Social media is doomed to die – The Verge

Ellis Hamburger was a reporter for The Verge between 2012 and 2014 before leaving to work at Snapchat. After leaving Snap last year, he went to work at The Browser Company. We asked Ellis to write about what he learned during his time working for one of the hottest social media startups of the 2010s. Disclosure: Ellis is a current Snap shareholder.I thought this time would be different.More specifically, I thought Snapchat would be different.I spent more than seven years there, writing almost everything from in-app copy to pitch decks, trying to make Snapchat different from every other social media app. And then, the other day, I received a push notification from the app telling me to wish my nemesis a happy birthday. This might read as normal or even expected to most of you, but I recognized the notification for what it really was: a death knell for a social media platform past its prime.From its earliest days, Snap wanted to be a healthier, more ethical social media platform. A place where popularity wasn’t always king and where monetization would be through creative tools that supported users — not ads that burdened them. I preached that friends mattered more
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