Copycat Culture: Is Competition Causing the Cloning of Social Media?

By Oni Abudu

What is life without social media? Millions of users flock to social media apps to share personal stories, photos and videos about their lives.

The growth and evolution of social media apps can be accredited to the consistency of technological innovation. With this rise of innovation, more social media apps can be created, especially as the market for it is so much easier to access for future entrepreneurs. However, it seems to be having an adverse effect as the increased amount of competition is starting to create a noticeable ‘culture of copycats’. The social media apps that started out unique are now becoming remarkably like each other.

With the creation of Facebook in 2004, other social apps followed hot on its heels such as with Twitter launching in 2006, Instagram (2010), Vine (2013), Musical.ly (2014) and Snapchat (2011), and the race to the top of the social media tree grew very heated. 

Each of these apps came out with their own unique features varying across the board. It seemed technology had worked its magic, giving consumers a multitude of choices, and the number of social media apps available to the public was growing. However, with this growth came the need to monetise and keep hold of user attention. As social media began gaining in popularity, it became less about the unique user experience and more about advertiser revenue.

Just look at some of the instances in which social media sites have copied each other’s most popular features: After Snapchat came out with Snapchat Stories in 2013, it seemed as though every social media site followed suit upon its success. Instagram launched Insta Stories in 2016, quickly followed by Facebook (2017), WhatsApp (2017) and then YouTube (also 2017). Even LinkedIn has launched a new Stories feature.

It’s not just Snapchat that’s been a victim to ‘copycat culture’. TikTok, which absorbed the blueprints of Musical.ly - which had itself perhaps taken the ultra-short video concept from Vine - has found itself at the sharp end of ‘innovation’. Instagram has recently announced a new feature called ‘Reels’ - just as with TikTok, users can make 15-second video clips set to music.

YouTube seems to have jumped on the bandwagon too as it has allegedly started testing for a new 15 second video feature also remarkably like that of TikTok’s. As Digital Music News says, ‘YouTube seems to be copying TikTok to make short-form video-editing easier on the platform. But Twitter had all of this back in 2014 with Vine before it shut the service down.’

Copying popular features of competitor apps doesn’t automatically work, however. Just this month, Facebook shut down its attempted TikTok rival, Lasso. As you’ve probably guessed, Lasso allowed users to shoot up to 15-second long videos and overlay popular songs.

Updates and advancements are all good but maintaining a sense of originality should be more of a priority where these apps are concerned. Creating unique experiences for users is exactly what made these apps popular in the first place and so to forsake that in order to be ‘competitive’ - when all they’re really doing is copying - seems a bit wayward. 

Nowadays, social media apps are becoming increasingly homogenised and repetitive to use. Competition has stomped out creativity but perhaps there’s a chance these massive social media companies will use their unparalleled resources to see competition as an inspiration to put out more original new features of their own. For the moment though, ‘copycat culture’ seems to be the latest social media trend and, until these companies decide otherwise, it seems like it’s here to stay.