The sphere of social media has always changed and adjusted since its emergence in various forms in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. Whether it be MySpace in the early 2000’s, Facebook in the mid 2000’s, Instagram in the early 2010’s or TikTok in the 2020’s it is assured that social media networks will rise and fall. However, this is not just the social media companies, but also how social media operates and the appetite of the consumer. In recent years we’re seeing a definitive change in people’s appetites. Rather than the multi use apps like Facebook or Twitter, we are seeing messaging applications grow such as Signal, Telegram, and Whatsapp. We are also seeing single or limited use applications grow, firstly Instagram, but then in recent years TikTok. While some people move on from social media sites due to privacy issues, or functionality issues some people reject entire corporations such as Facebook’s, now called Meta, collection of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. While the decline of MySpace was drastic and quick like the decline of Nokia, we are beginning to see cracks in Facebook decade of dominance in the social media sphere, though its possible fall may be considerable slower. So if Facebook’s dominance may be coming to an end, what may replace it? Of course, Instagram and TikTok are the prominent applications at the moment especially amongst the youth, but there’s a possibility of the emergence of another social media. These changes will be dictated by various communities and how these communities adjust to the changing sphere of social media. This conference paper delves into the diversification of social media and how various communities adjust to these changes resulting in the diversification of social media through the needs and demands of various community groups has created a divided online world of which new platforms are taking advantage. 

Where and when Social Media started is a debatable topic, some would mention blogs, some forums, and others the arrival of My Space and Facebook. The arrival of MySpace in 2003 was one of the first social media sites to take off around the world; however its popularity suddenly died off after its peak in 2008. This has been put down to as the disease spread model, which is used to describe the arrival and departure dynamics of the users in online social networks. It is theorised that most people join social networks because their friends are already on them and it is therefore a way to connect with friends, however it is also recognised that most online friendships are not strong, nor active (Basu et al., 2022). While Facebook started 6 months later than MySpace in 2004, it grew slower, before overtaking it and becoming the largest and most recognisable social media platform in the world. It is determined that Facebook beat MySpace on 7 of the 9 elements on the Service Innovation Triangle which includes Customer Experiences, Technology, People, Business Model, and Value elements (Cuthbertson et al., 2015). In the case of Facebook and MySpace it indicates that the communities using these services dictated the change into using Facebook, rather than MySpace towards the late 2000’s and early 2010’s. Facebook offering fan pages, private and public groups, public forums, and private messaging covered all the needs at the time of the communities desiring to find a place to collaborate and cooperate. Facebook’s functions are used by sporting organisations, political organisations, employers, schools, and event organisers to name a few. In recent years Facebook continued to add more and more functions such as better video-sharing functions and an online marketplace, obviously challenging YouTube and Ebay in those fields. However, despite its network covering nearly all possible features, Facebook is starting to face indicators that show Facebook’s popularity is waning and falling. In early 2022 Facebook announced that the daily active users of the site had fallen for the first time in the social media network’s history (Facebook: Daily active users fall for first time in 18-year history, 2022). This came not long after the company re-branded itself as Meta. This also followed a drop in WhatsApp’s popularity at the beginning of 2021 following an exodus over privacy concerns in which their users switched over to mainly Signal and Telegram (“WhatsApp growth slumps as rivals Signal, Telegram rise”, 2021). The concerns about privacy on Facebook and Facebook related applications like WhatsApp have been developing for years now, and when alternatives offer and advertise security as one of their main priorities it makes not only attracting new users, but maintaining users significantly more difficult. The emergence of single-purpose applications which include messaging applications, but also video-sharing platforms may be showing a switch in the online demands of consumers, something which may not have been previously seen in the relatively short history of social media.

Recent revolutions in social media include the rise of messaging applications. There was MSN messenger in the early and mid 2000s which was then followed by Vibr, WhatsApp, and the de-coupling of Facebook’s messaging service into a separate application, Messenger. The sphere is changing though as more consumers and users worry more about privacy which many claim cannot be guaranteed on Facebook’s services like Messenger, WhatsApp, and many other applications. This has created a window of opportunity for specifically private messaging services like Signal, Wickr, Status, and Telegram. Signal, along with Telegram, began to gain popularity from security concerns of Facebook’s messaging services. Signal was started in 2013, which was initially popular amongst journalists and activists, and then became a non-profit in 2018 with the help of WhatsApp founder Brian Acton (Sandler, 2021). Signal has previously been described by former NSA (National Security Agency) contractor Edward Snowden as being trust worthy, and more so than Telegram since it is not a private company, rather a not-for-profit (Signal is more secure than WhatsApp, believes Edward Snowden, 2021). Another messaging application which has been emerging in recent years is Wickr. Wickr is also privacy focused with its motto stating “without compromise”, with it offering military, business, government, and individual products. Wickr’s privacy standards are explained by Kim G et al (2021), with details about which information Wickr retains and which is encrypted “decrypted database stores the chat history in plaintext as the main evidence. However, other data, e.g., user information, app information, and the keys used in end-to-end encryption, are encrypted”. The method to encrypt contents is the same on Android as it is on IOS. Kim G et al (2021) concludes that most data including the database are encrypted and protects private calls and messages from external attacks. Another messaging app which has gained significant popularity around a similar time as Signal has gained popularity is Telegram. Telegram started as a private messaging app by Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov, who had also previously ran VK which is known as Russian Facebook, has been popular in Russian language spheres for some time. The messaging application was used significantly amongst political opposition and activists in Russian language countries like Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, while also being adopted by the same communities in the United States and Central and Western European countries. During political protests in Belarus in 2020 the Belarussian government had been switching off mobile internet, those with VPNs would check Telegram for updates on the protests for news and to pass it on to those who could not access it. Telegram was a key service in the organisation of communities in opposition to Belarussian President Aleksander Lukashenko (Walker, 2020). This has also been the case in the recent war in Ukraine as both the Russian and Ukrainian sides try to win the propaganda war. Such methods are made possible by Telegram’s channel function, which allows users to create public channels in order to publish information, much like rolling news updates you see on mainstream media websites. There are also public groups in which multiple users can interact with each other, while recent changes have allowed comments to public posts and emoticon reactions. Telegram which started as a private messaging service has now expanded to become something more than that, a hybrid between what Facebook is and what WhatsApp is.

The conversion of messaging applications into a broader social media platform has been seen with additional features on such applications; however is it more obvious than others with Telegram. While Telegram currently boasts over 500 million users, 540 million downloads, and is the most popular application in Iran and Uzbekistan the application is constantly changing and growing (https://www.businessofapps.com/data/telegram-statistics/). New updates included the addition of animated emoji reactions to messages, the translation of messages and QR codes for public users which also works for channels and groups (The Telegram Team, 2021). This follows on from Telegram’s channels and large public groups. Furthermore, Telegram has functions for live streaming voice messages, adding videos, and keeping records of what media you have viewed. This is a new form of social media, a hybrid between a messaging application and a regular social media platform. However the main criticism of Telegram is while it claims to be secure, these new additional functions are actually causing it to become continuously less secure. The application does not have automatic end to end encryption, rather the user’s have to turn on end to end encryption; however it is not available for group chats. There are also self-destruct timers for messages, however the app’s overall security has been criticised by the founder of Signal (Davies, 2022). These more diverse functions have turned Telegram from a niche platform used mainly in Russian language countries to a mainstream alternative platform to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in English language countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, and many European countries like France and Germany. The platform has become a safe haven for free speech with Donald Trump using the platform following his ban from most mainstream social media. Other known political and cultural figures in the United States and the United Kingdom who have used Telegram following bans on mainstream platforms include Alex Jones, Nick Fuentes, Paul Joseph Watson, and James O’Keefe. Organisations include Infowars, ran by Alex Jones. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro also heavily uses Telegram. Many governments are not happy with an alternative platform like Telegram existing with Russia previously banning the application for 2 years, while German officials have also made threats of banning it following anti-lockdown protests during the COVID crisis (Meaker 2022). While messaging apps and traditional social media are slowly converging on each other and both losing and attracting various communities, the future appears to be a continuous change. It is becoming apparent that the future of social media will be diverse with more competitors and different variations. Larger groups may attract themselves to Telegram, while smaller groups more focused on privacy and secrecy may focus on Wickr or Signal.  Founder and CEO of Signal Moxie Marlinspike stated “People no longer see Facebook as a company that is connecting the world. Most people conceive of Facebook as a company that is building apps for their data. And so we have been existing in this liminal space where everybody uses Facebook every day and hates it.” (Gallagher, 2021). This statement by Marlinspike indicates that more and more people are becoming attracted and sharing these views towards Facebook and perhaps Twitter as well.

It is clear that we are in a transitioning phase in the development and progression of social media and the communities that use them. Communities are attracted to new social media or messaging applications through privacy concerns, political refuge, and different functionality. This phenomenon differs between regions, countries, and continents, but nonetheless a change can be seen with the rising popularity of privacy driven messaging applications. These changes are seen in the growing functionalities of traditional social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, but also in growing platforms like Telegram and Signal. Communities are gathering behind functionalities such as instant messaging, video-sharing, self-destructing messages, private groups of thousands of users, and live streaming of video and audio recordings. Future possibilities and change may ironically not be shaped by the communities that use them, but the politicians and governments which introduce new laws in order to combat them. There is an evolving political landscape that wants to remove or limit the freedom of communication and privacy utilised on these platforms. Whether this be in Germany, Russia, Belarus, or anywhere else in the world these government projects will have significant influence on the future of communities using these platforms. The diversification of social media and how various communities adjust through their own needs and demands will be a central part of the online landscape through the upcoming decades.

Conference paper_Rachwalski

References:

Basu, A., Shannigrahi, S., Chhabra, S. S., & Brundavanam, A. (2022). On the Rise and Fall of Online Social Networks. ArXiv. arXiv:1403.5617.

Cuthbertson, R., Furseth, I. P., & Ezell, J. S. (2015). Facebook and MySpace: The Importance of Social Networks. Innovating in a service-driven economy 145-158 Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137409034_11

Davies, P. (2022, March 8). Telegram found itself at the heart of the Ukraine war. How do you use it and is it safe? Euronews. https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/03/07/telegram-messaging-app-is-at-the-heart-of-the-ukraine-war-how-to-use-it-and-is-it-safe

Facebook: Daily active users fall for first time in 18-year history (2022, February 3). BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60238565

Gallagher, R. (2021, May 28). Signal Jabs at Facebook and Navigates Growing Pains as Popularity Surges: Moxie Marlinspike, a legendary coder and privacy advocate, takes on Big Tech and internal dissent. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-28/signal-app-is-surging-in-popularity-and-hitting-growing-pains

Kim, G., Kim, S., Park, M., Park, Y., Lee, I., & Kim, J. (2021). Forensic analysis of instant messaging apps: Decrypting Wickr and private text messaging data. Forensic Science International: Digital Investigation, 37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsidi.2021.301138

Meaker, M. (2022, February 3). Germany Has Picked a Fight With Telegram. Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/germany-telegram-covid/

Sandler, R. (2021, January 15). So Many People Are Using Signal It Caused An Outage. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2021/01/15/so-many-people-are-using-signal-it-caused-an-outage/?sh=4e1489bd3df2

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The Telegram Team. (2021, December 30). Reactions, Spoilers, Translation and QR Codes. Telegram.org. https://telegram.org/blog/reactions-spoilers-translations

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The controversial messaging app has moved huge crowds on the streets of Belarus. But who is its secretive puppet master? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/nov/07/nobody-can-block-it-how-telegram-app-fuels-global-protest