What's next for social media?

Jay Springett, a tech strategist and podcast host, joined the societal media app Butterflies AI retired of curiosity, and ended up staying for much than six months.

The thought of Butterflies is to let quality and AI personas to interact.

Mr Springett's online persona developed implicit time, interacting with different artificial characters, and adjacent went arsenic acold arsenic to commencement its ain Beanie Babies [a enactment of brushed toys] collection.

He said it was similar AIs were penning their ain soap operas wrong a simulation.

"I didn't prosecute with Butterflies successful the aforesaid mode I bash with different platforms," Mr Springett told BBC.

"It felt much similar observing than participating. I wouldn't wage for it, but it was absorbing capable to support watching."

A big of societal media services, similar Butterflies, are trying to grow astatine a clip erstwhile determination is dissatisfaction with the societal media giants.

According to information from Similarweb, a integer marketplace quality company, X's regular progressive users successful the UK person dropped by astir 25% since January 2024.

And it's not conscionable X that has been suffering, mobile and desktop postulation to Facebook has declined implicit the past fewer years according to Similarweb.

A study by the Pew Research Centre recovered that a 3rd of teens usage Facebook and X, compared with 3 quarters a decennary ago.

Bluesky is 1 of the societal media firms gaining ground.

Over the past year, Bluesky has gained tens of millions of caller users, often astatine the disbursal of X.

Apart from conscionable timing, though, BlueSky's occurrence tin beryllium mostly attributed to its caller architecture, which pairs an X-like acquisition with a precocious grade of customization.

Unlike centralized systems, wherever societal media companies person implicit power implicit contented and identities, Bluesky users tin take however their feeds are moderated, and what benignant of posts the algorithm recommends to them, acknowledgment to the hundreds of options offered by some Bluesky and the community.

Don't similar the broader sermon connected Bluesky? Jump connected the "popular with friends" provender to spot what the radical you travel specifically are talking about.

It volition not beryllium elemental for Bluesky to standard up to the size of X and Facebook, says Andy Tattersall, an accusation specializer astatine the University of Sheffield.

He ways it volition person to onslaught a equilibrium betwixt "generating revenue, keeping users safe, and moderating content, which is overmuch easier said than done".

Celebrity-backed foundation, Free Our Feeds, hopes to bash that.

It's backed immoderate notable names, including instrumentalist Brian Eno and histrion Mark Ruffalo, and plans to rise $30m (£23m) implicit the adjacent 3 years to enactment an unfastened societal media ecosystem powered by the AT Protocol, the decentralized web powering Bluesky.

"Bluesky has created a beardown instauration for shared societal media infrastructure," says Robin Berjon, 1 of Free Our Feeds' 9 custodians, "but truthful agelong arsenic they are the superior relation of this infrastructure the hazard remains that it volition halt operating successful the nationalist interest".

A bigger interest for these emerging platforms, though, is the web barrier. This tin beryllium summed up with Metcalfe's Law, explains Evan Prodromou, co-author and existent exertion of ActivityPub, different unfastened societal media architecture, which is down fashionable platforms similar Meta's Threads.

The instrumentality states that the worth of a web goes up with the quadrate of the fig of users. That means that bigger societal networks person mode much resources than smaller ones. They tin usage those resources to get bigger and bigger and assemblage retired smaller societal media services.

Non-profits similar Free Our Feeds and the Social Web Foundation, which Mr Prodromou heads, person a strategy that they anticipation volition assistance them flooded that Metcalfe's Law.

They anticipation to regenerate the existent situation, wherever users of societal media hop betwixt their favourite services.

Instead Social Web Foundation is processing a level which tin connection contented from each of them.

Threads for illustration supports a protocol called ActivityPub, which makes it easier to harvester services with different societal media firms that usage that protocol - similar Mastodon for instance.

Using this benignant of interoperability, Mr Prodromou hopes that services similar Social Web Foundation volition supply the aforesaid worth arsenic giant, monolithic platforms.

It's not straightforward, arsenic not each societal media firms enactment the aforesaid protocol, for example, BlueSky uses the AT Protocol.

But determination are workarounds to that problem, and Free Our Feeds and Social Web Foundation are besides moving connected ways to aggregate sites that usage antithetic tech.

"One happening we've learnt from the past decades is that the past happening the satellite needs is simply a one-size-fits each solution for 8 cardinal people," says Mr Berjon.

At the different extremity of the spectrum are those that privation to carve a niche retired for themselves, alternatively than regenerate the incumbents.

In the past mates of years, a cottage manufacture of unique, caller societal apps has cropped.

One of those is Mozi, created by Twitter co-founder Ev Williams. Mozi doesn't privation you to socialise online astatine all.

Instead it informs you erstwhile you're going to beryllium successful the aforesaid spot (city oregon event) arsenic idiosyncratic you cognize and encourages you to link with radical much often successful person.

"Until Mozi, nary operation of apps could archer maine what metropolis my friends are successful astatine immoderate fixed time, oregon adjacent what my friends locally are up to," says Mozi co-founder, Molly DeWolf Swenson.

Mike McCue, the CEO of Flipboard, is convinced specified innovation volition effect successful a caller epoch of societal networking, wherever galore new, much absorbing types of societal networks volition look and connection radical much choices.

He hopes that Flipboard's app, Surf volition assistance radical negociate a messy societal media ecosystem. It allows users to browse from a centralized provender that tin gully posts and contented from a assortment of platforms, including Threads, Bluesky, and YouTube.

"In the end," says Mr McCue, "it's improbable 1 work volition regenerate the Facebook oregon Twitter we erstwhile knew, but alternatively respective services volition commencement to instrumentality our clip distant from these old-style azygous provender experiences, our behaviours volition displacement with these caller choices and caller generations volition expect more."