Evaluating Social Media Metrics To Measure Returning Users
If someone spends 60 minutes scrolling through 100 videos, most social platforms have plenty of reasons to call that a successful session. If someone spends those same 60 minutes with one person – talking, reacting, requesting a song, coming back to a conversation – the numbers may look less impressive. But which experience was actually more social?
The problem starts when we assume they also measure connection. Someone can spend an hour surrounded by people on a screen without interacting with a single one. We’ve all done it. You open an app to reply to a message, somehow end up watching a stranger reorganize her kitchen, learn more than you intended about someone else’s divorce, see three opinions about AI and emerge 45 minutes later having communicated with absolutely nobody. That’s engagement. It just isn’t necessarily social.
Many social platforms began primarily with people we knew or deliberately chose to follow. Then recommendation systems became good enough that knowing someone was no longer necessary. The feed could simply find something we’d probably like. Now, generative AI is removing another constraint. The internet already has more content than anyone could consume; producing the next image, video, song or post is becoming dramatically easier. There will always be something interesting waiting for us.
So the more interesting question for the next generation of social products may not be what can we show you next? It may be: Who is there when you arrive?
Key Takeaways:
- Social platforms may be winning the attention game, but real community is built when people return to the same conversations, recognize one another and feel that their presence changes what happens next.
- As AI makes entertaining content cheaper and more endless, the products that stand out may be the ones that give users a reason to stay with people.
- Watch time and views still matter, but they cannot fully capture the value of a user who comes back because a creator or community remembers them