5 trends that shaped 2021 - SVT Morgonstudion
Clubhouse and sound boom
Clubhouse was the platform that took the world by storm when it launched in Jan 2021. It caught on quickly and it was perfectly timed with people sitting at home and needing someone to talk to. Over the next few months, Facebook, Spotify and Twitter saw their users disappear in favour of Clubhouse. By the summer, several of the players had their own audio platforms ready to launch. When it was time to go back to the office, this trend quickly died out and audio is now mostly used for podcasting but there is some activity on twitter spaces as well as Discord where it is discussed in small niche groups.
Metaverse & NFTer
What is the metaverse?
- In short, it's a digital universe, you should be able to connect, have an avatar and a whole life on the digital universe and there have been huge investments there, partly Facebook's total dedication and belief that it's the next big thing, but also big companies like Nike bought up a virtual shoe company RTFKT that makes virtual shoes and NFTs for "metaverse" So I guess your digital avatars will need shoes too
NFT has been much talk about, what does that mean?
- Non fungible tokens, again briefly explained it's digital art where you sell the unique copy, so as only one can have the original of mona lisa in our physical world only one can have the original of an NFT in the digital world. This year has been awash with NFT and split the internet down the middle, one half who think it's a fad and hype and others who are absolutely lyrical about it and think it's the future. For example, this artwork by Beeple called Everydays: the First 500 days sold for $69.3 million. Which makes it the sixth most expensive piece of art ever sold
TikTok 2021
Tiktok has also continued to grow, how has that affected 2021?
Yes, TikTok reached the billion user mark and is probably significantly more now. If you look in the US, it became the most downloaded app every month in 2021 which says a lot. TikTok has also overtaken google to become the world's most popular website in 2021.
We notice it as the medium has a huge impact on other platforms as well. As most are familiar with the Netflix TV series Squid Games which took the world by storm much thanks to TikTok users who shared content about Squid Games. There was a period where the only thing you scrolled was Squid Games memes and content which also made Squid Games by far the most watched Netflix TV series with 1.6 billion hours in its first 28 days.. 1.6 billion hours to put it in some relation that's like 182,000 years..