Trendsplosion 9: Social media exhaustion
It is periodically necessary to declare social media fatigued, exhausted, or dead, in the manner of Keith Richards decrying the decline of rock 'n roll, so that people don't simply accept that it's become part the natural order of things, which is in fact the case. The flattening out of Facebook enrollment or passive use of Twitter are not signs of social media's decline, but rather of its maturity.
Despite the headlines, social media has never been about the success of its most prominent commercial platforms; it's about a fundamental change in the way users consume and share content online, which includes but is not limited to their interactions with brands. Today no retail site worth its salt fails to include consumer reviews, no media site fails to showcase commenting and sharing, and no consumer hits a new restaurant without first reading about how a waiter there failed to take somebody's drink order for like 10 minutes, and never even apologized or anything. Social media in its mature phase is much tougher to manage, but that's why we have top 10 trend lists.
