Facebook, the crème de la crème of the social networking world, seems to be losing its magic when it comes to the younger market. In this boxing match of epic social proportions, we pitt Social network giants Facebook vs Instagram. It is also worthy to note that they are both from the same Zuckerberg empire.
In 2013 Facebook Chief Financial Officer, David Esbersman, announced that daily usage among teens had decreased, “specifically among younger teens”.
These declining Facebook numbers are not an indication that today’s youth are swapping the tablet for tree climbing and the iPhone for existentialism.
Let’s be realistic.
When it comes to social media teens are more technologically savvy than most of us. They are now igniting new trends through fresh mediums such as the visual media app Instagram, photo messaging app Snapchat and visual discovery tool Pinterest.
Instagram Stats
Instagram was launched in October 2010. The app now boasts 200 million monthly actives posting around 60 million photos a day. In June this year it was estimated that 20 billion photos have been shared around the world, via Instagram, with 1.6 million people motivated to ‘like’ individually selected images daily.
Snapchat Stats
Snapchat began in September 2011 and now hosts over one million monthly active users, with 71% of users being under 25. The number of Snapchats sent a day totals 400 million.
Is Facebook feeling threatened?
Not surprisingly the team at Facebook predicted this market trend and purchased Instagram for $1 billion in April 2012, and reportedly offered Snapchat $3 billion in late 2013.
Brian Solis, a principal analyst at US digital research consulting firm Altimeter Group, said "Facebook realised it needed not just a mobile future, but also a future for this younger or teen audience." Solis believes Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook lead executives knew they would eventually need help with the younger market and this was the impetus behind the Instagram purchase.
What do the ‘kids’ think?
Emma, a student at Sydney’s Kambala said, “I know a lot of my friends use Instagram to share what they’re up too and post pictures and stuff. It sort of depends on the person but my friends probably check Instagram more than Facebook”.
Austin Bowler from Kellyville Public High School still prefers Facebook over Instagram, “I personally prefer Facebook because I find it easier to keep in touch with my friends than Instagram. My friends use both Instagram and Facebook, although I spend most of my time on Facebook rather than Instagram because whatever my friends post on Instagram I can find on Facebook”.
Comparing Screen Time
According to comScore’s mobile app report, the typical Instagram user spends an average of 257 minutes accessing the photo-sharing site every month, that’s about 8½ minutes per day. The average Facebook user on the other hand spends around 17 minutes per day, that's 510 minutes of ‘constructive’ screen time a month.
Common Sense Media’s new study Zero to Eight, conducted in the US in 2013, indicates that 72% of children under eight, and 38% of children under two, have used mobile devices.
Since 2011 the amount of time on average that children spend using mobile devices has increased from five minutes to 15 minutes a day. The percentage of children who now have access to mobile devices at home has radically jumped from 52% to 75%.
Instagram’s Appeal
Rafella Lucini, a 19-year-old Media Arts Production student at Sydney’s University of Technology likes “Instagram way more than Facebook. Instagram is focused on visual aesthetics, which essentially appeals to me more than the opinions and personal updates posted by people on Facebook. Also Facebook is starting to be completely infested with ads and memes that I don't want to be bombarded with”.
In late 2013 Instagram also introduced a direct messaging feature, which allows users to share private pictures, text and videos directly with friends.
After Facebook’s breakdown in its messaging feature its not too surprising teens are looking to connect on different social networking platforms.
Jason Silvia, filmmaker and TV personality investigates the Instagram generation in his latest “Shots of Awe” YouTube video. The video was inspired by psychologist and Noble Prize winner Professor Daniel Kahneman’s statement that through Instagram we are now, “experiencing the present as an anticipated memory”.
Although we may be in effect bypassing precious moments in anticipation of I’m-not-even-sure-what, Silvia believes this sociological shift is actually empowering, “You're given a chance to decide how this moment will be remembered. We all become artists, we all become architects of our mental narratives, of our historical digital paper trail. We decide who we are. We're building maps, and those maps are subjective. I don't think it's a bad thing. ... I think it liberates our desire to be artists."
What does this all mean for digital marketing?
For such a fast-growing app, Instagram is also surprisingly one of the most underutilised by marketers.
Social media analysts Socialbakers recently conducted a survey aimed at discovering what marketers are currently placing the most attention on, it turns out just 19% of marketers wanted to give Instagram a high priority in 2014, while 23% wanted to ignore the platform altogether.
This is interesting considering that of the 3.5 billion searches conducted on average each day, around 40% of the results include pictures online.
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest have begun capitalising on the aforementioned stats, experimenting with sponsored posts as advertising models. The next predictive stage in this experimentation is image tag advertising: meaning in the selfie you uploaded on Instagram this morning, a potential consumer would be able to identify through augmented metadata the items in your photo, essentially working in a similar process to face tagging.
Your Malvern Star bike, Kathmandu backpack and fresh Nike kicks would be automatically tagged and stored in easily searchable product databases. This development would revolutionise Facebook as the largest product discovery and recommendation engine in the world.
Caroline Sundt-Wels co-creative director of iconic Australian fashion brand Desert Designs utilises Instagram as a way to enhance the brand’s digital portfolio and online reach, “as a brand based on visual arts Instagram is the perfect platform for Desert Designs to share all of our visual content and inspiration without having to worry about ads and written information. By making your inspirations available to your consumer this makes them feel more involved in your creative process”.
What’s OnQue doing?
OnQue is committed to standing at the forefront of digital innovation, and we have implemented these visual communication platforms for clients, such as Caesarstone, resulting in increased traction in SEO, social media and digital brand awareness.