Are the Social Media Elephants Beginning to Fight?

There’s an old expression, “When elephants fight the grass gets crushed!”

I have a corollary to that which goes “And let’s not forget who’s green!”

The elephants are the gigantic social media players like Facebook and Twitter.

The green grass are their users, folks like us.

What got me thinking about this was the recent article announcing Zuck  (AKA Meta) was “building a decentralized, text-based social network to directly compete with Twitter…”            

Apparently, Zuck has to find some new revenue sources since the rest of us aren’t too inclined to spend the rest of our lives in his vision of the future, the Metaverse.

(Maybe if he started calling Real Life “meatspace” like some residents of Second Life do then it sound more appealing. But, I digress!)

Elon (AKA the Chief Twit) had purportedly been losing lots of revenue dollars since he brought his sink in.

(Sorry, couldn’t resist!)

I guess Zuck saw this as a target of opportunity since he’s been hemorrhaging revenue dollars himself since Apple changed its rules of engagement a while back. 

We’re starting to see a consolidation of the major social media players IMHO.

It’s only the beginning, but it’s starting.

The jury’s still out on whether Twitter will still be around a year from now.

You don’t go from over 7,500 employees to 2,000 in a couple of weeks without the wheels coming off the bus sooner or later. 

I’m a little older than the Chief Twit and whenever I’d seen this happen before, the organization usually wasn’t around for too long afterwards.

So, that could leave Zuck the only player on the field even if his new option isn’t that good.

Advertising dollars always burn holes in pockets if they’re not used.

As I blogged earlier, we seem to be seeing the free and near free social media world, that we all loved, starting to go away.

Economics 101 teaches us that monopolies lead to monopolistic pricing.

And, while we’re also taught that monopolies attract others because of their above average returns, the barriers to entry may prove to be too great for anyone to get any traction.

Anyone heard anything about Google+ or  Mastodon lately?

2023 could be turning out to be a pivotal year for social media.

One that a generation from now, we look back on and say, “Wow, I didn’t realize any of that back then!”

Only time will tell! 

That’s it for now!

Please check out my 8 step approach for developing a social media program for more ideas on how to use social media.

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