The liquid self - emerging trends in media

Liquidity | facebook.com/RobinFayArts

Ooh, this is fascinating for those of who are, as one colleague puts it "multifaceted" and struggle with how to present ourselves:

The Liquid Self and Ephemeral Media
Facebook has defined the social media experience for the last 10 years. But more recently there’s been a move away from the “unified self" – that you are who you are to everyone you know across every social context. The corresponding shift has been toward apps that let you represent yourself to different people in different ways at different times: the liquid self.

and

Individuals may still use Facebook because it’s useful for getting messages circulated to large numbers of people (the network effect). But apps like Snapchat fill a different need: for spontaneous sharing without concern for consequences down the road.

Other trends:

• Algorithm anxiety (le sigh...  all of those changes to the Facebook algorithm which drives down engagement instead of up)
•  Redistribution of Risks and reward (viral doesn't equal increased traffic over the long term)
• Too Much of a Good thing (social media saturation - we have information overload)