Social media platforms evolve from win-win partnerships with publishers into monopolies. Here is how it happens every time.
Social Media and Creators
New social platforms face the challenge of generating enough content that users want to consume. They solve this by welcoming publishers and creators. The platform does everything it can to attract them. Users follow their favourite brands. Brands get a scalable way to reach fans. Win-win on paper.
From Win-Win to Monopoly
As more users join, the platform becomes independently known. Creators are now attracted not because the platform makes publishing easy — but because it already has their audience. The platform owner notices this shift in dependency.
Facebook single-handedly crippled Zynga’s stock by removing them from featured apps. That is the kind of power that accumulates.
Zero Organic Reach
Some years ago, a single post on your Facebook page would be shown to 10–12% of your followers. It has since trickled down to roughly 1%. Every brand is pushing out more content than the platform was designed for, and quality becomes impossible to distinguish from quantity. So the platform throttles impressions and replaces quality with budgets — if you can create great content, you presumably have the budget to buy reach.
What Can Be Done?
Can we arrive at a scientific method of identifying which platform actually furthers our objectives — rather than just accepting platform metrics at face value? That is the real question. The answer requires building measurement frameworks independent of the platforms we are trying to evaluate.