Consumer social platforms – new age status games
I really enjoy exploring the consumer social space.
What attracts me most is that it involves both tech and sociocultural shifts. It’s always exciting to watch emerging behavioral trends. Even a simple product can add something to the daily routine of lots of people. Take BeReal – what can be more simple from the tech side? Still, for 5M+ people (BeReal’s DAU) the new instant shot behavioral pattern becomes an integral part of their lives.
The same can be applied to all the consumer social products that achieved certain scale and defensibility. I bet you visit at least one of the leading consumer social platforms (Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, Reddit) every day.
Why that happens? Because all of these platforms are status games.
People tend to have this age-old intrinsic desire to grow their status and do it as efficiently as possible. You can upload dozens of vids on TikTok every day hoping that one of them will go viral (due to the blackbox algorithm, the motivation here is very similar to the loot boxes so widely spread in the gaming world), you can write threads on Twitter because you’ve heard that now it’s the most effective way to gain audience, you can launch a startup and apply to Y Combinator, or you can even become a superfan of Charli, join or build a fan community and raise your status among her other fans.
People tend to play a number of status games, and consumer social platforms give them new opportunities for that.
To build a great status game, you need to dive deep into the thinking patterns of a target audience group, ideally – belong to it and “feel” the needs of this group. What matters to football fans (sorry, my European-wired brain doesn’t allow me to call it soccer) like me and shapes their the behavioral patterns, may just seem nonsense or even silly to those who don’t belong to the tribe.
But all the successful consumer social platforms have common principles. I cover this HERE. See ya!