1. Bluesky vs Threads
X has seen consistent decline since Elon Musk bought and renamed Twitter, with the company valuation dropping by 80% since the takeover and UK/US user numbers dropping. Donald Trump’s re-election sped up this process even further, with many vocal celebrities and journalists announcing their exit from X in favour of alternative platforms, citing that Musk’s free speech policy and light-touch moderation had led to misinformation spreading on X in the pre-election campaign.
Bluesky, initiated by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, was heroed as the return of ‘original Twitter’ by many high-profile influencers fleeing X, and has grown to 25 million users. This saw it gain ground on rival platform Threads, owned by Meta, though Threads has maintained steady growth over the past year and still has the edge at 33 million daily active users and 275 million monthly active users.
2025 is likely to see continued rivalry between the two platforms. Bluesky’s functionality and independent spirit have gained acclaim from journalists and celebrities. Meanwhile, Threads’ integration with Instagram could make it easier to slot into brands’ and creators’ existing social media strategies, and Meta’s deep pockets may allow them to develop new features more rapidly to entice advertisers. For example, Threads gained over 100M downloads within a week of launching in 2023, but lack of tools like analytics, scheduling and desktop versions, which have since been introduced in 2024, made it less viable for brands at the time.
Bluesky is starting to look like it could outpace Threads, but it’s still too early to make a call. After all, the social media landscape is littered with challenger apps that were once hyped as the next big thing but are now a distant memory.
2. AI – Benefits vs Backlash
It would be impossible to leave AI out of a list of social media trends. It goes without saying that AI will continue to reshape many aspects of the social media landscape, but brands are quickly learning that there’s a right way and a wrong way to integrate AI into their strategies.
Notable 2024 cautionary tales include Spotify and Pantone. Spotify’s eagerly anticipated ‘Spotify Wrapped’ campaign was this year met with criticism, as rumours started to spread that the company had laid off staff and relied on AI to create its data-driven shareable content. Fans felt the AI version was lazy, predictable or just plain off-base, and lacked the surprising elements from previous years that showed a human touch, like showing the small town whose music taste best matches your own.
Similarly, Pantone’s Mocha Mousse colour of the year announcement, shared on Instagram with an abstract swirling video of the chocolate-like mocha shade, was met with hundreds of comments criticising a design-led company for relying on AI over talented creators, particularly when some AIs may have been trained on creators’ artwork without their consent.
Of course, that’s not to say that AI can’t continue to have a hugely positive impact on a brand’s social media approach too. Opportunities like making research and analysis more efficient, or allowing designers to automatically extend a background to resize an image, will simplify mundane tasks and let marketers spend time on the tasks that really deserve their expertise.
3. The TikTok Shop Takeover
Social shopping (direct commerce through social channels, not just social ads that push to third party websites) has been touted as a trend for many years, but UK and US growth in 2024 felt particularly seismic. While in 2022, both Meta and TikTok were forced to pull the plug on investment into live social commerce thanks to lukewarm demand in European markets (particularly compared to its popularity in Asia), in late 2024 TikTok relaunched a revised social shopping push.
The result was immediately apparent, as it announced global TikTok shop sales tripled year on year for Black Friday, surpassing $100m in value. The number of UK businesses selling via TikTok shop has doubled in a year, reaching 200k, and daily UK sales have increased by 93%. Since 74% of Gen Z internet users reported using TikTok as a search engine and 51% preferred it to Google, this signifies a major shift in how younger consumers are discovering and shopping for products, cutting out Google and traditional websites and making TikTok marketing even more crucial.
What’s more, 2025 could also see a new element added to this opportunity, with TikTok reportedly close to testing ‘Mini Apps’ in-stream. This would allow third party developers to create apps that can be used without leaving TikTok, from ordering pizza to buying gig tickets, much like the options that are already commonplace for users in China’s Douyin version of the app.
4. Closed Communities
Social media’s major point of differentiation over traditional advertising has always been the fact it offers a two-way dialogue with consumers, but not all brands embrace this opportunity to create real dialogue and two-way conversation.
Recent shifts suggest consumers are tiring of the mass-announcement approach, and turning instead to one-on-one dialogues or closed communities that offer a chance to connect with smaller groups of likeminded people, away from the public eye.
DMs are now the primary way people share on Instagram, rather than posts, reels or Stories, and Instagram has upweighted the importance of less visible metrics like saves in the algorithm to prioritise content people enjoy privately, not just share publicly.
Likewise, Instagram Broadcast channels, designed to let creators develop a deeper connection with their loyal followers through a private channel, have slowly grown in popularity, with 1.5 billion messages shared in them each month. Meta has continued to develop new features for this format, and recently announced new interactive update options to facilitate more two-way communication with fans within the channel.
5. Embrace the Strange
Today’s consumers have grown up with social media. They crave novelty, surprise and surreal humour, and they know when they’re being sold to or presented an overly polished, disingenuous view of the world.
That’s where brands that embrace the strange have found success.
Take Duolingo for example. Their global exploits in 2024 included hosting a spoof ‘Broiler room’ DJ set where only consumers who could prove their Duolingo streak could enter, and releasing a mildly unhinged naughty or nice themed Christmas campaign and Spotify playlist threatening to kidnap your parents if you didn’t complete your daily lessons.
Then there’s TK Maxx, who spotted the popularity of the Sylvanian Drama TikTok account, which has attracted nearly a million followers by creating not-very-family-friendly mini soap opera episodes starring Sylvanian Family toys. TK Maxx teamed up with the account to create drama-fuelled scenarios featuring stuffed toys discussing topics like situationships while Christmas shopping at TK Maxx. On paper as a campaign concept, this could raise some eyebrows – are situationships too out-there for an outlet retail brand, and is the connection to the brand and products strong enough? But these three campaign videos generated 17.8 million views, compared to just 3.5 million cumulative for the 20 other TikTok videos TK Maxx shared in November and December.
That’s not to say that every marketer should ignore brand-fit to jump on trends or try something out-there. TK Maxx’s campaign built on years of gradually positioning the brand as more unique, colourful and creative before taking a leap. On the other hand, Jaguar’s sudden and unexpected rebrand certainly got the brand noticed, but has drawn more scorn than praise, though it remains to be seen if the shock tactics will still generate sales.
