Are young people sick of Facebook and broadcasting their lives online?

This is a sponsored post written in collaboration with Veeemotion. 

Rewind to about five years ago and Facebook was (IMO at least) in its heyday. Everyone who was anyone was on it, teens and 20-somethings were obsessively uploading photos, updating all of their friends about the minutiae of their lives and frantically ‘friending’ everyone they came across. But fast-forward to 2015 and the social network seems to have a very different kind of clientele.

According to all kinds of research and reports over the last twelve months, like this damning piece from TIME, the younger generations are tiring of Facebook. And fast. The social network was once a place for sharing with friends, but has since become a haven for all kinds of communications. This may seem like a good thing, but for early to late teens who value their privacy, there’s really nothing fun about your mum and your aunt discussing how cute you are in each and every photo.

So what’s the future? Well, over the past few years popular apps and services have emerged that aim to keep conversations private (or at the very least not public), which is why apps like Snapchat and WhatsApp are growing at dizzying rates.

We caught up with Mike Grant, the CEO of new social video app Veeemotion, to talk about social trends, control over content and why Veeemotion could change the way we share videos with each other in 2015.

Hi Mike! So why do you think so many young people have suddenly “woken up” to the fact that their photos, statuses and random musings should be ‘kept under lock and key’ so to speak? 

Over the last twelve months, we’ve seen a number of high profile, celebrity cases where individuals have had their privacy on social media compromised. This has happened both through individuals taking actions that were, in hindsight, ill-advised and through malicious hacking into private accounts. As a result, users of all ages are now much more aware of the risks of having their privacy compromised on social media, and are much more careful about what and where they post. Our research suggests that privacy is a concern for users as young as 11.

Does this mean that young people are moving away from these “broadcast” style apps and services, like Facebook, and are on the hunt for something else?

The way young people in particular use social media is changing rapidly. Users have a greater choice of services to choose from, and protocols are developing around what people post on Facebook vs  Instagram vs Snapchat vs YikYak etc.  Early pioneers in the industry, such as Facebook, are seeing teenagers in particular moving usage onto other services. Hence, major internet players are broadening their portfolio of services and buying up companies like Instagram and Whastapp.

Let’s talk about your app, Veeemotion. How does it solve some of these problems and why do you think it’s a great alternative to other video services that are already available, like say YouTube? 

Services like YouTube, Vine and Vimeo are fabulous platforms for sharing video content with everyone. If you are looking for the largest possible audience, those are the places to go. Veeemotion provides users with choices that are not available in the market today. We make it easy for users to grab and preserve content from social feeds and mobile video sources, and give users the ability to easily control how they share.  As a result we are able to help users to more easily capture and retain those fun, personal, valuable moments from fast moving lives, and share those with close friends and family. Moreover, we make it easy for users to go back, and relive those moments again and again. In many respects, we are a lot like Instagram …. except our content is longer lasting, and, I would argue, a lot more valuable to our users.

And finally, what do you think the key considerations are when it comes to sharing content in 2015 and beyond?

I believe two issues will dominate “sharing” in 2015 – security and segmentation. There is no question that awareness of privacy and security issues is impacting people’s choice of social platform and their decisions about what to share. That is a reflection of an increasing maturity in the attitudes of users. That maturity is also reflected in an awareness that one size does not fit all. People are engaging with multiple services for multiple purposes. Different apps are being used to meet different needs with different groups of friends and different situations.

This is an exciting time to be in social, and I am confident that Veeemotion will build a leading position globally, alongside the multifarious social media and sharing services that we consumers are looking towards to meet our multifarious needs.

Thanks Mike! 

If you want to try Veeemotion out for yourself, then you can download it for free from the iTunes store right now.