4 up-and-coming social media sites that you should know about

Social media sites are going through a period of monumental changes, with newer entrants, mergers, acquisitions, and disruptive features fundamentally altering the status quo. In recent years, there have been a slew of new additions to this landscape, with budding startups taking on the legacy giants by addressing key user concerns, and unlocking substantial value in the process.

For businesses, startups, and freelancers alike, a social media presence is a necessity, and so is being on top of latest trends, and transitioning to different platforms based on where their audiences are headed.

In this article, we cover 4 such up-and-coming social media platforms that have made quite the impression in recent months, and are thus, worthy of checking out to be a part of your marketing mix.

1. TikTok

From its humble beginnings in 2016 to over 1.2 billion active users today, the short-form video hosting service by Bytedance has come a long way. At its peak, the platform added 8 new users every second, earning billions in revenues for creators and influencers.

The platform’s resounding success prompted legacy social media giants to launch their own short-form video services, with Instagram’s Reels, and Youtube’s Shorts joining in on the action. While so far only 9% of marketers consider TikTok as an avenue to promote their business, the remarkable engagement the platform generates should give rise to more going forward.

2. Discord

What was once a niche app for the gaming community has since expanded its horizons to host audiences across niches, segments, and subsets.

With over 150 million monthly active users, spread across different niche-specific servers, the service represents a stellar opportunity with superior targeting capabilities for marketers and business owners. The platform is known for its lighted-hearted parlance, as evidenced by its whimsical themes and avatars, and a broad ecosystem focused on cool Discord avatars.

While the service itself doesn’t sell ads, many popular servers and their owners offer advertising and promotional services that can be beneficial. Beyond this, businesses can set up their own channels or servers, building an audience and community of their own on the platform.

3. Mastodon

A microblogging service that is similar to Twitter, but has certain characteristics that are borrowed from Discord. This is essentially a self-hosted social network, with numerous independently run nodes, each with their own moderation policies, terms of service, and code of conduct.

While the platform has witnessed steady growth over the years, it peaked over the past few weeks owing to the takeover of Twitter, reportedly onboarding 200,000 new users within a week. It still remains at nascent stages, meaning there is plenty of room for new users to set up their base, and grow with the platform over the coming years.

4. Polywork

A worthy contender for LinkedIn’s dominance in professional networks, Polywork goes above and beyond to address the former’s various shortcomings. This includes simple, and shareable profile links, clubs for like-minded people and more.

Polywork already remains ahead of LinkedIn on the product front, it's only a matter of time before it catches-up on network effects. Being an early-adopter, businesses and freelancers have an opportunity to establish themselves as power users on the platform before the hordes arrive.

Final Words

After nearly 2 decades and 4.2 billion users, social media is just getting started, and with newer trends and technologies like Web 3.0 rising to the forefront, we will likely see a lot more user-centric, and decentralized approaches to it in the years ahead.

All of this makes it an exciting time for businesses, marketers, and freelancers alike, to get in on the bandwagon early, and rise with the platform or service from its early stages.