Year after year, Facebook has dominated the social media scenario with new introductions and innovations to add to their basket and 2015 was no different. But, ever since the conception of social media, unlike the popular belief of critics, it has had a promising nature and is offering something new every passing year. This year not only saw varied developments within Facebook but it also proved to be the year which saw the transformation of Instagram into a completely different social media platform and helped Twitter tighten their grip as one of the best live update platforms over the internet. The one who said social media wasn’t a permanent solution to spreading the word around, definitely did not predict the evolution of the same. Along with these popular mediums of social media, the internet also helped newer channels establish themselves and accommodate into the never ending land of social connectivity. While LinkedIn has grown into a major customer engagement platform and a popular stop for recruiters and service providers, Pinterest has proved to be much more than an average article website and is slowly evolving into a popular medium of communication.
Let’s take a look at the popular innovations and trend makers in social media as we say goodbye to 2015.

Facebook’s Continuous Domination,

Facebook, started with a vision to connect people has moved beyond the concept of likes. Over the years, it has expanded beautifully, subtly dissolving into various parts of our daily life and leaving an impact on businesses small and big alike.

While more and more business are leaning onto Facebook for marketing and spreading out the word about their products, Facebook is the largest social media platform for online marketing. Its large scale integration with e-commerce websites and addition of the ‘Buy’ button is a trend which has just started out but will go a long way giving birth to ‘S-Commerce’ which focuses on social media as platform to enable transactions and commercial activities.

Not only does it focus on ‘selling’, but more careful are the businesses about taking care of their customers. Facebook has been an active platform for customers to speak up about their customers and for the companies to take of the shout outs.

Yet another trend which has worked well for the company is its integration with videos and Live Feed feature. In some spheres, Facebook is already leading YouTube in terms of video views but the most important feature rolled out is the Live streaming functionality which is being beta tested under the name of Facebook Live and can completely transform the online video feed service in the coming year.

With video platforms like Snapchat, Instavid, Vine, Hyperlapse and the Twitter owned Periscope already used by millions of users, Facebook is in for a treat as it ventures into the Social Video functionality.

Twitter’s Dilemma: Is it a pause or stagnation?

2015 was a tedious year for twitter as it lost on CEO, found another, moved beyond the basic idea of tweets and had to deal with a lot of abuse and tension over its platform.
But, it was also one of the years which could be major stepping stone and trend setter for the upcoming year.

While it faced its share of problems and issues, twitter was also seen as a major platform for marketers to instantly get the word out leading to some brilliant campaigns on the platform such as #ShareACoke campaign.

In addition to such geniuses, twitter product cards set a benchmark for good customer experience, hence making an entry into the S-Commerce arena with the trending ‘Buy’ button inclusion for testing purposes.

With the integration of the mobile communication system and the internet, advertising, marketing and social media have come down to the portable application based systems and this has been a key trend for twitter as it has impacted millions of mobile users as well.

Twitter also owns Periscope which, with a user base of 10 million users, is one of the most promising live stream and video based services. This has further laid the stepping stone for a trend which will take over in the coming time and contribute to achieve virtual reality.

Instagram: The SEO Takeover?

Google has made a mark so strong that it is going nowhere, no matter the amount of competition it faces. SEO is a long term solution to websites and businesses getting recognition and it is an effective but slow marketing technique.
Instagram, which has popularized the hashtag culture to a whole new level since twitter, has also seen a vast expansion over the past year. Numerous businesses have now shifted to Instagram for their marketing and social media strategy implementations.

The number of followers is like your audience on Instagram and the wider the audience, the higher the popularity. The number of influencers using the medium is increasing and a lot of brands and businesses are partnering up with such parties have large following to promote their own brand.
But, it is also necessary to understand that although this is an intelligent approach, smart decisions need to be taken to find out the right audience.

Branding is a major influencer when it comes to social media marketing, especially on Instagram. Various trends are created every second of the day, some of them live up to be brand specific hashtags, can be called ‘brandtags’. Creating such tags has a situation which is a win for both the community and the brand.

While comparing SEO to the hashtag culture is feasible, it is too early to comment on either as both of them play their own part. Yet it’ll be interesting to wait and see the effects of the hashtag culture on Instagram which has just initiated and has a long way to go.

While these are some of the top social media marketing platforms with promising products and services, several innovative solutions such as Google plus by Google and their latest email app Gmail Team has surprised us with innovative solutions for an easily accessible, smartly managed simplified email experience. Several video blogging apps continue to leave an impact on the internet and it would be interesting to see the trending social media platforms and how these collaborate to get the most out of the infinite world of internet, bring the consumers closer to the service providers.