The Transition: Move to Visual Social Media

There is no doubt that visual social media is overtaking text based social media. More and more social media users are skipping words and expressing themselves with visual elements such as videos and photographs. Videos are shared 1200 percent more than links and text posts combined and photos are liked 200 percent more than text updates (Bullas, The Facts and Figures). More social media sites are moving to the visual and storytelling formats, with Pinterest and Instagram as visual sites and Facebook adding the timeline feature to express information as a story. Pinterest is referring more traffic than Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn and Google+, via photo and video posts (Bullas, The Facts and Figures).

At the beginning of social media, we started with blogging, with long text heavy posts. Then we moved into the Facebook updates and our posts became shorter. Eventually microblogging was born with sites like Twitter giving the user a maximum of 140 characters to express themselves. Now with Pinterest and Instagram, most of the time users are skipping words and posting only pictures.

Why is this evolution taking place within social media? One opinion is that this shift seems to be caused by “our overwhelming preference for mobile devices” with 78 percent of Americans using their mobile device to access the Internet and only 68 percent that do it from a desktop or laptop computer (Connor). Generally, it is easier to upload a picture taken with a mobile device than to type a status or tweet. Another theory explaining the shift toward the visual is that using visualizations in the A.D.D culture we live in today helps readers remember content more than just words and visuals make meaning easier to understand at a glance in the multitasking culture (Trewe). In addition, editing tools have become easier to use and more readily available (Trewe).

One theory I haven’t found any explicit mention of is the use of signs/symbols/pictures that are used throughout our culture. From denoting the men’s and female’s restrooms to traffic signals to navigation through an airport, our culture uses pictures and signs all over the place, ensuring people from different cultures and that speak different languages are able to interpret meaning.

The transition to visual was an inevitable one considering the immediacy of the culture of today. Today, there are 2.5 billion camera phones in use, creating a massive increase in photograph creation; 10 percent of photos taken by humankind were taken in the last 12 months, as of May 2012 (Bullas, 6 Powerful Reasons). This statistic is staggering and shows that visual media is on the rise due to the importance of this medium to culture. The sharing aspect that the culture had developed with the use of social media also gives users a reason to take these photos; more than the want to preserve memories.

Images are important, not just in purely visual media, but in blog posts and articles as well, with articles that have images receiving 94 percent more views. Visuals are also important to consumers, with 67 percent of consumers noting that a quality picture of the product is “very important” when making purchases (Bullas, 6 Powerful Reasons).

The use of images is an important aspect in our culture and this evolution towards visual social media was something that was bound to happen considering the technological advances and the lack of focus in the culture and the need for immediacy.

Sources

• Bullas, Jeff. “6 Powerful Reasons why you should Include Image in Your Marketing (Infographic)”. Business 2 Community, 2010-2012. 28 May 2012. Web. 16 Dec. 2012.
• ---. “The Facts and Figures about the Power of Visual Content – Infographic.” Jeffbullas’s Blog, 2012. N.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2012.
• Connor. “Embracing Visual Social Media”. Pongr, 2012. 30 Aug. 2012. Web. 16 Dec. 2012.
• Trewe, Marti. “More Reasons for the Rise of the Visual Web.” AGBeat, 2007-2012. 6 Jul 2012. Web. 16 Dec 2012.