This year, the trend overview looks a bit different than you are used to from me. This year, no list of features, but a prediction that applies much more emphatically to the social development than to the technical development of the medium.
Illustration of a woman looking at her smartphone.
If I summarize the year 2020 from a social media perspective, I have to conclude that it has not been a ' telegram data ground breaking ' year in terms of technical innovations. It may sound crazy, given the literally dozens of new features per week. But the cards seem to have been shuffled fairly well. If you look at the innovations, you have mainly seen what they so nicely call ' line extension ' in retail. Relatively small adjustments , expected new features and especially a lot of copycat behavior . Not very surprising.
And yet it was an eventful and memorable year. Something I don't see changing anytime soon in 2021.
The tipping point where control over data and privacy on social media shifts to the user.
Power is shifting from tech giant to user
Why was it still a memorable year? Because we can or perhaps should conclude that in 2020 and 2021 we are at a very important and interesting tipping point. The tipping point where control over data and privacy on social media shifts to the user. More than ever, the social media giants have to tighten their policies, they have to eat humble pie every now and then and we see initiatives emerging such as the Center for Humane Technology and Humathon . More than ever, there seems to be a definitively required adjustment in policy.