What Lifestage Might Mean For Social Media
Lifestage might be attached to a powerful brand, but is it just a symptom of the larger social media evolution?
For those of us who are no longer able to suffix our age with ‘teen’, the recent launch of Facebook Lifestage may have slipped by unnoticed. Amalgamating elements of Vine, Instagram and Emotizer, Lifestage is a new social media platform that allows school-age children to share their feelings and opinions through short video profiles.
What is Lifestage?
Despite originating in Facebook’s Californian headquarters, Lifestage is far removed from its parent platform. Posts are public and visible by anyone, with the intention of encouraging classmates and fellow pupils at a particular school to connect once twenty members of that institution have registered. There is no messaging functionality – to avoid abuse and trolling – though the lack of privacy settings places personal information in the public domain where it’s freely available, despite account restrictions on users aged 21 and over.
Interesting though Lifestage is, it is unlikely to add much to today’s saturated social media landscape. What it says about Facebook is far more pertinent – Lifestage is effectively a tacit acknowledgement that the world’s largest social media platform struggles to appeal to younger audiences. Anything with parental approval instantly seems uncool to teenagers, and Facebook’s ageing demographic appears passé compared to Snapchat and even Twitter – itself dominated by users who were born before the Millennium.
Lifestage Potential? It depends…
While Lifestage is currently only available on American Apple devices, it will likely extend to other platforms and countries before long. That’s assuming it proves popular enough to become established; Facebook has a long and inglorious history of failing to break into new markets, from its Notify newsfeed to the facebook.com email service and various deal/incentive/coupon schemes. It’s already unsuccessfully tried to take on Snapchat with its aborted Poke and Slingshot offshoots, and few industry observers expect Lifestage to fare a lot better at poaching audiences from Vine or Vimeo.
Back To Basics
Facebook’s (teenage) product manager sees Lifestyle as an attempt to recapture the minimalism of the parent brand’s formative years, before Facebook introduced algorithmic timelines and cookie-powered advertising. Lifestyle’s very existence suggests that future social media platforms will be more focused and specialized, rather than trying to be all things to all people. Instagram is the go-to platform for sharing photographs, YouTube retains its status as the world’s leading video streaming service, and Twitter remains peerless as a way of connecting with public figures or communicating with brands. Each has its USP, which attracts like-minded users and encourages those all-important repeat visits.
We may be witnessing the fragmentation of social media into a distinct kaleidoscope of different platforms, each excelling at one or two specialized functions. Despite all the attempted diversifications outlined above, Facebook remains a status update platform. Meanwhile, arch-rival Google+ failed by trying to do too many things without breaking new ground in any particular area. It’s arguably better to have separate service providers excelling in a particular field, such as Spotify or LinkedIn. If this is indeed the point social media has now reached, new arrivals to the market will have to offer something very special to persuade new members – and in particular the crucial school-age demographic – to sign up and register.