How Social Media Went From Being Social to Being Media-First
Mapping the UX changes that changed how we use social apps
Rewind the clock to the early 2000s. The internet was filled with web pages to broadcast information. It was a glorified and more convenient Yellow Pages. Then Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook were built. At the inception of these products, social media was basically a directory to see what your friends were up to. It was everyone’s own personal webpage.
Quickly, these sites became new tools to communicate. In a time when communication via phone and text could be expensive, these social platforms provided new and convenient ways to connect. Yes, there was AIM, but those communications were one-to-one. Interestingly, these social platforms made communication between individuals public for all to see. They were novel in how they turned the internet from billboards into a town square.
You would post on your friend's wall for all to see. And then they would reply by posting on your wall for all to see. I liken it to the 70s and 80s when kids would roam free throughout the neighborhood for hours without parents having a care in the world. We didn’t care that other people could see our communications just like parents were fine with kids wandering the streets alone. Posting publicly was hip, cool, and the culture of the day.
However, the way friends communicate and behave on social media has changed. I am going to map out how small UX changes on social platforms transformed social media into just media. And to be clear, UX changes aren't the only thing that changes behavior—lots of factors go into it. With that said, the following UX changes paved the way for how we use social media today.
Feed
When social media was a directory and wall posts, it was difficult to discover new people. You had to know their names and be able to search for them to send a friend request. You came to platforms such as Facebook to be with the people you knew and cared about and would add new friends as you collected them in the real world.
However, for Facebook the company, this was a growth barrier because users weren’t able to easily see updates from friends.
Facebook turned to the innovative idea of the Feed, which would transform how social (and non-social) apps have been built ever since. The idea is that you would be able to see a stream of content from your friends every time you log in. Ultimately, Feed would become a growth engine to discover new people and content.
The reception for Feed was poor. However, Facebook observed that, though people complained about the change, they actually stayed on the site longer. It was an amazing product to make Facebook sticky for users.
The introduction of Feed set the stage for years down the road of users passively consuming content through scrolling and viewing instead of commenting and posting.
The Like Button
FriendFeed, a rival social network to Facebook, was the first social network to introduce the Like button. It took almost two years, but Facebook followed FriendFeed and introduced it as well.
It is now universally used for many purposes, including allowing social media apps to gain important signal into what type of content and businesses resonate with users to serve more personalized content and ads.
For users, a simple click of the mouse (or tap on the phone) takes on many different meanings. Approval, appreciation, agreement, sympathy, etc. A simple 'like' removes the barrier to actually communicating with words. Again, this was another small change that eventually steered social media to be less social.
Chat & Groups
In the mid-to-late 2000s, we saw new products that allowed communication to happen in smaller, more personalized groups. Reddit launched, which allows for participation in anonymous groups or subreddits. Facebook chat (Messenger) debuted, allowing users to chat in private with their friends. WhatsApp was released in 2009 as an affordable alternative to texting. And Facebook groups, a place to gather in small communities, became available for like-minded users to congregate. These products ushered in private communication on social media.
Cultural changes also helped push users to use these new private or semi-private communication tools more than broadcasting openly. Cancel culture and political discourse became more prevalent, forcing people to take sides. The 2016 presidential election was nasty, making the discourse on social apps more fiery. Many people were turned off and didn’t want to express their viewpoints publicly due to fear of backlash.
Additionally, people have become more conscious of privacy. With data breaches and more scrutiny of Big Tech companies, users started to become more closed-off in their online profiles.
Slowly but surely, communication between friends would become more private as opposed to public.
Algorithms
Remember the invention of the Feed mentioned earlier and how it paved the way for consumption over engagement? Well, algorithms were the big driver of this behavior. Initial algorithm sorted friend content (Facebook) or subreddits (Reddit) that would be most relevant to you. As the algorithms became more complex, it then started recommending new content.
This increased the ability for users to discover new friends, groups, subreddits, etc. Algorithms keep people scrolling and increase time spent in the apps based on content you will like.
New Use Cases
With the improvement and creation of algorithms, search, and hashtags, social media has become more than a place to talk and connect with friends. It became a way to discover new trends, stay up to date on news, and find cool products. New ad types were even created to support creators (Paid Partnerships). In essence, social media became a place to be entertained, stay up to date, and participate in commerce activities.
Soon users started to follow people they didn’t know, something that was uncommon when the industry was born. Users entered into parasocial relationships. The creator economy emerged and more time on social apps was spent watching and looking at the content of people users didn’t have personal relationships with.
TikTokification of Social Apps
TikTok took the world by storm and time spent was instantly sucked into scrolling short-form video. Powered by an extremely good algorithm that learned what users liked, it became an app that users could open and be instantly entertained.
TikTok also introduced fullscreen video, which didn’t allow users to see the next video before scrolling. Instead of being able to peek and see if the next video was interesting and worth watching, the UI kept users looking forward to the next video, which enabled more scrolling. Just test this out. Go to TikTok and try to force yourself to only watch the first five videos. It’s tough to not watch more.
With an incredibly entertaining product and fantastic algorithm, users spent more time consuming videos from creators instead of communicating with friends.
In the world of social media where time spent equals more ad dollars, every other social app needed to figure out ways to increase time spent or lose out to TikTok. Thus we saw the rise of Reels and YouTube Shorts. We even see LinkedIn, Substack, and X embracing short-form video now.
Apps that were once reserved for communicating openly with close friends have now turned into media giants where friends also happen to be present. TikTok is probably the biggest single reason our social apps are now media-first.
Key Takeaways
Gone are the days of public communication between friends on social. Couple these UX changes above with new cultural norms and changing user demands, and you have the new state of social media.
Some key takeaways to consider as you build your own products:
Even small UI/UX changes can change behavior. Consider all potential behavioral changes to mitigate anything that detracts from core metrics and the company mission. Set up guardrails to prevent unintended consequences of product changes. While making a change may move important metrics in one area, it may regress important metrics for another. Ensure that everyone is aligned and aware of the consequences before making changes.
However, when you discover a behavioral change that can benefit your goals, know that you may have hit a gold mine. It isn’t easy to change behavior that can meet user and business needs, so when you do, go all in.
Behavior change often takes time and is usually cumulative across many small changes. However, when one killer use case is introduced, the floodgates can open and behavior change may happen quickly. Think TikTok, Uber, Airbnb, etc.