What Are Your Top 3 Social Networks?

This article comes to us from the Speaking Human University Program, which gives voice to the opinions and perspectives of the next generation of consumers and marketers.

Snapchat, Pinterest, and Facebook are the social media channels that I use daily. Each brings variety, connectivity, and communication. These social media platforms are easy to integrate into daily life.

1. Snapchat

Snapchat effectively targets millennials because it’s easy to share pictures and videos on your story, stay caught up with friends and celebrities, and use filters. Content is only on one’s story for 24 hours. After that, it’s gone. Poof. No trace of the picture or video is left.

Snapchat does extremely well at constantly updating its content for consumers. For example, when Snapchat came out with filters, users did not know that was something they wanted. Now filters are arguably the network’s most important feature.

Snapchat also created the group feature, allowing groups of friends to create a group chat where they could share pictures, videos, and comments. In the group chat, all chat is saved for 24 hours then it disappears. Snapchat is not afraid to try new things and isn’t afraid of criticism from consumers.

A way Snapchat could improve is to have a feature that shows how many people you’re friends with and how many people are friends with you. These numbers are not always the same. A second feature would be to have an end count of how many people viewed the content on your story after it’s gone.

These two ideas would have value for both individuals and companies that use Snapchat. From a marketing perspective, this would give everyone a better idea of who your followers are and how to better target them in the future.

Another feature that Snapchat could/should develop on in the future is to add two sets of text on a picture. Currently, you can only put one per post on the Snap. With two sets of text, a user could highlight two aspects they believe are important.

2. Pinterest

Recently, I’ve gotten into reading motivational quotes, looking up workouts, and recipes for new meals. Pinterest provides a way to see all of those in one place in a randomized order.

It brings an interesting mix of results because it looks at what I’ve searched previously. This algorithm allows me to see new quotes, workouts, and meals that I haven’t seen in previous scrolls.

As I’ve recently started using Pinterest, primarily for personal use, I do not see anything that I wished it had or what it does poorly. I am sure as I utilize it more, I will see ways for Pinterest to improve.

One major strength that I see with Pinterest is its ability to bring back new results of interesting boards. I see what interests me with new results each time I open the app.

3. Facebook

Facebook keeps circles of friends and family connected in the digital world. With an easy-to-navigate platform, it’s easy to see what friends and family are up to and never miss a beat.

I use Facebook because it is so easy to sit there and scroll through status updates, memes, and watch dog videos (or some other pointless, but cute video). Telling yourself you’re going to spend five minutes on Facebook quickly turns into an hour.

I don’t know which features I wish it had. The interesting thing about Facebook is that they’re always trying to update and add something new. Facebook is a notable example where users don’t know what they need until they already have it.

This leads into my next point, Facebook’s greatest strength and weakness: constantly changing. Facebook anticipates and executes, and gives users a new experience that they can’t get elsewhere. On the other side, some of the continuous changes and updating are pointless.

Two examples of this are the story feature and the recent update that makes Facebook look like a text message. The story feature is pointless. Snapchat already does that and does it exceptionally well. Facebook was not built to have a story feature. The mobile platform looks like a text message format. It just looks tacky.