Abstract
This study traces appeals to authenticity, over time, in the promotional material of leading social-networking sites (SNSs). Using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, the public-facing websites of major SNS platforms—beginning with Friendster in 2002—were sampled at six-month intervals, with promotional language and visuals examined for authenticity claims. The authors tracked these appeals, with attention to changes in promotional copy, through to July 2016, among the most popular social media services (as determined by English-language web presence and active monthly user figures or, when unavailable, reported network size). The study found that nearly all SNSs invoked authenticity—directly or through language like “real life” and “genuine”—in their promotional materials. What stood out was the profoundly reactive nature of these claims, with new services often defining themselves, openly or implicitly, against legacy services’ inauthenticity. A recurring marketing strategy, in other words, has been to call out competitors’ phoniness by substituting (and touting) some other, differently grounded mode of authenticity. Since the affordances of social sites, even those touting evanescence or anonymity, make them vulnerable to similar charges, the cycle gets replayed with numbing regularity.
Highlights
IntroductionThis study emerged from an observation: Social networking sites (SNSs) claim emphatically (and frequently) that they are platforms for authenticity
This study emerged from an observation: Social networking sites (SNSs) claim emphatically that they are platforms for authenticity
Two facets of the patterned competition stood out: first, the sheer variety of authenticity claims issued by the rival services, from boasts of spontaneity by one to filter-free sharing by another; and, second, the consistency with which these claims cited predecessors (Facebook above all) as their inauthentic contrast
Summary
This study emerged from an observation: Social networking sites (SNSs) claim emphatically (and frequently) that they are platforms for authenticity. We thought, is that these sites issue their authenticity proclamations as rebukes of their competitors’ inauthenticity. For example, boasts about its carefree spontaneity, set against the identity straitjackets it says are imposed by rivals like Instagram. Google+, likewise, has promised to restore the audience-specific intimacy of the offline world, which—the service claimed—Facebook’s one-big-audience model had badly undermined. Plucky upstart Ello positioned itself as the anti-commercial alternative to the ad-tech data-hoovering of competing apps. In other words, a battle for the mantle of authenticity, one waged against predecessor services
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