and potential impact. And so it was with a technology wave my company, Vitrue, saw in 2007 – Social Media Networks (CLICK to make logos appear).
The earlier social networks, like Myspace and Friendster, were tapping into this desire for consumers to connect and share—regardless of location and boundaries. And usage began to grow rapidly. We saw that it would fundamentally change the way consumers and businesses would interact – forever. And we rode that wave. (NEXT SLIDE).
For the first time ever, consumers had a platform to interact, learn, share and voice their opinions. It was as if everyone had their own broadcasting platform. Communication went from one to one… to one to many. Millions were flocking to social networks to share, like, follow and learn. The social networking phenomenon had taken consumers by storm…and it was changing behavior and shifting power… (CLICK TO NEXT SLIDE)
Social networks gave rise to the Empowered Consumer. People now had the means to discover information, share and voice their opinions. Facebook became your ever expanding social community. Twitter was becoming the first place for breaking news. It was 2009 when Sully landed on the Hudson and Twitter took off. (Mention the Vitrue FB tribute page that went viral.) Bottomline: Consumers were now empowered – and that was changing everything. BUT what was that doing for businesses? (CLICK to show next image).
It was the “end of business as usual” -- hat tip to award-winning author Brian Solis for this visual. But yes, social networks and the rise of empowered consumers – forced businesses to completely rethink the way they were going to do business. The traditional consumer-to-business relationship had been drastically altered.
If you go back to the very beginning, we/Vitrue had a vision that hinged around more people discovering information based on recommendations from peer or a friend. Social networks fueled and amplified that. Nine out of 10 people were buying products based on recommendations - but brands had no way to engage or influence that conversation. Vitrue was formed to help brands do that.
It wasn’t until 2008 that Facebook started to develop partnerships with brands and marketers. I saw Sheryl Sandberg in the fall of 2008, with the simple idea that Facebook was keeping up with the needs of 20 million consumers. We wanted to build software to help brands manage their presence on Facebook. Fast forward to 2009, and Facebook opened up Pages. We were one of the first platforms to work with brands to help manage their Facebook Pages. We added content management, analytics, and grew our platform so brands could manage their presence across Twitter, Youtube, Google+, LinkedIn… basically, anywhere a consumer eyeball was, we wanted to be. Once Facebook opened up these resources for business, innovation and usage skyrocketed. (Reggie to give the Apple iTunes official FB page launch and the app developed around iTunes playlist.) (NEXT SLIDE)
Briefly review the timeline – and note the years were growth and innovation kicked off: 2007-2009… allude to the similarities you are seeing with a new wave…. (CLICK to next slide.)
And so we see another wave on the rise—and it’s much bigger – and happening much faster than social networks. And that’s Messaging apps (CLICK TO SHOW LOGOS.) For consumers, particularly younger demographics, this isn’t new. Messaging apps have been experiencing explosive growth for years. Popular Asian messaging apps like WeChat, KakaoTalk, and LINE have taken the lead in finding innovative ways to keep users engaged. Snapchat, Kik, Messenger and others today boast incredible user growth.
But what’s just as important as the total users is the speed at which this mobile messaging app revolution hit. (NEXT SLIDE)
(Walk thru chart.) Note the speed of WeChat – 7 months. Yes, an example from an Asian market – where mobile is usually the first introduction to the Internet – but still an incredible example of the speed of adoption of these dynamic platforms.
As of January 2016, according to BI, the big 4 messaging apps overtook the big 4 social networks in usage. And, according to April data from Statista, 4.1 billion users are now on messaging apps.
Just consider these numbers:
WhatsApp: 1 Billion
Messenger: 900 Million
WeChat: 700 million
LINE: 220 million
And these are spread across the globe and regions… (CLICK to next slide)
It’s important to remember the diversity of the market – the market is indeed growing very fast, around the world, but with many different platforms dominating different countries.
Challenge: How can brands manage distribution of content and experience in so many different platforms, considering language and culture?)
So, consumer usage and global scale is here …
What we need now is business innovation. And all that has changed very rapidly in the last few months alone. (CLICK to New Slide).
Main message: These marketplaces are going to spur innovation and allow these platforms to take off… we are going to spur massive innovation around bots – chatbots, service bots, commerce bots, etc. – leveraging AI and machine learning to automate these engagements at scale. It’s early days yet, but innovation and growth will happen at a lightning pace. And we are going to continue to see these platforms become much more than messaging… (CLICK to Next Slide.)
Talk about all the potential innovation here for businesses and consumers. Make connection btw early social days when FB opened Pages and APIs…and now this…
Chat apps are much more than messaging – they are platforms. ASAF NOTE: Chat apps are the new websites. They start to act as the gateway to the Internet. Chat apps are building a close ecosystem that will provide different benefits and services for the users.
(ASAF NOTE: Great place to talk about Asaf’s point around “The end of apps?” In correlation to the increase of users on chat apps there is a huge decline of app downloads. This is an important trend – hard to create and maintain apps, and users tend to remove them from mobile. It means brands need to find new ways to get in to apps that are already installed.)
(NEXT SLIDE)
So let’s talk about the basic differences btw these technologies…
(ASAF NOTE: He mentions that messaging apps will be always on with bots and automation…not sure if we add it yet in this chart b/c not quite there…thoughts?)
What’s going to spring up very quickly is a technology ecosystem that will help engagement and growth flourish between users and businesses.
Just look the the marketing technology landscape:
2011: Less than 150 companies on Scott Brinker’s now famous Marketing Technology Landscape chart.
2016: Almost 4,000
(Reggie to make connection btw ecosystem/partnerships to spur innovation; mention OMC; tie together around partnership innovation.
So what’s the future? Is it Social Networks VS. Messaging Apps? We don’t view it as one or the other…in today’s multichannel world, it’s about meeting consumers across all their many devices, channels and platforms. The right choice will be Social Networks & Messaging Apps – as each serves different needs and—again—it’s a multichannel marketing and engagement world.