Social Media connects billions of people across the globe every day, while advances in technology continue to shape the way we share or receive information. By combining social media with emerging technologies, we create new forms of communication and interaction that feel more organic and genuine. This post will take you through five intelligent ways social media can combine with emerging tech for better experiences. You will notice how these combinations can keep you connected, informed, and ahead of the curve.
AI-enhanced Social Media
Artificial intelligence can feel like a silent partner. It sits more behind the curtain than in front of the curtain, creasing your feed without you even knowing it. As you scroll through TikTok, Instagram Reels, or even Facebook, you view more than just random videos or posts AI sorts the contents it thinks you will appreciate, filtering out those things it thinks you may hate or dislike, and can even alleviate toxicity in the comments section to preserve some level of friendliness between users.
How AI affects your feed
- Content Curation: Algorithms are simply reviewing what you watch, like, or skip. With every interaction, they get slightly better at predicting the next interaction you want to see.
- Automatic Moderation: AI can automatically look at comments for spam or hate speech, which helps create safer online spaces for everyone.
- Visual Effects: Have you ever seen a viral filter or AR lens on TikTok or Instagram? AI has been leveraged to create fun overlays and smooth out your imperfections while streaming in real-time.
AI is a great way or method to deliver a more current and relevant experience for the users. AI uses data and advanced pattern recognition to provide a fresh feed, so every time you log in, you have a curated experience, and the brands have a new way to reach their best audience.
A Technical Perspective on Social Media & AI
If we dig deeper, AI is more than a buzzword. Let’s look at how it REALLY works on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and Reels.
Machine Learning Models
All of these platforms use deep learning to learn from billions of posts and videos. It identifies the type of content that people react to, share, and save. For example, TikTok’s For You Page uses neural networks that were trained on millions of videos. The app uses that training to predict the next video that you will likely enjoy; it can predict your interests before you even know them!
Natural Language Processing
Natural Language Processing is a field of Artificial Intelligence that enables computers to understand, interpret, and generate human language, both written and spoken. Facebook and Instagram’s tech not only reads text they can also understand the tone. AI can also detect subtle bullying by racist language, sarcasm, and spam. AI detects and filters out content—accounts that older filters would have ignored.
Real-Time Filtering
With the immense volume of content uploaded each minute, AI processes everything immediately when it goes live and scans the new content. Whether it is flagging copyright issues from recorded music on YouTube, misinformation on Facebook, or harmful content to others on TikTok, AI is hard at work to ensure these social media spaces are delightful and safe.
1. Organizational Use of AI in Social Media
Brands and creators use AI for more than just filters; AI has practical applications for all and can help you grow, connect, and differentiate yourself from similar content.
Intelligent & Personalized Online Advertising
Actually, AI studies user behaviors, interests, and service use on social media platforms. It serves ads that satisfy personalized experiences. For example, on Facebook, you search for workout routines, and within moments, you see ads for running shoes. Companies save ad spend by not showing ads to people who are uninterested, and consumers receive ads that are of interest to them.
Customer Service Improvements
AI chatbots are now responding to the majority of first contacts on sites like Facebook Messenger. These bots provide replies quickly and are available 24/7, assisting you in finding what you hope for, each answering in less time while providing more help.
Content Development and Trend Detection
Tools utilize AI to assist brands and creators in detecting trends as they appear. For example, if there is a new type of dance or meme that is exploding on TikTok, smart algorithms quickly notify creators to capitalize while things are still new. Marketers can tell creators the next best bet to be viral, allowing them to get a jump start.
Improving Engagement with Smart Replies
Instagram and Facebook now offer auto-suggest replies in comments and direct messages. This enhances reply times and keeps conversations flowing on reels comments consistently. Fast replies contribute to brands feeling more personable, while customers feel they can get immediate responses to concerns.
Fraud Prevention and Security
Integrating blockchain with AI helps place fake accounts and fraudulent claims to rest, helping build trust in both brands and users on social media. Secure sites mean secure sign-ins, verified identities, with transparent data, and people feel more comfortable sharing and building relationships online.
2. Augmented Reality Enhancing Social Media Engagement
Augmented Reality (AR) contributes a new layer to your social media experience. It combines elements with our real world, creating more dynamic interactions and memories. While the technology adds fun appeal, it also sparks creative means of individual engagement with content and poses a perception of immediate interpersonal interactions. Here are ways AR is redefining the use of social media for a better future.
Face Filters and Interactive AR Effects
Face filters and AR effects have been among some of the most widely used tools on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat. They allow you to modify your appearance or surroundings in real time, giving you the ability to turn a regular selfie or video into something fun or artistic.
These effects don’t just provide entertainment; they allow you to become an active participant. When you put on a face filter, you’re not just being a spectator; you’re being a creator. You can demonstrate moods, commemorate occasions, or simply share jokes with friends. With how simple face filters are to use and share, it’s easy to see why they can become popular so quickly.
Face filters increase engagement in a number of impactful ways, including:
- Prompting users to create and share bespoke content.
- Providing branded effects that create a closer tie to a product/campaign.
- Adding an aspect of familiarity and fun for users by enabling customization.
Face filters enhance users’ transition from passive scrolling to active storytelling, where you are part of the story, not just simply watching it.
AR Shopping Experiences
Shopping via social media has become much smarter with AR. No longer do you just have to hope that the product you’re considering fits your style or needs; AR provides the opportunity to try it on virtually before you purchase it. This is particularly powerful when it comes to items like glasses and makeup, but also furniture.
Simply put, it allows you to build confidence in your decisions as you can see products placed on you or located near you without the requirement of leaving your home or the app. AR shopping opens a link between an online exploration and a physical experience of testing, allowing for less hesitation and reducing the product return rate. Here’s what makes AR shopping intelligent in social platforms:
- Virtual try-ons that are able to fit your size, shape, or surroundings.
- Instant previews on how colors or styles might fit you.
- Instaset post or story integration that allows instant purchase options.
AR’s interactive shopping experience reduces risk, allowing for faster decision-making and an overall better shopping experience. This interactive approach makes social media a better place to showcase products and brands.
[Read related article: Maximizing Social Media Engagement – Strategies For Social Media Success]
3. Social Media and Cryptocurrency
Social Media is no longer just a hook-up for social communications; social media has come of age in a new realm, integrating cryptocurrency into new concepts regarding paying, transacting, earning, and displaying digital assets. This mature social technology brings advantages, ownership, and rewards based on blockchain technology to the ways you socially engage on these platforms.
Payments and Crypto Tips
Sending money online is not a new concept; social media allows social media users to pay or tip friends, creators, and influencers directly, using cryptocurrency. Some social media platforms have their own wallets, while others link to crypto apps, allowing them to transfer assets such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. This direct relationship eliminates the middleman, adds value, and reduces the costs of doing business in traditional ways.
You are able to:
- Instantly tip your favorite creators by sending a crypto tip while they are creating content or are in a live stream.
- Pay directly for goods and services that are discussed on social media channels, without leaving social channels.
- Receive micropayments for content and advice, maximizing your earning potential.
These features streamline the transaction process, making it more global, and present new potential rewards for engaging in richer content quality alongside more direct financial engagement.
NFTs and Social Media Profiles
NFTs aren’t merely applicable as art or collectibles. NFTs in social media serve as a part of identity. Users can link NFTs to their social media profiles or display NFTs on their profiles, which indicates what or who they own or value.
This can demonstrate many things:
- Imitation of a digital possession, whether it be artworks, made-up music, or limited edition items.
- A signal towards interests, tastes, or memberships of communities.
- Authentication of unique content that is based on either the individual who made it or who purchased it.
When users add NFTs to their respective social media profiles, they add an individual touch, which can represent a story to those who see it. It is similar to wearing a badge where those who were created, sought or belonged to an interest, trend or movement – that does not make as much of an impression as a profile picture.
[See related article: Can NFTs Deliver Real Marketing Value?]
Token-Based Reward Systems and Your Commitment to Social Engagement
In some social spaces, they provide users with tokens for achieving an active engagement – posting, commenting, or moderating – on behalf of their social platform. Sometimes, these won tokens will have real value either inside or outside the platform. They also provide a context for navigating and generating quality consumable content, motivating the user to stay active.
Here are the particulars of the enterprise model that can arise:
- You earn tokens, which are a reward for your hard work or creativity.
- Tokens may be designated to allow exclusive access to community features.
- People can exchange tokens or use their tokens to access keys or make payments.
Having this feature as a part of the model allows engagement to be a social commitment, where users’ input and time will earn rewards. Intended to keep the person using it, conversing, and have a socially gratifying experience.
Thus, social media and cryptocurrency are a critical pathway to socially connect, socially pay, and socially express yourself. As tipping with crypto and displaying NFTs, and earning tokens become more commonplace, these ideas provide new ways to provide unique experiences and connections.
4. Voice Technology and Social Media
Voice technology is changing how you engage with social media by removing effort and making it faster and easier. Since you speak instead of type or tap, you are using apps and searching for content with no hands. This transformation improves accessibility and adds a more personal touch to interactions with your friends and community. This is how voice technology is being integrated into social media as it exists today.
Voice Command Navigation
Utilizing voice commands for social apps provides you with the ability to stay connected while your hands stay busy! A few examples are when you are cooking, driving, or multitasking while handling tasks in a digital environment. Rather than having to use your hands to move the application, scroll the feed, play a video, etc., you simply dictate to your social media app, like:
- “Show me the latest things my friends posted.”
- “I want to play that funny video again.”
- “Open my notifications.”
Voice control opens social media by offering great accessibility options to people with physical challenges, people who struggle with text or typing, and anyone who simply prefers to be hands-free. Voice control also quickens basic use and app navigation, so you spend less time figuring out which way to tap and how to tap and more time enjoying the content that has been curated for you.
Voice Messaging and Social Media
Calling on social media is becoming more personal, too, with the proliferation of voice messaging capabilities. Instead of sending long text sentences or just emojis, you can record your actual voice to better express emotions, tone, and inflection.
Voice messages:
- They allow for more emotional and nuanced communication than text.
- They save time when you have a lot to say and want to avoid typing.
- They add an authentic and personal layer to conversations, creating a feeling of closeness.
People are using voice messages more frequently with apps like WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger. If you use voice messaging, it’s particularly useful in group chats or busy conversations where you do not have the time, patience, and sometimes the ability to deliver clear communication quickly.
Voice-Activated Content Discovery
When on social media, locating the desired content should happen quickly. Now with voice search, you can dispense with endless scrolling or typing out keywords. You simply state what type of content you would like to see, for example:
- “Find posts related to summer fitness tips.”
- “Show me recipes my friends have shared.”
- “Search for trending news focused on technology.”
When using voice-activated social media search, the platform utilizes its Artificial Intelligence (AI) to surface the relevant content based on your request, thereby eliminating frustration, increasing the speed, and improving the nature of your discovery process. Voice-activated search allows you to investigate topics, hashtags, or people without disrupting your flow.
5. Internet of Things (IoT) Facilitating New Connected Social Experiences
The Internet of Things (IoT) connects your devices, allowing your ordinary objects to become tools for you to connect with others in an entirely new way. Social media is taking advantage of an entire network of smart devices to make communication and sharing experiences more automatic, immediate, and relevant to you. Here’s how IoT intersects and enhances social media to create richer forms of social communication based on what unfolds around you.
Social Sharing in Smart Home Settings
Think about your smart home being integrated with your social media account while you relax on the couch. One aspect of IoT devices, including smart speakers, smart lights, IoT Lights, or smart thermostat, is their ability to automatically post updates or activities for you on your feed. For example, maybe your smart fridge puts a note in your log that allows you to go grocery shopping, or your home security system logs a check-in status when you leave or return.
Monitoring changes to your smart home and sharing updates to your friends or family happens on its own. Each day I will experience a special moment that will be shared. You decide the experiences to share with others, and the connected home will do the rest. In other words, it makes your home a social connection, being present was more immediate and the connections were more authentic.
How Wearable Devices Enhance Social Connections
As we think about wearable fitness devices, they have become more than health trackers; they are a mobile way of bringing social networks closer to your body and daily routine. Wearable devices will send you immediate notifications regarding your friend’s social engagement reactions to your day, such as texts, comments, or likes, to your wrist.
Wearables keep you plugged in, letting you check your phone every few seconds.
Some wearables even let you quickly reply using a voice reply or a pre-programmed response, so your wearables help to streamline short connections and replies. Wearables will provide new ways to share experiences. For example, I can take a picture of my running stats on my wearable or share my heart rate data during workout sessions with my social app for my friends, or anyone who follows me for motivation or friendly competition with my connection circle.
Because wearables are programmed and designed to be part of your daily routine, and not distract or impede your daily life, social networks become more readily shared and sometimes automatic.
Live Data Sharing via IoT
Instantaneous and live data sharing is an asset that IoT brings, and social media uses this benefit through the stories or posts that always seem fresh and interesting. Think about all of the live uses of data sharing. A fitness tracker can share your workout activity, a smart weather station can share local weather conditions, or an environmental sensor can share local air quality data to a group – the same can all be posted and shared live with social groups.
Live and instantaneous data adds dimensions to your post, allowing other people to join or respond from factual, relevant, and immediate information. You can authentically challenge friends regarding your last run, notify a community regarding the weather, or share the conditions of your workstation while on a video call.
More than engaging in social interactions, you are connecting using verified facts that are current and relevant to a conversation. Live sharing takes factual, daily actions and turns them into stories for other people to respond to in real time, which makes your social feed seem alive and current.
In Conclusion
In the end, the partnerships these social network websites manifest provide us, ultimately, better experiences and fresh ways to be connected with one another. Brands will target more precisely and experience engagement that is more personal. Content creators will create content more efficiently, communicate with larger audiences, and preferentially reward core audience members. Every day, people using social networks as they have been designed will experience smarter feeds, different, more interactive content, and a clearer perception of what is real.
As we continue to see these detailed integrations advance with these services, we can expect the value of these services and online experiences to increase. Be ready to adapt to further tools and share your experiences as we continue to shape your voice as part of the next wave of online innovation.
[Recommended reading: 10 Best AI Tools For Social Media Marketing]
[Image credits – Main Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay; Bitcoin: Flickr; other images are credited their respective SMR articles.]
Meredith Rosy is a passionate content writer and social media researcher at planyourgram.com. With a strong grasp of platform algorithms, she frequently contributes to blogs on content strategy and marketing.