The Social Media Clone Wars

How Influencers Are Taking Over Hollywood

Have you ever felt like you’re seeing the same thing over and over again on social media? That’s because you are. In recent years, social media platforms have become more and more alike, copying each other’s features and formats in a desperate attempt to keep users engaged and advertisers happy.

Instagram has Reels, which is basically TikTok. Twitter has Fleets, which is basically Instagram Stories, which is basically Snapchat. Snapchat has Spotlight, which is also basically TikTok. And TikTok is basically Vine 2.0, but with more dancing and lip-syncing. All of them are powered by some level of Artificial Intelligence, usually serving up content from people you’ve never met.

Why are all these platforms looking so similar? Well, it’s simple: they’re all competing for the same thing: attention. Attention is the currency of the internet (thanks, advertising), and whoever has the most of it wins. And right now, TikTok is winning big time.

TikTok has over 1 billion monthly active users, and its average user spends 52 minutes per day on the app. That’s a lot of eyeballs and a lot of time that could be spent on other platforms. So it’s no wonder that Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and others are trying to emulate TikTok’s success by offering similar features…