Well 2024 has been an interesting year for many reason, but here in the UK for us here involved in Social Media it has been a tough year. The old guard of Social Medai ie. Facebook and X/Twitter have both had huge falls from grace here in the UK, whilst still seeming to plough on in other regions. New platforms have come to the fore and some have disappeared. On a personal note I was going to make this a video – but our household has had a nasty flu bug for 3 weeks and my voice is still rather croaky thus making that a painful experience! So here it is, a nice article instead….

On the whole 2024 has been a year of lots of diversification and changes in social media. No longer is it normal to stick to one platform, but most people post on multiple platforms. Bluesky and Threads have made massive inroads into people lives, whilst Facebook is now seen as old fashioned and Instagram is kinda flat though still massive. Lots of reasons for these trends are simple – here in 2024 going into 2025 it is actually harder to post to multiple platforms than it has ever been. Facebook often removes links to your own content as trying to get likes, and Twitter/X removed many of the ways to easily share content. Instagram you need a business account and often a paid method to do it, whilst Threads needs an Instagram account. So if you write an article on say WordPress – which has had its own issues in 2024 – then you need to crosspost to all of the above platforms and it is no longer easy to do so as Jetpack sharing has become a weird plugin designed to monetise everything. This trend of having to make money from everything has risen as well, mainly due to the inflation issues that exist around the world which has seen budgets for social media and advertising slashed by the majority of smaller businesses. I mean big businesses still have lots of cash, even though they have jacked prices up and shrunk product sizes, but the smaller guys like us here at 3DCANDY have seen a rather large increase in just daily operating costs, which has not been matched by donations/subs/income. This “blog” uses WordPress and the cost of just having a broad spectrum of plugins and/or themes on WordPress has increased rapidly throughout 2024. Plugins that have been free for years have lost features or become paid for. Having a decent hosting plan has become more expensive. We have bespoke hosting here run by a sister company – www.relayeasy.com and the server costs there have increased pretty steadily throughout 2024 with a marked decrease in income and people willing to use the services we provide. Even the “free” services have seen less and less use this year. I’m not moaning, I am still able to pick and choose when I work realistically, but the income has decreased a fair bit with costs rising. This January I think I’m going to have to have a review of the services we provide and I am thoroughly expecting a rather large rise in how much I have to charge just to provide the same level of service. Perhaps a rise of 25% will be necessary. These rises are just simple effects of the inflation we have had over the last 18 months or so, which stubbornly refuses to go down despite the best(!) efforts of those in charge. All of these factors have resulted in a change in how social media is used, how people see it and with some real winners and losers…. so without further ado I have a few winners and some losers (in my opinion) from 2024!

WINNERS

Threads from Meta has been probably the biggest winner this year. With an estimated MAU of 300 million from almost nothing, it’s growth has been like ye olde days of social media like the growth of Twitter back in the day. For me though, this growth is based off a few simple facts, most people have Instagram accounts, which gave it an easy route into being adopted, and the fall of Facebook from the same corporation made it a simple move across. Add in the lack of ads so far (though I have been told multiple times they are coming in a few months time) and the fact that you actually see way more of the content you want to compared to its daddy FB and it is easy to see why it has had a big uptake. My only view here is that FB and Instagram were good until ruined by greed, and surely Threads will go that way too. I’m afraid it is only a matter of time…

Bluesky has also seen a large increase in use this year, but nothing like that of Threads. MAU is estimated to be around 30 million – which is a tenth of what threads and X/Twitter enjoy right now.But there were a lot of fairly high profile accounts that left X/Twitter for Bluesky in 2024 and whilst recently the buzz and vibe seems to have dropped off 2024 has still been a success for this platform!

I thoroughly expected Youtube to struggle in 2024. Newer platforms and especially the slowdown of livestreaming for many I thought would have a serious cost to Youtube. But despite the rise of TikTok and other platforms Youtube has stayed buoyant. The platform has fairly successfully integrated shorts into its products and has kept livestreams going despite the fact that they have significant issues with revenue and ads. The ongoing war against adblockers that has raged throughout 2024 hasn’t seemed to impact Youtube too much either, despite me thinking it would.
If I am honest it is the sheer ubiquity of Youtube that has kept it going – no other platforms have as much content, though of course the fact that Google highlights it in its searches, something that regulators are scrutinising goes a long way to helping it. It also has a robust set of apps which mean that the vast majority of devices in 2024 can access it easily…

LOSERS

Well I have talked about this quite a lot recently, and I mean Facebook had a good run. There are still there vast amount of users, as the MAU is estimated at 3 billion or so, but many of these are redundant or dormant accounts or the lurkers who just scroll past and don’t interact! As FB needs to keep the cash flowing it has made the platform full of ads, suggested posts and lots of prompts to boost a post. The side effect of this is that most posts are instantly drowned out by posts that are paid for. When you then add in the block facility, the arguing and just poor internet manners plus the community standards that are at best vague and damn right silly and, well, you can guess how interaction and actual social use has plummeted this year. I have asked people about FB and why it is dropping and the most common answer is always ads and not seeing what you want to see and second most common is it is old fashioned and for old people….
Really sums up how the platform has fallen when it is considered old. The run was good, it was long and FB still makes a bundle of cash for Meta, but threads and Instagram seem destined to be better long term bets until Meta ruins them as well!

X/Twitter has been another loser this year. Yes it hasn’t imploded like many thought, but Elon Musk has basically paid a fortune for his own internet mouthpiece. There is way, way too many things that have declined on X but here in the UK the fact that people were jailed for posting racist and illegal post on the platform has had a real impact on its usage and relevance. Plenty of people quit in protest and most went to Bluesky whilst Threads picked up even more users. US based users probably won’t agree, but as time goes on X is losing its grasp and relevance quicker than ever….

The final loser is a bit of a cheat as I am lumping together the Fediverse as a whole. I had really high hopes at the beginning of the year that the Fediverse would take off massively, but to be fair it has pretty much stalled. All those people leaving X/Twitter should have gone to MAstodon, but in reality the MAU has hardly improved to just over a million, yes a million. The advantages that were promoted over the years of decentralised instances being better in reality just put people off. Mastodon makes you choose an instance right at the beginning, and for most that is a no-no. Get the choice wrong and you can impact the whole experience. Peertube should be better then youtube with zero ads, and the content is easily available, but nope – again having to choose the instance puts way too many off. It’s not helped by the mobile apps also having to be designed a certain way to be allowed on the app stores, which really really limits how the majority of people consume their content these days. The harsh truth is that I cannot see now how the fediverse will ever become a mainstream force in social media like it could and probably should have done. Too many drawbacks for the non techy is hurting it real bad right now…

CONCLUSION

2024 has been a year of big wins and big losses. Inflation and the continuing cost of living has resulted in lower budgets for many and lots of previously free or cheap services now charging or those that already did having rather large price hikes. Social Media is no longer the wild west that it was, and rightly so, but as content is moderated heavily by platforms then it also means less post and the content you want to see is harder to find. This review is in no way a definite review, just my feelings and opinions. I have no wish to post a huge long article as this TikTok generation has a smaller attention span than ever before. Here’s to a great 2025 and lets hope that it is a positive one!