About This Episode
Instagram has been testing removing likes throughout the past year and now the test is rolling out in the US. We discuss and analyze why this change is taking place, the social media’s effect on mental health, and the future of social media.
Listen To The Episode On Spotify
Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Brew, a podcast series where we deep dive into trending topics about business and culture. Now sit back and join in on the conversation over a cup of freshly brewed coffee.
[00:00:21] Welcome to The Brew. Today I am joined by Nikhil, who is the co-founder of Free Logic Media. And today we have a special episode as we’re going to be discussing Instagram, removing likes and just social media as a kind of overarching topic, but just diving straight into it. So Instagram we’re moving likes. Why is that happening?
[00:00:39] Well, Instagram is not fully removing likes or removing the light counters on people’s pages. So this is something that they’ve been testing for well over the last over the past year throughout different countries. There’s a huge pile of sites in Australia and it was a very successful right. And they started in Canada and stuff, too, and all over the world, basically. Right. So now it’s the US’s turn. They started this week, started rolling it out. And we see a lot of people believe that the conversation around this started around mental health because Instagram and other social media platforms are getting a lot of flak for creating environments that contributed to people’s mental health being affected negatively. Right. So that’s that’s what stems around it. But I think on another point of view, Instagram could also be doing this for themselves to look good.
[00:01:38] Yep.
[00:01:40] I mean, yeah, overall, as you stated, I mean, Instagram has been the the the leader in this space as of right now. And they’re trying to combat mental health and all these issues that I mean, they created with this platform, but also on their end, this is actually providing the content that consumers create.
[00:01:58] And they have 100 percent control now because before a consumer had the control based off the amount of likes and the influence they have in platform, but by removing that influence. Now, Instagram itself got the control back, which is an interesting kind of take. But at the same time, this is the press conference and everything that they’re pushing, the way that the CEO of Instagram was stating it, this is to combat mental illness. And as he stated, it was to create his ultimate vision. Right, is to create this kind of platform that depressurizes this social context that’s been created where individuals can technically bully or compare each other or all this kind of negative connotation that’s been created. And I think that’s very good, obviously, because there’s a really good podcast. I mean, a very good episode podcast on Yarragon or one of his guests was talking about after social media was created. So hitting that twenty five, twenty eight. And as it grows to twenty thirteen, as these social media platforms started being developed and being used, mental illness. So depression and all these issues skyrocketed. It was the first time there’s a massive spike. And it was not just because of other social, it was clearly because of social media. So it was a very interesting kind of take on what is social media really doing to society and how people are changing because people aren’t having face to face conversations anymore. They believe that what they see on social media, someone’s real life, when the majority of influencers on social media that have this fantastic life, that’s not what the life they really live day to day, people who see individual struggles. And the one thing that Instagram kind of created or this problem came from is that they use algorithms to create dopamine levels that make you addicted to social media. Yeah. So they created this really strong addiction that every single time you’re Skrull, they’re pretty algorithms to make sure that you’re continually scrolling, continue liking, you’re going through it. You’re even sometimes realize you spent like 15 to 20 minutes to scrolling through Instagram. But they’re creating that kind of gamification systems within the platform to cause you to want more and more and more. So, yes, it’s great. I mean, we’ll go into a little bit more detail about this later. It’s great what they’re doing. But also it’s kind of they created the problem as well.
[00:04:04] Yeah, it’s interesting because you see all of these things that are going on in the platform and at the same time, like Adam Ussery the CEO of Instagram at that press conference where he initially announced this, he said that what you said earlier and then also he said that he wants to essentially do use the competition that goes on or eliminate the competition that goes on in the app and create one of the safest or the safest place possible for people. Something along those lines. It was interesting. But, yeah, it’s like I completely relate to all of that, too. I think you do as well.
[00:04:40] It’s people try to curate their online personas based on what they think other people want to see. And that stems from likes pretty much. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:04:55] So do you do you personally or can you recount any examples where you personally relate to how, like Instagram is negatively affecting your lifestyle or something along those lines?
[00:05:09] Yeah, so I mean, I mean social media, which we’ll go into later, can be fantastic. And there’s a lot of positive outlooks too. But some of the negative outlooks that I see that impact me on the daily. It is very addictive, like I go on it without realizing it. So every single day when I wake up before I even read my emails or look at my text messages, I go on social media first. I honestly can’t even tell you why I do that, but I do that. And it’s just it’s just the natural thing. I wake up first thing, check social media, check what’s going on, and then I go on with my day and I’m extremely busy. So the fact that I’m spending 15 to 20 minutes on social media, that’s really bad for my time constraints that I have for other things. And that’s in the morning alone. In the morning alone. It’s just a waste of my time. Yeah. And it’s the same thing like lunch breaks during work. Yeah. If I get bored and my lunch break, I have to take my mandatory lunch break. If I get bored in that time instead of maybe doing something a little bit more productive and allowing myself like walking around campus and just allowing myself to kind of refresh before I continue my work. I’m on social media. I’m actually wasting my time. It’s not allowing me to refresh, continue my work. It’s actually making me more tired. Yeah. So those are things that I personally realize. What about you?
[00:06:17] Yes. So it’s gotten to the extent where I have to pretty much delete Instagram off of my phone every night and then reinstall it the next night and delete it again at the end of the night, because pretty much the same thing for me, right?
[00:06:32] Like, um, I wake up, pick up my phone because my alarms on my phone and then it’s like, oh, there’s an Instagram notification or just it’s just like wired in my brain. Like I’ve also hidden Instagram, like very far down, like in like two different folders in my app store. And like it’s wired in my brain to like, put my fingerprint on swipe swipe right two times and then click.
[00:06:59] I know exactly where the app is.
[00:07:01] And it’s just like and I just mindlessly scroll down for like five minutes before I’m like, shit, I’m late, you know?
[00:07:09] And yes, it’s just weird. Like the way that they’ve designed it. Like you said, it’s it’s kind of things become automatic, like, you know, and you’re not thinking about it.
[00:07:21] It’s just muscle memory. And at that point and then time just flies by and you don’t realize anything. And at the same time, that’s the tech. The way that they designed it is that every single time you get a like the dopamine levels grow. So you get more and more addicted to the notifications that come up. You just get more and more addicted to the comments, engagements. You get more and more addicted to it, and then you create notifications for everything unless you mainly go in there. I mean, if you go into a notification list that you can turn off. Yeah, there’s so many things you can turn off.
[00:07:48] Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
[00:07:50] And I mean to combat that, like I’ve started posting less, but then I started posting more on stories and that’s just a whole different problem when it comes to stories. It’s not even like for me, it’s like just saying for some reason I just want to keep seeing how many people have seen my story for absolutely no reason. It really doesn’t matter. Right. So, yeah. Have you done anything to combat it yourself?
[00:08:16] I tried to be a little bit more disciplined and just try to stay away from that. Doesn’t always work. But the reason why I don’t personally want to delete social media platforms and all that is for at least for me personally, I know myself well enough. If I delete it, it’s it’s kind of me telling myself that I’m not capable of staying away from it. That’s not for me. That’s what I kind of stand for. Right. Instead of what I tried to do is I just I’m very conscious now of how much time I’m spending on it. And every single day I try to minimize it a little bit at a time instead of doing drastic jumps. I just trying to minimize a little bit of time. So, for example, I I’ve deleted Snapchat, I’ve deleted Twitter, I’ve deleted the applications that I use less and less and less. Instagram is still the dominant one. Yeah, but even that I actually turn off the notifications for majority of the things that I’m not getting bombarded by because if my phone’s not going off, I’m not going to jump on it. But the second I get a notification, even if I open my phone for a text, that maybe that’s going to cause me to go to Instagram and then I open up. Instagram goes down. So I’m trying as much as I can. But realistically, at the end of the day, it’s more of a discipline thing. Yeah, it’s more the the approach you have to social media. So stuff like for me, I don’t use it as a tool for comparison. I use it more as a tool to kind of express my story. Yeah. So that also is very important is the shift of how are you using the platform. It makes a little bit less toxic, but at least on the dick developments for me, I’m trying to discipline, but I mean, it’s only working as much as it’s working.
[00:09:42] Yeah. I mean, I also took like thirty days off of social media one time actually no, not fully because I needed to use LinkedIn for some stuff. So it wasn’t a true test.
[00:09:52] But I did say off of Instagram for thirty days and I did find that like I had more time for stuff, you know, like studying for the GMAT or whatever it was. This is interestingly like I chose to do this right after I graduated college and I had two to three months of a gap between then and when I started to work. So I had, like, not very much stuff to do, but I chose to stay off of social media and I found more time to be more productive with other things, too, I guess. Learn, you know.
[00:10:21] So, yeah, honestly, I might do that again, and I think I might try to do it for longer just to see how more as a test to see how it affects my lifestyle. And if I might end up being happier, you never know.
[00:10:35] Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, like I’ve said a couple of times already, social media can be great, but it’s really how you use it. And I think a lot of people are using it in a very wrong way. And that’s exactly what Instagram’s trying to fix because they realize they’ve created this problem. Right. And that’s exactly why we’re in a loneliness epidemic. This is the first time that literally everybody feels lonely. Yeah, we’re the most connected. You can connect with anybody anywhere in the world, but people feel lonely. And that’s because social media itself creates that. So you can see what your friends are doing and then you creates a sophomore effect that, oh, my friends, that invite me to go out to this event or literally listen to me like a couple of months, like exactly like a couple of weeks ago.
[00:11:14] Yeah.
[00:11:14] And before before social media, you never knew and it wasn’t a problem. I don’t I didn’t care what my friends did. Like, they they can do what they got to do. But now since everything’s nonstop in your face. Oh, they’re traveling. Oh, they’re having the best time of your life and you’re stuck studying for an exam or whatever. It creates this weird comparison. And that’s why everybody feels lonely. The loneliness epidemic is a huge problem that needs a solution for there are people that are trying to create the solutions. But in general, it’s just the peer to peer conversations that used to be a thing. Just having a conversation at a coffee shop. Yeah, it’s really weird because when I go out with some of my friends, let’s say I’m at a bar, I rather have just a face to face conversation. Let’s talk about, you know, what’s going on. Just go into maybe meeting like philosophy or whatever, wherever the conversation goes. Nowadays, I see people at the bar and they’re just on their phones. And the other person on the phone like, why did you go out in the first place? If you’re just going to be on your phone, like, of course, you’re going to feel more lonely because you’re not connecting with other people.
[00:12:11] Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:13] It’s like I think that might have happened because, like, they if they were those people sitting next to each other, because if they were, they probably just didn’t know what to say and things became awkward. And one person flips out their phone and they’re like, this isn’t this is a group of four people. That’s embarrassing. But yeah, I get it because, like, I feel like if we were in a world without smartphones and or if we just left our phones at home, we would be forced to come over the conversation and meet new people. Whereas when we’re in those situations where we don’t know what to say or you’re on a date and things become a little awkward and you flip out your phone because you don’t know what else to do, um, you know, that kind of stuff would be prevented if we just didn’t rely on our phones too much, you know?
[00:13:01] Yeah, but I honestly feel that just kind of goes back into Instagram itself because people get notification and they start going into like stories and they just kind of goes down that. And then once one person picks up their phone, another person will pick up their phone and see what’s going on and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, kind of going off of that, though. So obviously there’s a big problem here and I’m trying to solve it, removing likes. But what does that really mean for the platform? What does that mean? It’s going to happen. So at least in the positive side of it, what I think is going to happen is that instead of accounts or individuals posting what’s going to get likes or what they think is going to do well away from what they’re generally doing, it’s going to go way back into storytelling about what you what you actually care about. It’s also going to go more towards thought leadership. So what you believe in, it’s going to provide businesses, outlets to kind of create this community effect and people actually following or engaging with people based off of if they actually care about it, not because that person is an influencer and it already has 10000 likes or whatever. And that’s the only reason why you like it. So I think it’s going to create more authenticity on the platform. But I think the other side of the equation, by them removing likes like I said, it gives the power back to the platform. And I think the repercussion of that is going to be advertisements. So because they’re going to be removing likes and there’s less influencers, they can create more push for advertisements. So in scroll, while you’re going down your feed, you’re going to get more and more advertisers. It’s owned by Facebook. That’s what Facebook’s business model is. There’s no reason why they’re not going to implement that back into Instagram. They need to make money somehow. And I think that this is what the approach are going to take, whether that’s good or bad, we can go in. That’s a little bit later. But what do you think’s going to happen now that they are planning on removing likes? And how do you think that people are going to react to it?
[00:14:44] I mean, there’s yeah. So there’s two sides of the coin, right? There’s definitely going to be those people, celebrities included, who are going to react negatively to it. And there already has been some backlash there. Like like I think it was Nicki Minaj. Nicki Minaj said that she’s going to stop.
[00:15:01] She said she’s going to stop using Instagram and she needs to figure out what to do with all of her time, which I thought was hilarious. Yeah, but so, yeah, you got people like that who basically only go on to Instagram for the likes. Right. They they feel like only purpose is for the lies. And then on the other side people are going to.
[00:15:20] People in brands are going to become more authentic, like people like, for example, I used to post covers and stuff on Instagram and YouTube and likes were a big factor of what I ended up posting. Yeah, like I would take retail things like five times, six times, seven times just to get it good enough where I was like, this will get enough likes. This is like three or four years ago. And then I haven’t been posting since then. But I feel like if once this roll out fully happens, I will be a little more motivated to start posting on the platform again because I’m less afraid of being judged by the number of likes I get. You know, it it’ll motivate somebody like me or another creator or another artist to just put their stuff out there and create use Instagram more as a portfolio of like this is what I have to offer.
[00:16:20] This is what I want to express is what I want to show you and take it as you may. And then brands, on the other hand, will start be more focused on creating a story around their products and their services. And yeah, just overall, I think things will just be a lot more authentic.
[00:16:41] Hmm. I definitely see that. Do you do you think that the amounts of content going to get pushed out is going to decline or do you think it’s going to be the same as it is right now?
[00:16:51] That’s interesting. Honestly, like I think overall, I feel like it might decline a little bit.
[00:16:57] But from individual contributors, I depending on who it is, I feel like there will be an increase.
[00:17:04] Just like if we go back to my own example, I would definitely post a little bit more, you know, just photos of my everyday life or whatever, not caring how perfectly curated it. It I made it on Lightroom or Photoshop, right? Yeah.
[00:17:21] And yeah, on whereas like the the people who choose to stay on the platform who are more focused on the likes, will probably decrease fairly significantly because they have less stuff to put out there. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:17:36] And I think, I think the new metric that people are going to be considering more is the engagement side. So many comments are getting. Are people really caring about it, sharing it, removing likes? I think it’s good because that’s the really the biggest dopamine factor there, which some people are chasing. And that’s why they were doing content just to make content that they would get like not even authentic. Yeah, but I think there’s can be less volume of content, but it can be higher quality. I mean, to your point, I agree with that. I think more people will start posting stuff because they feel less judged. But at the same time, I think bigger brands are going to should be posting less but with higher quality because they should now be pushing that thought. Leadership really think about the messaging, making sure that people really, you know, attracted to what they’re talking about. Yeah, it was really good segments. And I also do believe that Instagram is going to be pushing more towards video content. That’s why TV is created even in stories. I think that now without by removing likes, it creates a new platform, which is kind of a a micro YouTube in a way that you’re posting small segment videos, but a little bit more frequently than you’d be posting on YouTube. And by that, you’re creating this new environment for the platforms. If they’re trying to be the what would you say? Like the safe, safest place to be, whatever they’re doing that because they’re probably trying to steer away from the negativity and that’s trolling that happens on YouTube and kind of creating their own microenvironment.
[00:18:59] Yeah, well, the trolling can still happen. Yeah, I forget which celebrity was that pointed this out. But, you know, comments are still an issue, too. Oh yeah. So that that’s definitely still something that can happen. And I hope Instagram considers that a little bit more too, because I mean, yeah, the lights are one issue with the comments. Like that’s where I think all the bullying and stuff happens for sure. But anyway, back to the whole video conversation. Another metric is view counts, too. Yeah, they never said that they’re getting rid of you. It’s not OK. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, that’s definitely when it comes down to influencer marketing or just like the way people judge the performance of their videos, they’ll be able to see that. Oh, one hundred people saw my video yesterday, but I saw them today. Right. And they’ll be feeling much happier today than they were yesterday. Um, yeah. Same thing with the TV and everything. That’s what people are going to be judging themselves off of for sure.
[00:19:56] Yeah. I mean, the analytics aren’t going away, so I mean, you can still see your peak times of posting how much your posts are getting. You can see on the analytics side. Yeah. But I think that they should never remove that because I’ve removed the whole concept of the business being, yes, if you can’t track what’s working, what’s not as a as a marketer, there’s no point of being on there. Yeah. Defeats that whole purpose. But yeah, I think the shifts can be interesting. But kind of going back to what I stated before, I the. Negative side, I think there should be more advertisements and more ad push, and that’s because if you’re removing likes and moving this influence factor, it causes brands that want to be out there and kind of build more audience since it’s not getting done by likes to put money into ad budgets so that people are getting funneled into their Instagram pages or into converting sales, because as of right now, Instagram ads are one of the best converters into actual sales. And that’s because you have a visual representation of a of a tangible product and you can actually kind of represent whatever issue a watch or whatever swipe up and you can buy directly. So they’re definitely to do an advertising push. That’s that’s. Yeah. Pretty set in stone. How are they going to do it? No idea. So at least on the negative point, I think that it’s going to cost a lot of people to possibly leave away from Instagram because they’re just bombarded by display ads. Yeah, but the positive side of it and we’ve talked about this many times before, is as long as those advertisements are providing value or finding something that I actually care about in their marketed well, I’m OK with it. Yeah, I’m perfectly fine with it. Yeah, both of us have bought something because we’ve got an advertising for it and we didn’t know about it beforehand, but more than a couple of us.
[00:21:32] Some more but yeah, totally.
[00:21:34] I see your point and yeah, like most people I know do not like ads so but with the way that ad tech has expanded in like the last couple of years has been tremendous. It still fascinates me. And I think it’s just going to keep growing like every single day. I just feel like it gets better and better. Like the ads that I see are pretty damn tailored to, like, my lifestyle or at least stuff that I’ve seen online. Right. So I’m anticipating that once Instagram does is ad push these like in the few years down the line, like these ads are going to become very, very natural feeling like and I’ve seen I’ve seen brands like push their products on one their own personal pages, but also serving by serving the ads as if it was a post I would have seen naturally, if you do. Yeah. So like an example is a watch company. I think it was movement watches. And, um, well, I followed them because when I had their watch already, which I think I found through an ad, I’m not a hundred percent sure or like a sponsor deal or something. And then two because their page is super esthetic. Um, the third point to add to that is that Instagram like added this feature where when you type on a photo, you can click on a link that leads you to a page to buy the product, and that is becoming more native within the Instagram app itself. So I’m anticipating a lot more ads to look like this where super sediq like, oh, that’s a nice picture of a watch and that’s a nice skyline in the background. And I want to buy that watch and all I have to do is click on it. And two seconds later I paid one hundred bucks to get to watch it. So that’s the way I see it going. I don’t know about you.
[00:23:26] I mean, for me, I think Instagram is going to have to figure out a way to prevent over push of advertisements, because as you’re starting these companies already established, they already have good cash flows. They have a marketing department, they have a concentration team. They’re able to create these very immersive ads, which is a great opportunity because it’s actually creating a new market. So even for us and what we do with free media, this is an opportunity that needs to be explored, which is creating these very immersive display. That’s great. It’s it’s providing more opportunities to market. But I think the downfall is is let’s say that you kind of have to push advertise. There’s a lot of individuals that are just terrible ads and I’ve seen it all the time. And whether it be like a musician trying to push ads or whatever, and if I’m getting those on my feet, that’s going to bother me a lot. If it’s a good ad and I like it, it doesn’t bother me. But if it’s like a crappy ad that just destroys the flow of me going from 50 feet, that’s going to really bother me. And that’s going to make me not want to be on there because I don’t care. Right. But as Facebook is kind of fixing it with the entire Kabab, which is a lot of people don’t know, like you’re the hamburger menu and then the Kabab is the three dots. So on the kebob, actually, no, I don’t think this songfest because I don’t Google, but you’re able to pick and choose and hide, which advertisers don’t care about. So if Instagram is able to face up to Facebook, so if Instagram implements that, it makes it very easy for you to avoid getting advertising in certain spaces. And that provides value, I think, on both ends of the spectrum, because the advertiser will know that their ad is not functioning, it’s not going well, and they need to change it up or buy an ad agency to create it for them and other projects, the consumer, because no longer are they getting bombarded by just ads and ads and ads, because millennials, Gen Z and Gen X, all of them, he adds. It’s ad blocker rates to. By ad blocker rates and all this is insane, like everybody’s get ad blockers because it’s just too much, it’s not authentic, but if it’s made an authentic way and Instagram can facilitate that in a very easy user experience, I think then it solves the problem for everybody. And I think the biggest problem with a lot of people that understand how display ads or social media ads work is they try to, oh, this is going to reach three million people. This is a great ad. I’m just going to boom, three million people going to see it. And then they get one person go to their website. Yeah, it’s because they didn’t start they didn’t know what to say. They don’t know what their segment is and they don’t they don’t know where they’re located and they’re not doing the messaging correctly or whatever. This protects them as well. Not waste your ad dollars anymore because display ads are based off impressions. They’re not based off of clicks. Yeah. If you’re doing impressions and everybody’s seeing it but nobody’s clicking on it, you’re just wasting your money. So I think that way it kind of protects both and allows Instagram to be a profitable business. At the end of the day, it’s a free platform, but they need to make money somehow.
[00:26:16] I think that would be a win win. Yeah, totally.
[00:26:20] But kind of going off of how social media is changing. What do you think as a digital marketer, what should your approach be now to Instagram and kind of how that leads into other platforms as well?
[00:26:34] I again, I think brands should focus more on creating a story and authenticity, definitely planning out their content and making sure that everything that they post connects to each other to like form one major story. So like an Instagram feed is the book. And each post, I guess you could say, is like a chapter or a page in the book. That’s the way I think it should be on Instagram at the very least. And same with other platforms as well. And, you know, there’s tech talk and suffers on the rise. So I know a lot of people are probably posting randomly on there, but there’s also a lot of people who are creating stories around their personality on that platform. So, you know, if people are dancing, if there’s like somebody who’s dancing on Take Dog and his brand is around dancing, then the rest of his post should be focused around that like personality type to attract that audience that wants to see that kind of stuff. You know what I mean?
[00:27:44] Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think the one thing also for my Instagram removing likes, I think digital marketers should keep in mind that if one platform is doing it and they’re now kind of the leaders in that space and we applaud them for taking that step forward and realizing that this is a problem, we’re trying to create solution for it. But a digital market to understand if one platform is doing it, most likely other platforms are going to follow suit pretty quickly in one way, shape or form. I don’t know exactly how the other platforms would go about it, but even Twitter CEO applauded Instagram for doing this. So you can kind of see that other platforms will follow it. That means that your strategies that you’re doing now might not work that much. So my recommendation to digital marketers or digital strategists is, yeah, 100 percent authenticity and brand storytelling. So instead of you posting a lot of content, that’s just to get likes now you should be creating a story and kind of getting the community to buy in and become loyal to what you’re doing. Yeah, being a thought leader in the space, I think any brand that’s on social media right now on Instagram that’s trying to be a thought leader, removing likes is going to give them a huge opportunity because people are going to be drawn to it because they like the content, they’re going to engage with it. As for other platforms, I would say they should really follow what the trends are and where things are declining, what the audience segments are. So Facebook, the primary segments. Forty five year old mothers. So if you’re whatever you’re doing, that’s that’s your Facebook. LinkedIn, obviously very professional and seeing kind of how the algorithm works. And then tick tock, as we discussed, that’s a 12 to 16 year old market segment. It’s a fantastic platform. It’s growing really, really well. Digital marketers to see like on Instagram, we’re doing this thought leadership piece. How do we make it more creative and fun on tech talk? But what you talked about, making sure that they all come together and their storytelling are part of a bigger objective, a bigger book. Totally. But yeah, I mean, social media change and what their impact on mental health. A digital marketer needs to be following this trend consistently, because I think if if a social media strategist is relying on Instagram right now and they’re only relying on Instagram, yeah. They’re unfortunately going to kind of fall off the map. Yeah. You can’t stick to one platform.
[00:30:00] You can’t you can go hard on one for sure, but definitely distribute yourself on different forms of media. Right. Like Instagram, your main thing, dabble a little bit into Twitter, into Facebook, a little bit tech talk, maybe a little more and as well as LinkedIn. And then, as we’re doing right now, podcast, right, so everyone strategies are going to vary a little bit.
[00:30:26] Yeah, but definitely sticking to one platform is in the long term, it could be a recipe for disaster because once one’s Instagram, if Instagram’s your main platform, that’s the only platform that you’re on, ones that falls off a little bit or even a lot, just like how Facebook did, then your brands could be done more, right? Yeah.
[00:30:47] So and I think that’s I think that brings up a good point. That’s kind of what contin are you putting out there and how can you put it on other platforms in another way? So, for example, a lot of Instagram models are going to really suffer from the station. They should be freaking out because a lot of Instagram followers have created this hype and cloud based off of a false perception of what they stand for, the amount of likes they’re getting on post. Yeah, I’m not going to talk bad about anybody, but there’s a lot of a lot of pages out there that are just literally girls with their booties out or whatever, and they have a bunch of followers. And those those they’re going to suffer because they’re going to lose that influence very, very, very quickly. So, for example, if you’re a model in the space, figuring out how to create your brand, now more on tech talk or how to professional creator or whatever, and not just relying on Instagram because it’s a it’s going to be a downward spiral for those individuals. But if you use Instagram correctly, as it’s changing, too, I think there’s a huge opportunity for anybody to become a thought leader, whatever space you want to be in. Have you seen any models on LinkedIn, by any chance? No. And I actually do think if a model was to create a brand online brand on LinkedIn and thought leadership would be kind of a tell our story through modeling. Yes. And show what the realities of that world is like and how you can create positive change and influence in philanthropy or whatever. Yeah, I honestly think that be pretty awesome. Yeah, it would be awesome. Yeah, but LinkedIn by far the most underutilized platform for sure. And that’s because a lot of people understand it or they’re too afraid to post because it’s a professional platform. They don’t know what they can and cannot post. Yeah. Which you have to be careful about because that’s your professional brand and you want to keep it that way. But yeah but yeah, I mean, that goes back into I being put all our social media is, are very different to figure out what content pieces. But if you’re relying on one stream you’re eventually going to die out. Mm hmm. Yeah, definitely cool. But kind of close it out. So obviously we talked about what’s happening with Instagram, how it’s changing. What’s the problem with their solution is what do you think is to end it on kind of a positive note? What do you think, though? The positive side are the the best part about social media really is.
[00:33:01] It definitely allows people to express themselves and as I mentioned earlier, like I used to post covers on social media, I also used to post like photos and stuff like whenever I travel. And then I’d come home and edit them. And I created like a different, like account just for that. And it was definitely fun for a little bit until I got to into like, my posts aren’t getting enough likes or not enough people are seeing it. My hashtags aren’t working and they’re going to keep changing its algorithms. Then that’s when I kind of lost its allure to me. And I kind of stop I just stop posting on both ends. Right. So for me and for I’m sure for many other many other creatives and artists out there like who want to express themselves, I truly believe that removing the light counts and not focusing on that will definitely help us, you know, be able to put ourselves out there again and get back into our passions or get more involved with our passions for sure.
[00:34:09] Do you think? I think the positive outlook on social media, kind of where it’s going, is and I hope this shift really does change is going from comparison to collaboration. Yeah. So instead of focusing on how you’re better than somebody else or how do you stack up to somebody else or what somebody else is doing, collaborating with them. Complimenting them. Yeah. Oh, they succeeded. I do this all the time. If any of my friends I see that they did something cool I’ll message, I’ll be like, oh that’s awesome. Congratulations, man. Like just being a positive. I bring in positivity and encouraging people to take a risk and encouraging people to pursue what whatever their ambitions are. Yeah. Get away from that whole competition side. If social media does the shift towards collaboration and instead you find somebody who, for example, you’re you’re an artist and you find somebody who’s a really good content creator just hitting them up like, man, I love your work. Congratulations on that. And then making that into a collaboration project where you can get a music video or something like that. I think that’s what social media can be so amazing because social media itself has provided the opportunity to connect with anybody in the world and create a brand anywhere in the world. Yeah, in the last decade, more billionaires have been created than the century before that. And that’s pretty much because. So Internet and social media together allows us to interconnect. Yeah. If we can make that into a platform for collaboration, which LinkedIn is, LinkedIn is actually a great example of this. They’re helping individuals get jobs and literally people are referring to other people for jobs, which is awesome to see making that on an Instagram level. So artists or content creators or whatever your story is, there’s a lot more positivity there and just pushing it at the end of the day. I mean, like if everybody just like, honestly just share love and just like respected each other, it just seems to me to be so, so great. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, that might not become a reality, but I think that’s the positive light that people should look at. Social media.
[00:35:54] Yeah. What if Instagram ever created, like joint accounts, like one instead of a profile being about one person? It’s like one account that like links two to three people together. And I don’t know, I’m just thinking of stuff right now. But that’s like one way to go about collaboration. Right? We’re like multiple people can create a brand together. I don’t know how this would look because people can obviously share passwords and stuff.
[00:36:23] So, yeah, my mind’s just working right now. I just I guess what you’re saying is like let’s say that there’s a company brand and then you can interconnect your personal accounts to it to show that you’re all collaborating on that personal brand or something like that. Yeah, yeah. So there’s like the middleman but it shows like that account was created by whatever and put it back in without the way that’s done now, which is like everybody just has to log into that one account and post on it. Yeah. So that way you can create kind of a micro distribution on who is contributing towards project or brand.
[00:36:52] Yeah. That’s like one like really extended portfolio or something like that. Or like on LinkedIn. I was LinkedIn would allow people to do like joint articles. I wanted to do that with somebody once and there was no like easy way to do it. And I just ended up writing the article myself. But yeah, it’d be cool to like do like a joint article and have like a coauthored article on LinkedIn. That’s one way LinkedIn could do collaboration. I know like Instagram is already done like live stuff where you can do like multiple people are on a live stream. Yeah, you do the same thing. We like take talk as well. We’re Yeah.
[00:37:30] Anyway we’re going to go off on like a crazy tangent here. Yeah. But I mean going back to your point and coming back to my point as well, it’s if they promoted more activities like that for collaboration, it’s shifted away from the comparison in the mental illness side to more collaboration right now working. And then I think the last piece that social media should really all a social media platform should take into know is how do we get individuals? I know this kind of counterintuitive to what their business model is because they want people to stay on as long as possible. But how do we get people to kind of connect outside of the platform? How? We get them to talk in person, how do you get them to eat up and stuff like that?
[00:38:04] Honestly, I feel like if if Instagram really does care about people’s mental health, they will shift towards that. We have yet to see if they will. But like, it would be a pretty awesome to see that.
[00:38:16] I think it’d be awesome to see that. But other than that, there’s still business. They still got to make profits. That’s their end goal. Even though they can say what they want, they’re going to make money. So we’ll see where that money kind of drives them at the end of the day.
[00:38:27] Yeah, I mean, they’re creating like hardware now. Like, they got they got what is it called a portal or something like the video thing. So just watch them, like create more physical stuff in our everyday life and oh boy, it’ll get it.
[00:38:40] And we’ll talk about data piracy another time because I can go on that for days and days and days, because at the end of the day, everybody will give up their privacy for convenience.
[00:38:49] And that’s simple as that. That’s why everybody has their Facebook login for like 20 different websites because they’re just too lazy to create passwords and accounts. Now, Facebook has all your data, but we’re not going to go into that right now.
[00:39:01] And I think just to close it all out, once again, I applaud Instagram for what they’re trying to do, will kind of follow up as they’re going. We’ll definitely have more conversations about this and writing out an article and kind of talking about the full picture of where we see social media going. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Well, thank you for tuning into the Brew. It’s a great episode. Thank you for joining me. Thanks for having me.
[00:39:31] Thank you for tuning in to the break, I hope you enjoyed this episode and tell us what you thought about our conversation in the comments below. If you guys like our content, make sure to follow us on a very social media platforms and we will see you all next.
