The Social Media Jackpot, Harder Than Ever
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What challenges are creators facing in the current social media landscape?
Smart, sharp, and slightly unhinged. Late Night's Fresh Perspective. The Last Show with David Cooper.
I remember a time when a teenager could post a dancing video and wake up in the morning and be globally famous. A small town figure could make a few scrappy vids and be an internet celebrity overnight. But those days, they might be ending. The algorithm may no longer produce content creator superstars like it used to. The internet's new rule? Get weirdly specific with your content or get ignored. So is online fame officially out of stock? That is the great question we are going to answer here with Sydney Bradley and Dan Waitley, both reporters at Business Insider. Dan, welcome to the program.
How did algorithms previously help creators gain fame?
Thanks for having me. And Sydney, welcome back. You were on the show earlier. Thanks again for being here.
Thanks again for having me.
So like these huge creators like Mr. Beast, what enabled them to become so popular in the first place before we get into what might be changing?
So folks like Mr. Beast, Charlie D'Amelio, Kabilame, they rose to fame on social media at this moment when algorithms were really putting a few big creators on everyone's feeds. And it helped create this new generation of basically superstars. And that's no longer true.
What did the algorithm do to enable them to become so popular in the first place? Like how were they discovered, so to speak?
Initially, the TikTok for you page was basically like a talent show. So everyone would log on and they would see a feed of videos. And if you were lucky enough to get showcased there, you could become super famous. But there were just a lot fewer creators on the app who were prominent. And what shifted more recently is everyone's For You pages, their feeds are a lot more personalized. So the videos you see are tailored to your interests. If you are interested in knitting content, you see people knitting. If you love basketball, you see people shooting hoops. So it's really changed the sort of types of content that people see and the content bubbles that we're all in.
Does this mean we're not going to see these kind of like general superstars like we used to see coming up? I don't know, five, six, seven years ago?
Stars are going to look a little different. So maybe it'll be someone in a certain niche being the person to follow if you want to watch knitting content or the person who is one of the biggest fashion influencers. But being the everything creator is almost just as hard for a social media platform to be the everything platform for everyone. There's so many things happening. There's so many ads that need to be placed. There's so many people now on these platforms that... Being the star is a lot more difficult than being a star.
It seems to me like in the early days you could collab your way into fame. Like you do a video with another moderately famous person. They do a video with you. You'd share each other's following. Now what I'm hearing is it's like stay in this very specific lane. You can't leave it. You need to be a very kind of fixated creator. When and how did this shift happen? Was it gradual over time or did the people at these companies like TikTok, YouTube Shorts, things like that, they just wake up and switch the algorithm overnight?
Yeah, I mean, the change was gradual.
What has changed in the way social media algorithms work today?
I would say it wasn't like we suddenly stopped seeing these mega stars. But I do think that in the last couple years, we've seen a push toward personalization. A lot of that is because every social platform is kind of trying to be TikTok now. Instagram used to be this place where you could build an audience, a following, you know, score brand deals. And now the most popular thing, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, Sydney, is Instagram Reels. People are mostly watching videos on Instagram. We also see similar trends happening on YouTube. YouTube Shorts, I believe, gets 200 billion views a day. And so the rise of short form video really, I think, is the sort of pivot point in terms of these types of stars growing.
these kind of megastars disappearing.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What challenges are creators facing in the current social media landscape?
0:02–0:44
2
How did algorithms previously help creators gain fame?
0:44–3:16
3
What has changed in the way social media algorithms work today?
3:16–8:55
4
Why is niche content becoming more important for creators?
8:55–9:19
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Last Show with David Cooper
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