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A second issue of Future Social in one week? In this economy?

Seeing all the Bluesky wonders gave me a little inspo, and frankly, I could use some dopamine—a little overwhelmed with my business right now. So hey, thanks for opening my creative procrastination tool.

In this issue, we’ll talk about

• Why brands shouldn’t touch new social networks

• What your brand should do on Bluesky

• Wonders if the people writing trend reports are overindexing on Gen Z.

—Jack Appleby

No, your brand shouldn’t be on Bluesky, or any brand new social network.

Bluesky gained 1.25 million users in 48 hours following the election. It’s mechanically a clone of Twitter, except their leader doesn’t jump up and down weirdly enough to get parodied by Saturday Night Live.

Add that to their existing users and you’ve got an audience that’s… carry the 2, divide by pi… a whopping 4% of Twitter’s 386 million monthly active users.

Don’t get me wrong, earning 1 million users in one day is quite a feat, and it makes for a great media headline, but no—your brand does not need a Bluesky presence.

That’s true of any emerging social network. Lemon8? Mastodon? BeReal? Hive Social? Hell, remember Peach (I’m really aging myself, now). None of these networks have come close to reaching the scale that should warrant spending any soft or hard marketing costs.

Let’s talk about all the reasons why your brand should stick to the major networks and ignore new social platforms until they reach mass scale.

Scale matters

Let’s look back at some of the “hottest” new social platforms to emerge over the last two years.

• Bluesky: 15.2 million monthly active users.

• BeReal: 21 million monthly active users, down from their 73 million peak.

• Mastodon has 975,000 monthly active users, down from it’s 2.5 million peak.

Now let’s look at the big boys.

• Facebook: 3.07 billion monthly active users.

• Instagram: 2 billion monthly active users.

• TikTok: 1 billion monthly active users.

• Twitter: 386 million monthly active users.

• Threads: 275 million monthly active users (which sorta confuses me because I can’t name a single person who uses Threads, but we’ll take Zuck at his word).

The new networks are microscopic in comparison to the established. That means an incredibly low ceiling for content performance—there just aren’t enough people on the platforms to justify the blood, sweat, tears, budget, and staffing it takes to properly start attacking a new social network. It’s bad math.

If you truly want to abandon one of the major social networks, doubling down on a different major social network is the move. Focus even more on that audience you’ve already built—not starting from scratch on a new network with very few users. In the current economic times, effectiveness of advertising + staffing spend is essential, and there are much safer bets on established platforms than new platforms.

New social networks require new best practices

There’s no greater timesink than learning a new social network full of new best practices, made especially painful since so many networks emphasize unheard of innovative twists on social media. Social media managers are already massively overworked managing the current networks—you cannot justify tossing another social platform on their plates when every other platform’s performing well.

If you can easily repurpose content for a new social network? Fine, you can consider it. That’s an efficiency, like how brands can easily make TikToks + Instagram Reels + YouTube Shorts simultaneously.

But even then, those new social networks may not have scheduling tools like Buffer or Sprinklr to schedule content. There won’t be plug-ins to analytics platforms yet like Sprout Social or HubSpot. Working on a new social network can be a completely manual process that may actually take more time than any of the existing social platforms.

There’s no real benefit to being first

Bobby Axelrod said it best: “Being early is the same as being wrong.” The fictional hedge fund CEO from Showtime’s Billions was no social strategist, but his thinking still applies.

No one’s following your brand because you’re the first brand on a social network—no consumer’s ever thought that way. Sure, you could argue new networks aren’t as content oversaturated as the big guys, but again, you’re a brand. We don’t anxiously await your arrival. Being the first brand to make content on a new platform is a PR headline, not a social strategy.

Waiting is good—necessary even. Wait until the networks grow. Watch how early adopters approach the platform. Most importantly, remember there’s no such thing as being late to a social network—you’re not missing the boat, you’re just making sure it won’t sink.

That said, it is worth “parking” your name on that social network. I have no plans to use Hive, but you can bet I grabbed @jappleby to reserve the right + make sure no one impersonates me. When I was at agencies, we’d always run to new networks to secure our names, juuuust in case. Your brand doesn’t wanna end up like Eli Lilly.

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Read the case study

It’s starting to feel like we think Gen Z is the only generation on the internet.

I've read a handful of 2024 In Review & 2025 Predictions pieces this morning, and all seem to almost overindex their reporting on trends that resonate with Gen Z (currently 12-27 years old) without much context for Millennials (28-43 years old) and virtually no mention of Gen X (44-59 year olds).

I'm sure data shows that the <27 year old crowd is more actively engaged on social than the >27 crowd, but social media is old enough now that every generation is very present. Millennials are certainly online and active!

The reason I mention it—when I see whitepapers and predictions only focused on Gen Z interests, it tends to lead brands to focus solely on the marketing behaviors & brand voice tones that appeal to Gen Z, even when these businesses have colossal millennial consumer bases. And I worry that those brands are going to begin to alienate the people paying their bills in favor of social media engagements from their younger audiences.

I'd love to see more reporting on Millennial internet marketing, as well as how to build brand voices that resonate with multiple audiences. We're rapidly reaching a phase of social media where everyone's grown up with social media—you can bet millennials will still be online as we become grandparents.