• by Maarten Albarda , Featured Contributor, December 23, 2022

So that was the year that was. As I reflect on the many highs and lows, I will leave you with three ideas to ponder during your much-deserved break (assuming you will have one).

Number three:It seems that many once-fundamental truths related to on-screen advertising no longer hold true anymore. Examples? Nielsen is for TV ratings. Linear TV will always retain some relevance due to its live sports programming. Creating video content that reaches huge audiences costs millions, if not billions. Netflix will never accept ads.

Obviously, none of these are true anymore. And that fact leads to gross uncertainty as we enter 2023.

Will the (assumed) recession kill further content development across the various platforms? We know that cutbacks are already happening at Disney and Netflix. And linear TV ratings are falling off a cliff. We know that your daughter can create content on TikTok that reaches a greater audience than any of those platforms. But will there even be a TikTok in 2023? And how will we measure audiences across all platforms where you buy your ads -- assuming you still have budget to buy ads because of the recession?

Number two: The metaverse is – for now (?) – a joke. Recently, the EU organized a party in the metaverse to celebrate and inform “the youth” (pronounce like Joe Pesci did in “My Cousin Vinny”) about the importance of being politically aware and involved. It cost the EU about $425,000. A grand total of 41 people signed up to attend the virtual party. Five showed up on the day and time, of which four immediately signed off after signing in. The last remaining guest was a journalist.

This is only one example of a metaverse investment not quite working out. There are countless articles detailing various metaflops, and they all come down to not enough people interested or invested.

One could argue these flops are simply coming from organizations investing ahead of the curve, and that the metaverse’s future is exactly there: in the future. And that those investments are simply the very first steps. But I was reminded last week it was exactly nine years ago when I received my Google Glass. I have distinct deja vu with the metaverse.

And finally, as will be no surprise to anyone, number one: Running a social media platform is more complex than rocket science (or building self-driving cars). The Twitter “cluster” is continuing to provide an ongoing cacophony of ill-informed decisions, kneejerk reactions, management by random thought, and so on.

If we can have one hope, it's that The Chief Twit indeed finds someone “foolish enough” to want to run the business, and that the Chief Twit leaves that fool enough room to actually run it. I have a hard time believing this will happen.

The weird thing is that, among all the misinformed, harmful, and terrible Twitter content, there is also really good and useful content to be found. Twitter can still pride itself in shaping culture and being a source of instant information when important things happen. I do not see an immediate alternative for this, despite efforts from Instagram, Mastodon and the dumbness that is the echo-chamber from you-know-who.

I won’t be sad to leave 2022 behind. It had its highs and lows, also on a personal level. But I fear that 2023 will be more of the same. Here’s hoping I am wrong.