The Rise and Fall: Case Studies of Social Media Apps That Soared and Then Sank

Social media

Let’s face it. Social media platforms have helped millions of people across the world achieve their goals and improve the quality of their lives. Communication has been made easier than ever before. Regardless of how far someone is, all you need is a digital device and internet connection to send them a message. The marketing world has also evolved rapidly. And businesses have made a lot of sales thanks to social media. While creating a social media platform might sound like a great business idea, not all of them grow and thrive. In this post, we are going to discuss about the social media apps that soared and sank. 

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1.Yik Yak

Yik Yak rose to popularity at some point that it was valued to be at least $400 million. It came with a plethora of issues but the platform managed to raise over seventy million bucks in venture capital funding. Young adults quickly adopted it back in 2014. One of its biggest problems was its anonymity, which attracted mostly college and high school students as users. The platform allowed them to post anything they had in mind for other users in different geographical areas to interact with. This led to big problems such as acts of violence and bomb threats. 

If you are a user of TikTok, you’ve probably experienced these issues. If you’ve been asking yourself, “why is TikTok banned in my nation?”, it’s because of national security threats and privacy issues. With TikTok unblocked, you can watch your favorite videos. TikTok unblocked allows you to converse with other users. Unblocked TikTok also helps you discover new products and services in the digital space. TikTok unblock is made possible by using the TikTok ban VPNs. The popularity and usage of Yik Yak had greatly declined towards the end of 2014 due to many issues. In early 2017, it was shut down.

2.DailyBooth

This was one of the most popular photo blogging platforms that allowed users to take a picture with a caption every day. It was similar in many ways to Instagram. It shut down officially towards the end of 2012 after being launched a year and half before Instagram.

Celebrities started joining the network after its launch in February 2009. It had gained so much popularity that by September 2009, it hit its one millionth photo. By March of 2010, it had more than 3 million photo uploads and ten million comments. DailyBooth sank towards the end of 2012 after Airbnb took over its management to help the platform achieve its travel mission. Today, DailyBooth only exists in people’s minds.

3.Vine

This was one of the failed social media platforms. Vine made huge contributions in making video popular. Before it was officially launched, Twitter bought one of the progressive mobile apps that showcased the potential in coupling social media with video. It was an idea that many had not entertained at that time. The app impressed so many that in 2013, it became the most commonly downloaded free app in the IOS App Store in the United States. At that particular moment, no app with video functionality could match its popularity. However, its success didn’t last because it was unable to adapt unlike its competitors such as Snapchat. Twitter was forced to shut down Vine towards the end of 2016.

4.Google Plus

Google Plus was one of the old social media sites that died. Google’s attempts to build a successful social media platform failed once again. Google Plus was a unique platform that played a key role in the evolution of search and educating digital marketers about entities around the world. Google created Google Plus with the aim of taking Facebook’s place in the world of social media. However, it failed. The biggest problem that it faced was that it wasn’t a social media platform. It didn’t offer anything useful to users. And that’s why it ended up being a defunct social media platform.

5.ITunes Ping

This was a popular platform that played an important role in integrating music and social connectivity. Users could access the content that their friends listened to and follow their favorite artists. Users could follow each other. However, the other person had to allow them to. ITunes later integrated with Facebook to give platforms such as MySpace competition. In the end, the two were disintegrated to make the iTunes Ping exclusive. Most users did not like this. Some users also posted spammy links on the platform thus harming user experience immensely. Hacking and phishing were also common on iTunes Ping. The app wasn’t updated consistently to add new tracks. The number of users started decreasing and in 2012, Apple closed it.  

6.Google Buzz

This was a connectivity and microblogging app that allowed people to share valuable content. Its design was simple to allow people with basic knowledge of apps to start conversations and build an engaging blog that delivers easily. It allowed users to share content on popular platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Its lack of privacy options was one of the reasons that led to its failure. In less than two years after its launch, it was closed and replaced by Google Plus, which also failed.

Conclusion

Every social media platform is launched to be the next big thing in the digital space. However, there are times when things take a different turn. These are some of the social media apps that died. Knowing why these old social media platforms died will help you avoid repeating mistakes especially if you have a goal of developing the next popular platform. 

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