2024 in social media: Regulation, challengers and a flotation
2024 in Review
Is social media “social media” any more?
Social media companies might be trying to ditch the label amid souring public and political perception of the industry, but ad revenues continue to grow at substantial pace for many of the world’s biggest platforms.
Indeed, brands grew their investment in social and the creator economy as they sought to reach young users on popular platforms throughout 2024.
This is despite renewed apprehension around the effectiveness of such expenditure. A study from WPP agency EssenceMediacom notably found that major brands could be spending three times more on social than is optimal.
Here are five key stories in the world of social media from the past year to consider as we enter 2025.
Brands could be spending three times too much on social. You read that right
Regulation coming?
Concerns around youth usage of social media have reached a boiling point internationally, with regulation abound in a number of markets.
Most notably, the Australian government last month passed a ban on social media for under-16s. It is unclear how such a ban will be enforced, given the current lack of reliable, privacy-safe age verification technology. The Australian government has said options will be tested in the coming months, with the platforms themselves responsible for their implementation.
Regardless of the efficacy of policy implementation, other countries — including the UK — may follow suit.
This week, Scotland first minister John Swinney said a similar under-16 social media ban was “on the table”.
‘Blood on your hands’: 5 takeaways from US social media hearing
Meanwhile, in the US, congress passed a ban on TikTok, citing national security concerns over the app’s ties to China. With a federal judge upholding the law’s constitutionality in December, TikTok is running low on options, though it will seek an appeal to the US supreme court.
Such a ban, were it come to pass in early 2025, would significantly upset the social media market, likely to the benefit of short-form video competitors such as Meta and Snap.
However, US politicians have also showed rare bipartisan support for regulating social media companies more generally. In February, senators took turns excoriating CEOs for their lack of care towards online harms.
X becomes a blunt tool
Nowhere was the tension between the business of social media and its impact on democracy more apparent this year than on X.
Owner Elon Musk used his influence on the platform to alter algorithms to boost himself and Republican-friendly influencers and politicians who favoured Donald Trump.
If telling advertisers to “go fuck yourself” in 2023 wasn’t enough to sour relations, in August Musk and X sued the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), arguing the advertising bodies had illegally conspired to boycott expenditure on the platform.
The case was widely viewed as frivolous, but GARM was forced to shut down, unable to afford the legal costs associated with the suit.
‘Weaponised’ litigation: Industry stands ground against X following GARM shutdown
Even as users and advertisers have moved away from X, Musk’s $44bn purchase of Twitter has seemingly paid dividends.
While it is unclear whether Musk’s ownership of X directly influenced the US vote, Trump’s win has placed the world’s richest man into the inner circle of the next administration. Musk’s net worth has ballooned in the weeks since Trump’s electoral victory.
Musk could well shape an administration that is aggrieved at its treatment by established social media players.
Alternatives jockey for growth amid AI push
Tumult at X has created a gap for users seeking greener pastures that aren’t filled with unmoderated hate speech and harassment.
Two new competitors emerged this year to challenge X for the microblogging crown: Bluesky and Meta’s Threads.
The former now counts around 25m users, while the latter has 275m. However, user engagement on Bluesky appears to be punching well above its weight.
For now, neither platform allows advertising, although both have signalled an openness to developing an ad offering at some point. But, of course, it’s worth noting that Twitter was never a major part of media plans even in its pre-Musk heyday.
Apart from Threads, Meta had a remarkable year for growth. Total revenue grew 19% in the tech giant’s latest earnings, thanks to investments in AI paying off for advertisers.
Indeed, all major social media companies released new AI performance and creative tools this year, designed to make it as easy as possible to part marketers from their adspend.
While the result has been increased revenue from especially small and medium-sized enterprises, the amount of capital expenditure required to further develop and use these tools will require increased investment in the future.
Reddit’s coming out party
Perhaps the biggest social media winner in 2024 was Reddit, which went public in March and grew revenue substantially during the year.
The company reached profitability in Q3 for the first time, growing total revenue by 68% to $348.4m. Like its contemporaries, much of the growth was driven by the long tail, with advertisers adopting Reddit’s automation tools.
Looking ahead, Reddit is looking to compete not just in the social media market, but in search. This is especially true given “Reddit” has become a popular inclusion in Google search queries by people seeking authentic answers from real people and not SEO-driven articles on the web.
Earlier this month, the company launched its new search product. Dubbed “Answers”, it is an AI-powered tool that users can interact with to receive information and recommendations via a conversational style, akin to other chatbot-based search services from ChatGPT and Perplexity.
‘Social media’ becomes a toxic label
Reddit is one of many social media companies that no longer likes to be called a social media company. It prefers to refer to itself as a “community of communities”.
TikTok, meanwhile, calls itself an “entertainment platform”. Snapchat sees itself as a communication platform, with an ad campaign running throughout the year focused around the tagline: “Less social media. More Snapchat.” Whatever that means.
Pinterest is even more to the point: it wants to be a “refuge from the toxicity of social media”.
If one thing is abundantly clear from 2024, it is that social media has a branding problem. It is the media channel most associated with Oxford University Press’ word of the year: “brain rot”.
So social media is under siege by regulators over online safety, derided by even its own users (addicted though they may be) as potentially harmful for their wellbeing and apparently no longer comfortable with its own label.
And yet, like a boat beating with the current, it sails on nonetheless.
Social media companies don’t want to be ‘social media’ any more