Twitter Trends for 2016

Prédiction Twitter 2016

Now that 2015 comes to an end, it’s time to look back and see what this year meant for Twitter: stock market crash, difficulty in finding a CEO after Dick Costolo’s departure, the return of founder Jack Dorsey, improvements and updates on the platform!

In short, we will not write a comparison with Facebook (see the note at the end of the article).

#TeamBirdy uses its crystal ball to predict Twitter trends for 2016!

Twitter will continue to grow its user base in 2016

The penetration rate on the American market is likely to reach its peak, but this is not the case in many other countries where the growth of the number of active users is always sustained. France, for example, always shows a meaningful growth of active users (+56% in 2 years)

Twitter engagement for brands has strongly increased as well.Twitter has become more and more integrated into cross-channel campaigns, particularly in the case of physical events. Another boom registered by Twitter is in terms of contest campaigns, which have taken various shapes in the last months, especially at end years abounding in Christmas contests, such as Advent calendars. Many brands grasped Twitter’s interest and fastened the pace.  What a smart call!

Always easier

What Twitter came to realize is that new users are having real difficulties in using their platform. In 2015, they managed to simplify this process:

  • easier Retweet, with the possibility to leave a comment
  • Fav becomes Like for a more universal and comprehensible language
  • the possibility to create polls (in the tweet)
  • the images displayed on the timeline are no longer trimmed and cropped but displayed in full.

This trend will continue in 2016 with the possibility to choose from different emojis and thus express moods other than Like.

Always funnier

Speaking of emojis, they are more and more used on all social networks and particularly on Twitter. The social network also has special emojis linked to events such as #Cop21 or sports club franchises.

Twitter also introduced animated gifs called ScratchReel, one of the latest innovative formats. You can scrub back or rewind the gif!

Not to mention an interactive video format, which only needs a Bot-O-Reply to add additional steps.

Always in real time

Twitter was a pioneer in real-time live video streaming by launching Periscope. The Twitter / Periscope couple will strongly develop in the following months to offer a new experience (a Periscope real-time live stream on Twitter in 2016? You didn’t hear it from usJ)

The real time live stream of tweets is also an advantage for the customer service. Many clients understood that and now turn to Twitter for more answers. Attention, if customer service does not rise to the challenge:

Twitter Trends for 2016

2016 will bring for Twitter more active users, more brands and more new features, and more contests of course (by the way, do you have the right tool for launching your contest?).

In short, 2016 will be the year of Twitter!

N.B. The Twitter vs Facebook comparison is unfair and often biased. After all, Facebook was the first launched on the “large audience” social network market at a time when the service offer around social networks was not as rich as today (a quick reminder for the younger ones: no Instagram, Snap, or even LinkedIn back in the days, there were just other more complicated Facebook-likes). Today, Facebook is the leader in so many fields and knew how to leverage its first entrant position. A little bit absurd to compare the growth of Twitter’s number of users with Facebook’s at its beginning, or the features Twitter copied from Facebook (such as Like). After all, who copied whom? Facebook is now launching its live video streaming….