"The media have been feeding us this fake news story about the death of social media. There is absolutely nothing in the data - regardless of what data points I look at, there's nothing in the data that supports the idea that social media is dying. It's the complete opposite. Social media users are growing. The time that we spend using social media is increasing. There is no evidence of the death of social media. So that was a big surprise in there. When you start looking at things like streaming, there are obviously some really interesting conversations there about the overall time we spend streaming TV content versus how that splits across different companies. So Netflix versus Disney plus versus whatever else. Search behaviours. I'm sure we're gonna unpack that later on, but that is another one that is evolving quite rapidly. And how people find what they're looking for on the internet is evolving rapidly. That's got implications for everybody. It's not just a business conversation. That's anybody that is wanting to reach and influence audiences on the internet." - Simon Kemp

Fresh out of the studio, Simon Kemp returned for the 6th year to break down the key digital, mobile, and social media trends in the annual Digital Report 2023. Simon began with the first surprise that social media is not dying from Meta to Twitter, and debunked the myth propagated by social media on the war between Instagram vs Tik Tok. He highlighted the key trends on how the shift from pandemic to endemic will impact the streaming wars, and the fallout on cryptocurrencies and NFTs after the crypto crash in 2022. In the same conversation, Simon discussed how generative AI inspired by ChatGPT and Midjourney will upend digital advertising and marketing and what it means for brands moving forward. Last but not least, Simon offered what great would look like for the digital report in the next decade.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by G.Thomas Craig (@gthomascraig, LinkedIn).