We all use our social media a bit too much, so much that anyone who was last here 5 years ago would think people from the village hometown had locked us inside our LED screens. In many ways, social media has replaced, or at least, presented an
alternative to actual physical interaction. Talking online has become a part of our daily lives.
Using these platforms, and juggling Twitter conversations while you talk about marriage with your mum seems almost second nature,
which is ironic because some of the things you do now simply couldn’t be done 5 years ago. And that’s because they didn’t exist. Here are 4 of them.
(1) Posting Instagram Stories: Yea 5 years ago, your favourite social media platform for checking up
on celebrities, friend and foe only allowed you to post photos. Instagram only announced the video-sharing feature in June 2013. Before that, your best chance of getting famous of a short video was
on Youtube. What this means is that 5 years ago, you couldn’t have had a Charles Okocha or a Maraji . Thank God for technology. (2) Posting Speeches as Tweets: Back in the day, when the world was a much more peaceful place,
Twitter allowed users to post tweets within a 140-character limit. What this meant was that users often had to say as much as they wanted with as little as possible, or just act deep and post a thread.
Then in 2017, after heavy pressure from some who even wanted the platform to let them edit tweets and basically mop their bad judgement with toilet paper when they wanted, Twitter increased the cap to 280 characters.
(3) Snapchat Premium:
For those who might be inclined to go searching for Snapchat Premium in their app stores, there is no actual app like that. Nowadays, Instagram models and Bobrisky (for a short while) sell exclusive sexual content to users who pay a subscription to access the account where it is shared.
Snapchat and Instagram had been around this time 5 years ago but the people at Bad Ideas HQ simply hadn’t come up with this yet.
(4) Social media jobs:
How did it feel the first time you asked someone what they did and they responded, “social media manager”. Were you shocked or did you
sit somewhere and cry about how we had taken this a little too far? Today, social media is an integral part of the business for many brands, publishers and … well, businesses. To get the best of the opportunities that these platforms offer, experts
who understand the finicky workings get paid to work their magic. According to Social Media Examiner, 92% of marketers report that
social media is important to their business.
5 years ago, there was no such thing as a community manager who tried to convert a brand’s social presence into naira or clicks. Halleluyah for job creation.
ARIKS' blog 