Yahoo, Tumblr And Social Media Stuck In Neutral

It’s worth noting that the biggest social media story of the year so far has nothing to do with innovation but rather the sale of an existing platform, Tumblr, to an entrenched tech giant, Yahoo YHOO -1.74%. It may be a sign that the first big social media land grab has come to an end.

The idea that the social media industry is settling in is a strange one. For a while, it seemed like a new massive platform would pop up every few years and the pattern would keep going forever. From 2006 to 2011, Facebook FB -2.01%, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram all hit growth spurts and solidified their status as giants within incredibly short time frames. But the phenomenon seems to have come to a halt. Recently, the most promising attempts to break into social have not been new concepts, like Pinterest was in 2010, but rather purported giant killers like Google GOOG -1.85% Plus. And the giants are still in great shape.

While it’s hard to say what exactly is responsible for putting big social media into neutral, a likely culprit is that the industry has hit some sort of sharing ceiling. Humans will not share infinitely, we have a limit. Sharing a photo on Facebook is fun, but sharing the same photo on three additional networks starts to feel like work. Posting a single status can be rewarding, but posting ten in a day will likely annoy your friends and make you want to take a nap.

We love engaging in the social world, and can spend hours there, but we all eventually get sick posting, reblogging and imagining new concepts to push out. We won’t keep on sharing endlessly.

The Pie of Low Friction Sharing

Once we accept that there’s not an infinite willingness to share, it’s fair to say that there are a finite number of big social platforms that can thrive. Sharing is what fuels their existence. Without it, they would be empty structures.

Those at the top today have carved out a niche by becoming sharing depots for one low friction form of content or another. Instagram and Pinterest run on images, Twitter runs on short bursts of information, Facebook used to run on photos, but it moved towards information and then bought Instagram to keep itself balanced. Tumblr, for its part, is unique in that it is conducive to the sharing of images — photos, GIFs and memes — but is also used by a small core of users to write and share short and mid-length blog posts. It’s sort of the caulk of the social media world, filling in gaps left by the others.

All these platforms do what they do well and, as long as they mess it up, there will be diminishing returns to share content elsewhere. Google, for instance, thought it could create a better version of Facebook, and perhaps even did with Google Plus, but it was too late to the game for the vast majority of Facebook users to give it a shot. Google Plus’s average user now spends just under seven minutes a month on the platform, as compared to just under seven hours for Facebook. One we share something on Facebook, there’s little reason to share it on Plus as well.

What Happens Now

Here’s where things are likely to go from here: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram will stay at the top for the time being, but they won’t all be there in perpetuity. Even though it might feel like these platforms have been around forever, they are all less than a decade old and we’re still adjusting to them. The novelty will wear off eventually, opening up opportunities for new entrants.

Facebook, for example, is already seeing some cracks in its armor. Pew recently found that 61% percent of Facebook users take breaks lasting several weeks and, as the AP reported yesterday, more and more teens are migrating to Twitter. These are signs that opportunity does exist for social media newcomers, but the challenge for them will be to figure out how to capitalize on the inevitable fatigue with those at the top today.

Still, it will be a long and hard road for new entrants, especially given the fact that VCs are investing less in consumer technology. “Consumer behaviors are starting to ossify on the web,” wrote venture capitalist Fred Wilson in a blog post last year. “It is harder than ever to build a large audience from a standing start.”

That said, Yahoo’s deal for Tumblr is probably a good one. It was able to snatch up one of the three still-private social giants at a relatively low price tag. If Yahoo lives up to its promise not to screw Tumblr up, it will likely have a seat at an exclusive table for some time to come.