Lockdown has been a tough lesson for the whole world. All this free time and isolation has led naturally to a lot of self-reflection. A large majority of people have tried their hardest to better themselves during this time whether it be through losing weight or trying to become more knowledgeable through reading more books.
In the year 2020, it is impossible to scroll through Instagram without it being saturated with ads promoted by social influencers. But is there a way to tell whether they genuinely like this product, or is it driven by money and sales?
Towards the end of 2016 Instagram introduced a “live feature” in which a person could broadcast a live video from their profile. It was instantly a hit with users as they were able to host live Q&As with their friends and even do joint live streams. For the average Instagram user with a normal following, live streams are just a way in having some fun with friends to maybe pass the time. However, for influencers, it holds a great open opportunity for them to directly interact with their fan base/ followers.
YouTube is the second most used search engine in the world right behind Google. YouTube is not simply a website, it is a search engine. It gathers a staggering 3 billion searches per month, in comparison that is more than Bing, Yahoo, AOL and Ask.com combined! Since Google owns YouTube, video content uploaded on the platform ranks really well on Google, the number 1 search engine in the world.
IGTV is an app that can be used alone or within Instagram. It's basically Instagram's answer to YouTube in that it's designed for the mobile-optimised viewing of longer videos. Anyone can start up their own IGTV channel and share videos that are up to an hour-long. The main big difference between IGTV and Instagram Stories is the duration of the videos, IGTV can be minutes and up to an hour while stories are seconds.
Youtube has been at the top of the game since it launched back in 2005. The platform completely revolutionized “home videos’ and allowed people the creative freedom to create whatever they wanted and the ability to share it with the world. People purley made videos for fun for the first 4 years up until 2009 when the platform introduced ads. A large majority of Youtubers were making huge sums of money from ads from their videos.
Instagram has grown to be the star of Facebook social media apps. But Facebook still performs well. It might not be the social network of choice for teenagers, but it can still claim dominance of the social market, with over 2.32 billion active users at the end of 2018, with Instagram having 1 billion. Nearly 66% of those Facebook users log in to their Facebook accounts daily, with Facebook claiming 1.52 billion daily active users as at the end of December 2018.
In the year 2020, it is almost compulsory that every human being manages their own private Instagram account dedicated to showcasing their life. Instagram was released almost a decade ago, back in 2010, and since then it has evolved in ways in which nobody could have predicted. The app is now so much more than just a “Social Media’ platform. Instagram now gives the public a whole playground to explore and be creative in so many different ways.
Trends come and go all the time, especially in the 21st century, with the likes of the internet and social media blowing topics up instantly worldwide. Trends have now gathered themselves a reputation of lingering around for a few weeks or months and then disappearing off the face of the planet. It seems to be lightning in a bottle for a “trend” to come along and actually stay.