While posting a instagram story, I accidentally swiped right. Suddenly the colors of my story popped, red became maroon, blue became indigo and a text popped. “Rio De Janeiro”. Damn. Instagram filters. They still exist.
Filters was the killer feature of instagram. Everyone used to use filters a few years ago. And then . . . . we stopped. Why?
Remember prisma? All the posts were prisma posts for good few months.
What about those doggy ear AR stickers/filters? As glad as I am today that they are not popular now, at one point it seemed there was no escape from the girls with doggy ears posts.
And of course, AI enhanced images are all the rage these days. Will this one stick? or fade? My bet is that it will fade, and fast.
It seems that any novelty features on social media that enhances the way your photos and posts look go in and out of popularity. You know some other industry where things come and go out of popularity? – Fashion.
In fact things going in and out of fashion is almost a verb. And all the features that enhances your images and posts on social media are essentially that. fashion.
These features follow the fashion rule. If something becomes too popular, it looses it’s novelty and you need to find something else.
This is good as well as bad news if you are a social media company. The bad news is, even if your filter/AI enhancer feature is a hit right now, it will most certainly be a dud in a few months or a year. The good news is, that you can use techniques honed by the fashion industry over the last century to help your business.
Perhaps, don’t release a feature to mass market too soon. Maintain the illusion of exclusivity as much as possible. If something becomes available to everyone at the same time. it ll loose its novelty factor soon enough.
In fashion this happens naturally as it takes months for a brand to catch up on a particular trend. In digital business, you need to manufacture this.
Maybe think about cyclicality of your feature’s popularity. Cyclicality may not apply too well for the digital fashion products as tech changes too fast. Filters that looked cool on 5mp 2015 photos don’t really add that much value to 50 mp photos of today. And the AI features of today were not even available few years ago.
Still, I wouldn’t bet against cyclicality. The “look and feel” of film camera and VHS tapes have certainly came back in fashion.