The Emergence of the Vertical Content in Social Media
http://www.forbes.com/sites/taitran/2015/11/07/snapchat-and-periscope-lead-vertical-content-trend-to-engage-millennials/
Over the past five years, millennials have been changing the way social media has been formatted. Steering away from the desktop, or horizontal content, and mainstreaming into mobile, or vertical content, social media is forever changing. Two social media apps have helped make this change happen, both Periscope and Snapchat. Periscope is an interactive app that lets users film a live event while others can comment or use emojis during the live feed. Snapchat, on the other hand, enables users to send a picture or up to a 10 second video to post on their My Story or to their friends. The cool thing about Snapchat is depending on where you are, you can tag yourself along with the name of the city you are in to let your friends know where you are. Both of these apps have helped the transition from the horizontal screen to the vertical, or mobile screen.
Since 2010, vertical screening has increased five fold, from 5% in 2010 to 29% in 2015. 60% of users of vertical screening are millennials. This shows that the transition to vertical screening content is something that app making companies will want to keep track of and change the way they make social media apps. I feel with the transition to more mobile apps, this will change the way people interact with each other from social media. I myself have used Snapchat. I think it is an interactive and fun app to use, I don’t use it every day, but I certainly see how many of my friends use it everyday and make sure people view their My Story through different videos and pictures displaying what they might be doing. We will see if these types of social media apps are here to stay, or maybe they’ll die out like most of them in the past.
Who knows where this vertical platform of social media will take us. It certainly has some potentially, especially being mobile and on the go. With different tech companies making the change from desktop to mobile apps, I believe we will see many similar apps surfacing. I think these apps can be both beneficial and not as appealing at the same time. Although these apps like Periscope and Snapchat can be useful, I believe many of the times someone posts something public, many people do not care about it and only view it to have the notification disappear. A lot of people are quite narcissistic, and these types of apps only help their cause of temporary fame. But maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps most people are interested in what users are posting about themselves and want to comment or send them back pictures and/or videos. It’s up to you what you want to post or not to post. As always, I would be safe and not post anything that your parents wouldn’t approve of in your My Story. It is amazing how a bad post can travel fast and impact the people that it was sent to. All in all, the way youth view technology is ever-changing and will continue to change in the future.