The way of communication in social media networks has been continuously evolving for the last years, due to the new demands of immediacy and the fast content consumption.

This evolution started less than 10 years ago when audiovisual content completely displaced the content in text. It continued with the imposition of the micro videos over the 2-minute lasting videos, and finally, last year’s trend was live video, in which users could follow on live any activity that was projected by streaming.

However, users of social networks have continued to evolve the way they want to consume content, and the demand of faster content has been exponentially increasing, and nowadays one the most consumed content is the ephemeral content.

The concept of ephemeral started back in April 2011, when Evan Spiegel created the Snapchat app. An application in which users would upload a photo or video that disappeared in 24 hours, and if they were sent to a user, they could only be viewed once.

In May of 2012, 25 images per second were sent on this app, and by November of that same year, more than 20 million pictures per day were shared through Snapchat’s iOS application.

The success of Snapchat began especially in the Millenial generation, who were attracted by this publication format through the insertion of augmented reality in the publication formats (funny filters, masks, text in the image, etc.), which made this population sector get instantly hooked to this social network.

Since then, all main social networks have decided to replicate this publication format in their products: The first one was Instagram: in fact, Mark Zuckerberg wanted to buy Snapchat and even offered 9,000 million dollars to Evan Spiegel in order to acquire his app, and therefore, his business model. However, Evan Spiegel, rejected the offer and it was on August 2, 2016 when Instagram decided to “incorporate” the function of the “Instagram stories” on its app.

Many people described it as plagiarism of Snapchat, from Ideagoras we leave it up to you to decide whether it was or not;)

After the resounding success of Instagram Stories, it was the sister social network of Instagram, Facebook, who decided to incorporate this functionality, followed by Whatsapp, and finally Google inserted the stories format with AMP Stories.

Nowadays they have become a real revolution, and social networks like Facebook and Instagram insert advertising in this publication format due to the high visualization potential it has.

The use of filters, gifs, music or masks makes the presentation of the ads much more attractive and less intrusive than the classic advertising banner. In addition, the possibility of inserting all these elements detailed above allows the creation of Call To Actions widely diverse and original and encourages a high conversion of them.

According to TedCrunch’s study, over 1.161 million stories are published on a DAILY basis!

The combination of the fast consumption of this type of content have totally changed the way we communicate on Social Media, and brands totally aware of it.

How are they using it? These are 6 ways how brands are using them :

  • 1. Direct Product Promotion
  • 2. To provide an Inside look of a brand
  • 3. Using an influencer to promote a product
  • 4. To livestream an event
  • 5. To create contests and therefore,
  • 6. To get insights about a product or service

There are several case studies on how this format is helping brands. You can find some here.

The power of fast content is undeniable, neither brands nor users cannot live without ephemeral content. But, how long will it last? Will voice-first communication replace it, like many studies say?

We have no other option than wait! Excited to see what it is coming in the very close future for users and brands!

Ideagoras Social Media

By Ideagoras Social Media