When social media stopped being social

New Delhi: Social media was supposed to make the internet more participatory. Instead, it may have turned consumers into spectators. Brands have poured millions into platforms expecting more than reach, hoping to build communities, loyalty and direct relationships with consumers. As consumers watch from the sidelines, brands have started behaving like creators, hopping on every bandwagon that triggers trends on the internet. And rightly so. The strategy still delivers unmatched scale and visibility, but conversations with agency leaders, strategists and brand marketers suggest that they are increasingly described as discovery and distribution engines rather than relationship builders. That relationship building, in fact, resides in assets brands own, such as CRM systems, first party data, loyalty programmes, mobile apps and retail ecosystems. Not the Instagram pages brands own. The most consistent theme across BestMediaInfo’s conversations with industry experts is that platform algorithms are increasingly optimised to maximise content consumption rather than conversations between brands and consumers. Distribution has replaced conversation Aprajita Biala Aprajita Biala, National Planning Head at Cheil India, said social algorithms have been openly optimising for time spent and video watch time. Feeds are increasingly built around content people consume passively rather than content they discuss, and a reel can now outperform a comment heavy post simply by holding attention longer. “A 200 comments carousel vs 2M views and 40 comments reel, the latter will get a prioritisation in distribution,” she said. In Biala's assessment, comments and shares have evolved into algorithmic signals that help platforms determine what to distribute next, rather than serving as reliable indicators of meaningful engagement. “Conversation hasn't scaled but distribution has,” Biala said. Shan Jain Shan Jain, independent consultant, pushed back on the idea that social media failed at participation in the first place, pointing to the 90-9-1 rule - the internet forum principle that 90 percent of users lurk, 9 percent react and 1 percent create, which has held true since the 1990s. “What changed isn't user behaviour, it's that platforms stopped pretending. Algorithmic feeds monetise watch time, not conversation,” Jain said. Jain believes the industry's understanding of participation itself needs updating. Public conversations may appear to be declining, but consumers are participating differently, shifting interactions into WhatsApp groups, direct messages, closed communities and, increasingly, AI assistants. “Social media today is less like a neighbourhood cafe and more like an airport terminal. Millions of people pass through it every day, but very few stop long enough to have a meaningful conversation,” she said. “The irony is that we still call it social media, when much of it has become broadcast media.” Saurabh Munjal Saurabh Munjal, Co-Founder and CEO of Lahori Zeera, framed the shift in business terms rather than behavioural ones, arguing distribution at scale is now the platform's real product. “Social media has evolved into one of the world's most efficient distribution engines. It can make millions of people aware of a brand overnight,” Munjal said. But awareness, he cautioned, should not be mistaken for affinity. “Most consumers don't wake up wanting to have conversations with brands, they simply want brands that consistently deliver value,” he said. Is Discovery enough anymore? The shift from conversation to consumption is pushing marketers to rethink what success on social media should look like. Biala's answer is a layered measurement model rather than a single metric. Views, saves and watch throughs represent presence at the top of the funnel, she said, while link clicks, profile visits and search lift signal genuine interest. Repeat engagement and owned base growth, in her framework, are the metrics that compound over time and actually matter for the business. Jain was blunter about what current metrics miss. A brand can be doing everything right commercially and still look flat on the dashboard, she argued, because marketers are measuring visibility instead of value. “A consumer may never like your post, never comment, never share it, and still walk into a store and buy your brand every month,” she said. She argued that marketers should place greater emphasis on metrics such as watch-through rates, saves, private shares, and branded search lift, which better indicate whether content is influencing purchase consideration rather than simply generating engagement. Munjal extended the same argument to hard business performance, where he saw engagement acting as a misleading proxy for effectiveness. “Engagement has become an increasingly misleading metric. A post with millions of views may have little commercial impact, while a brand with relatively modest engagement can enjoy exceptional repeat purchase,” Munjal said. He argued that penetration, repeat consumption, share of wallet and mental availability are the numbers that should matter to marketers instead. “Virality is not a business model,” he said. “Many brands have become famous without becoming meaningful. Sustainable brands are built through consistency, not constant visibility.” Owned channels become the real asset If social media is increasingly at the top of the funnel, the industry's consensus is that relationships deepen elsewhere, in CRM databases, loyalty programmes, mobile apps and retail ecosystems that brands control directly. Unlike a platform feed, these assets are not subject to a sudden algorithm change. Biala drew a sharp line between visibility and ownership. Social platforms remain essential for discovery, she said, and even for transactions through social commerce, but none of that hands a brand the relationship itself. “Social is where you get found and where you transact, but this is rented infrastructure with someone else's data and algorithm,” Biala said. Owned channels, in her view, will keep winning the strongest relationships “because it's still the house a brand owns.” Jain framed the same idea as a test every brand should be willing to run on itself. If a platform vanished overnight, she asked, how much of the customer relationship would actually be left standing. “If Instagram disappeared tomorrow, how much of your customer relationship would survive? If the answer is not much, then the algorithm owns your audience, you don't,” she said. She was specific about what genuinely counts as owned in an Indian context. “Your dealer network, your WhatsApp community, your retail relationships, your brand's presence in the kirana owner's recommendation, that's owned. Everything else is borrowed reach.” Munjal tied the same distinction back to algorithmic dependence, arguing platforms decide short term visibility but have no say over long term preference. “Algorithms can decide who sees you today. They cannot decide whether consumers choose you tomorrow,” he said, pointing instead to product quality, distribution, pricing and consistent brand experience as what actually earns that decision. Brands that lean too heavily on algorithms, he added, risk renting their audience instead of building lasting preference. Shikha Davessar Chiming in, Shikha Davessar, Managing Partner at 22feet, said, “The honest answer for most brands is that they’ve mistaken platform presence for relationship ownership. Distribution has been outsourced to algorithms- the relationship itself hasn’t been rebuilt anywhere else. That gap is worth naming, because it’s the same shift we’ve been describing. Content reaches people, but conversation and loyalty don’t automatically follow.” AI becomes a new front door Executives expect the next contest for consumer attention to begin even earlier in the journey, at the point where AI interfaces shape what gets discovered at all. Biala called AI interfaces “a new front door for discovery” that will effectively control access to the consideration set. “Losing visibility here means losing the customer before relationship building even starts, but winning here also will not mean loyalty,” she said. Jain sees the shift as a continuation of a much older competition for space, just moved to a new arena. “The question is no longer, will the consumer remember me. The question is, when the consumer asks AI for a recommendation, will my brand even make the shortlist,” Jain said. That reshaping of representation is already showing up in how agencies think about client accounts, according to Davessar. She sees the shift extending beyond social feeds into search itself, another channel she believes is being reshaped by the same forces. Also Read: Is AI becoming CMO's best employee in FMCG? “A brand's conversation with a consumer may happen through an AI intermediary rather than a feed or a DM,” Davessar said. She called it a real threat to brands that exist only as content in a feed, and an opportunity for brands with strong structured data, reviews and reputation, since that is what AI systems draw on to represent them. For Davessar, this reinforces a distinction she keeps coming back to when clients confuse visibility with relationships. Social platforms remain unmatched for discovery, she said, but that is not the same as retention. The marketing funnel becomes more specialised The perspectives throw light on how marketers organise acquisition and retention, with each channel now assigned a narrower, more specific job rather than being expected to do everything at once. Munjal puts it plainly, describing a future where the channels stop competing and start dividing labour. “I think the future will be omnichannel. AI will increasingly become the discovery layer, social platforms will remain powerful storytelling platforms, retail will continue to be the moment of truth, and owned channels will become more important for loyalty,” he said. For an FMCG brand like Lahori Zeera though, he added, nothing in that mix replaces a consumer choosing the product repeatedly at the shelf and recommending it to someone else. “Algorithms may decide what people see. Experiences decide what people share," Munjal said. “The brands that win over the next decade will be the ones that consistently create experiences people feel proud to recommend.” Jain closed on a similar note. “The brands that will win are those that build an ecosystem, not a channel strategy,” she said. Read together, the interviews land on a quieter point than the scale of social media spend might suggest. None of the four argued that brands need to post harder, chase virality or fight the algorithm for attention. Social media's job, on this reading, is to get a brand noticed, not to win it customers. The real competitive work happens away from the feed, in product consistency, CRM depth, retail relationships and the reputation a brand carries into an AI recommendation. The next chapter of brand building may not be about winning the algorithm, but about ensuring the relationship survives without it.