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Why do all social networks want us to see 'stories'

2020-12-03T21:07:46.073Z


The fashion for ephemeral videos has even reached Spotify.There are fewer and fewer social networks without stories , publications that disappear after a few hours. In fact, they are already being tested by platforms that are not even networks, such as Spotify. If we enter his list of Christmas songs through the mobile application we can see videos of various musical stars, including Jennifer Lopez and Meghan Trainor, talking about their favorite songs f


There are fewer and fewer social networks without

stories

, publications that disappear after a few hours.

In fact, they are already being tested by platforms that are not even networks, such as Spotify.

If we enter his list of Christmas songs through the mobile application we can see videos of various musical stars, including Jennifer Lopez and Meghan Trainor, talking about their favorite songs for these dates.

Additionally, the platform's annual summaries are also presented using a similar format.

Spotify has stories now ....



SPOTIFY



This has got to stop pic.twitter.com/xsurbrJblx

- TmarTn (@TmarTn) November 27, 2020

These ephemeral stories, better known by their name in English (

stories

), are an invention of Snapchat, a social network that was born in 2011 to share images and, later, videos that disappeared after a few hours.

The function was copied with minor changes by Instagram in August 2016. Facebook did the same in February of the following year, a few days before WhatsApp.

Recall that Facebook -owner of Instagram and WhatsApp- tried to buy Snapchat in 2013, without success, reaching out to offer 3,000 million euros.

In recent months,

Pinterest (since September), Linkedin (since October) and, more recently, Twitter

have joined the

stories

: this network launched its Fleets in November, reviving the jokes that warn that at this rate there will be stories in Excel , on teletext and even on the street.

now twitter has stories, in 2021 I imagine it to excel like this pic.twitter.com/jQQ9AL4Yyh

- kevin (@kevinlmds) November 19, 2020

Wow.

I spent this morning in the Plaza Mayor of Salamanca and they have updated it with stories đŸ€Ż pic.twitter.com/QdCqGQNQ8S

- Roberto ツ (@Roberisamess) November 20, 2020

Why do all networks want to have

stories

?

Laura Cuesta Cano is a specialist in Digital Marketing and a professor at the Camilo José Cela University.

In his opinion, the success of ephemeral stories is largely explained by the fact that they are aimed at a younger audience, which was the one who used the format first on Snapchat and then on Instagram.

In addition, as he points out, in networks the text tends to lose more and more presence in favor of video, whether it is ephemeral or live.

BĂĄrbara Yuste, communication advisor and journalism professor at the Carlos III University, recalls that "on Instagram, stories have more impact and repercussion than publications."

In 2017, a year after launching the format (or copying it to Snapchat), Instagram went from 500 to 800 million monthly users, a figure that now exceeds one billion.

Instead, the number of Twitter users has been stagnant for years.

The company no longer publishes monthly user data, but in 2019 it was still slightly above 300 million, a barrier that it had overcome in 2015.

In addition, adding content in this format can help the user stay longer on the platform, as Cuesta Cano points out, giving new opportunities to the network to plant advertising in our faces.

Remember that Instagram offers these stories continuously and without pause, sneaking ads in the middle.

Ephemeral content also has benefits for users.

The main one is that it helps them worry a little less about the dangers of their fingerprint.

As Yuste recalls, it is still relatively common to do archeology on Twitter to throw an unfortunate message from years ago (or even a simple change of opinion on an issue) in someone's face.

For this reason, there are users who have deleted all their tweets or who are periodically deleting their publications.

The risk doesn't go away with expiration-dated posts, as there can always be someone who will take a screenshot of a message before it disappears, but there is a bit more room to be wrong.

In addition, responses are made by direct message.

That is, some fights and controversies may disappear from the public stage, which would help Twitter to alleviate one of the problems it has faced in recent years, that of lynchings and insults.

However, the Fleets will not make the harassment or the dissemination of disinformation disappear, as Cuesta Cano points out.

In fact, it could make it more difficult to control these messages.

Twitter already warns that these stories must comply with the same rules as any tweet and that it will keep a copy of these publications "for a limited time" to check both complaints and appeals from users.

Of course, imitation is not necessarily a guarantee of success: Cuesta Cano recalls that the format has worked on Instagram, but it did not catch on on Facebook or WhatsApp, where its use is less common.

This format needs its own content and it is not enough, for example, to share a screenshot of the tweet to make its use popular, as some users are doing in these early days.

This channel has its own language and you have to dedicate time and effort to it, which can be a barrier to being used regularly.

Are all networks the same?

Ephemeral stories are not the only format that networks imitate.

The success of TikTok videos has led Instagram to launch Reels, a feature for sharing and editing short videos.

In a similar vein, YouTube is testing its Shorts, videos of less than a minute in vertical format.

Before that, for example,

Twitter

hashtags

or tags were used in other social networks to group topics and platforms incorporated the filters for the photos that Instagram popularized (without inventing them).

Recently, the online medium

Axios

published a comparison in which it was possible to see how social networks offer more and more similar functions, including also augmented reality and live videos.

Will we see something like Tik Tok reels and videos on Twitter?

Castro Cano believes not, although it would not surprise him, and Yuste does not dare to answer yes, “but it could be.

There is a tendency to copy what works ”.

This has its downsides: As Yuste points out, it can be difficult to even differentiate the design of the platforms.

But both Yuste and Cuesta Cano recall that the audience for these platforms is not the same, at least for the moment: "The functionalities are increasingly similar," explains Cuesta Cano, "but that does not mean that there is a transfer of users."

As Silvia MartĂ­nez, director of the Master of Social Media at the Open University of Catalonia, wrote in

Come In,

the communication magazine of this university, users can choose the social circle with which we want to relate, without having to worry about it. format of our messages.

That is, if we want to share a photo, we do not have to do it only on Instagram, and if we like ephemeral content, there is no need to stay on Snapchat.

This expansion of possibilities helps to retain the user on the platform, Yuste points out, since in this way we can offer the content in the way we want, but addressing a professional environment on Linkedin, another family member on Facebook or a third party already more focused on today like Twitter.

Seen like this, it is not so rare that there are

stories

everywhere.

Maybe they even put them in the covid vaccine, as

El Mundo Today

warns

.

I just found out that stories have been added to teletext pic.twitter.com/H57gcoX9XT

- Memes Castellanos ♖ (@memescastilla) November 19, 2020

don't fuck with me I've gone to make a coffee and look pic.twitter.com/QSQPkjeK6t

- miguel 🐒 (@miglnavarro) November 19, 2020

In my father's car there were also stories.

pic.twitter.com/ajrpEAdxFV

- Bastard words (@Palabrastardas) November 19, 2020

BREAKING: Monolith Inexplicably Returns ... With Stories pic.twitter.com/If61Aj0iaC

- Tim Quirino (@timquirino) November 30, 2020

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Source: elparis

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