Is it me, or is “social media” starting to feel different? While browsing Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat these days, I still surf through plenty of content from my friends and famous people I choose to follow.
But I’m also getting hit more and more with posts from people I have no connection with, curated by the services themselves. Take, for example, Twitter’s new food account that retweets people’s food pics and recipes; the best photos of the week chosen by Instagram; Snapchat stories about the Election in the UK or the Louis Vuitton Cruise, whatever that is.
The platforms are putting more and more energy into content that is user-generated, in the sense it comes from everyday people. But it isn’t social in the traditional sense, namely that it is created by or recommended by my friends or connections.
