At the start of the year, we asked 11 experts to share their social media predictions for 2025. They pointed to big shifts — world-building, private communities, AI in everything and everywhere, LinkedIn’s rise, and a creator economy moving toward more sustainable businesses.
Now that the year is behind us, it’s a good moment to pause and check the tape.
Some predictions held up almost perfectly. Others played out more slowly or looked different than expected. That gap between prediction and reality is where the most useful lessons live.
In this article, we’re revisiting seven themes from our original piece, from what actually happened, to where expectations missed the mark, and what creators and brands can take into 2026 planning.
⚡Revisit the 2025 predictions at 7 Predictions for Social Media in 2025 from Creator Economy Experts
Prediction 1: LinkedIn as a creator & influencer hub
Verdict: Largely accurate
At the start of 2025, the prediction was that LinkedIn would evolve beyond a traditional professional network and lean more fully into the creator economy.
That shift did happen, and it showed up in both platform features and creator behavior.
Over the year, LinkedIn expanded video-first formats, rolled out more creator-focused analytics, and made it easier to publish consistently. At the same time, brands grew more comfortable partnering with creators on the platform, and employees used LinkedIn more intentionally to build personal and company brands.
Key proof points:
Video became one of LinkedIn’s fastest-growing formats, with uploads and viewership increasing 36% year over year.Creator–brand partnerships became more common across industries, with one agency reporting a 3x increase in monthly campaign volume and payouts to creators from August 2024 to April 2025. And if you need further proof, I was one of the creators who benefited from increased interest in brand partnerships in 2025.Employee-generated content gained momentum as a way to build trust and reach — something we’ve seen firsthand at Buffer as documented in How We’re Empowering the Entire Buffer Team to Become Creators.A growing Gen Z audience made LinkedIn feel less rigid and more creator-friendly overall.
What this means for you:
LinkedIn now sits at an interesting intersection: it offers professional credibility alongside creator-style engagement. For creators building authority, relationships, or long-term opportunities, it’s no longer just a résumé platform — it’s a place to publish, experiment, and grow.
For planning ahead, the takeaway is simple: if your work benefits from trust and context, LinkedIn deserves a thoughtful spot in your strategy.
Prediction 2: The rise of smaller, private communities
Verdict: Very accurate
At the start of 2025, we predicted a shift away from big, noisy feeds toward smaller, more intentional spaces. Over the year, that trend became hard to miss.
Audiences gravitated toward places that felt calmer, safer, and more conversational — and creators followed them. Public platforms remained important for reach, but deeper connection increasingly happened elsewhere.
Key proof points:
Instagram Broadcast Channels continued growing as a lightweight way for creators to communicate with their most engaged followers.Substack Chat and Discord saw steady adoption, especially for niche communities and lower-pressure engagement.On Threads, Instagram and LinkedIn, posts where creators replied to comments saw 42%, 21% and 30% higher engagement respectively.Patreon crossed over 25 million paid memberships and passed the $10 billion lifetime creator payouts milestone — signalling growing creator demand for direct, private-community models.Private or “spam” pages gained traction as creators built quieter, more authentic spaces separate from their main profiles.
What this means for you:
Public feeds increasingly functioned as discovery layers — places to be found, sampled, and shared. While private communities became the loyalty layer, where trust, belonging, and long-term relationships formed.
For creators planning ahead, the takeaway isn’t to abandon public platforms. It’s to pair them with spaces you control, where you can set the tone and build connection without competing for constant attention.
Prediction 3: AI becomes a core part of content creation (with backlash)
Verdict: Very accurate
At the start of 2025, the prediction wasn’t just that AI would become more common — it was that platforms would fully integrate it, and audiences would have mixed feelings about that shift.
That’s largely how the year played out.
AI tools became deeply embedded across social platforms, touching everything from ideation to editing to distribution. At the same time, creator and audience sentiment remained cautious, forcing platforms and brands to slow down and think more carefully about how AI showed up in feeds.
Key proof points:
Major platforms introduced AI assistants and creation tools at scale, including auto-captioning, image editing, content suggestions, and search enhancements. And some AI-only platforms were introduced, such as OpenAI’s Sora and Meta’s Vibes.These rollouts weren’t always smooth. In some cases, new AI features triggered immediate pushback around feed quality, originality, and trust.Audiences grew more sensitive to content that felt automated — especially in personal or expertise-driven niches.Brands became more deliberate about how they used AI after early signals showed lower trust in heavily AI-generated creator content.Brands slowed their adoption of overtly AI-generated content after reports of lower trust, aligning closely with the prediction about backlash and transparency challenges.
Why it mattered:
AI didn’t replace creativity in 2025 — it replaced friction.
Creators who used AI as a support layer — to brainstorm, outline, edit, or repurpose — often gained speed without losing connection with their audience. Those who leaned too hard on entirely AI-generated content sometimes saw the opposite effect.
The year reinforced a helpful distinction: AI works best behind the scenes. But authenticity is still needed to avoid “sloppifying” your content.
For planning ahead, the takeaway is less about whether to use AI and more about how visibly it shows up in your work. The creators who treated AI as an assistant, not a stand-in, tended to earn more trust over time.
Prediction 4: Short-form video continues to dominate
Verdict: Accurate, with nuance
Short-form video didn’t slow down in 2025. It continued to expand across nearly every major platform, from TikTok and Instagram to LinkedIn and YouTube.
What changed wasn’t its importance but its role.
Instead of replacing other formats, short-form settled into a clearer position at the top of the funnel. It became the fastest way to reach new people, while longer formats carried more of the weight for depth and retention.
Key proof points:
Platforms continued investing in short-form discovery. LinkedIn rolled out its dedicated video feed more broadly, leading to a noticeable increase in face-to-camera clips and repurposed content from podcasts, webinars, and livestreams.YouTube Shorts remained a powerful discovery engine, especially for creators repurposing content across platforms.Instagram Reels maintained strong performance across both entertainment and education, often outperforming static posts for reach.Visual storytelling styles evolved quickly — fast cuts, text-forward narratives, and tightly edited micro-stories became familiar patterns across TikTok and Reels.
At the same time, longer formats held their ground. Long-form YouTube videos continued driving trust and watch time, surpassing traditional and even modern broadcasters as the most-watched platform on TV in the U.S. in 2025.
Why it mattered:
Short-form video remained the fastest path to discovery — particularly for new or growing creators — but it wasn’t the only format that mattered.
Creators who paired short, high-reach clips with deeper formats often saw stronger overall results. Short-form pulled people in; longer content gave them a reason to stay.
By the end of 2025, the ecosystem felt more layered than dominant. Short-form shaped first impressions and momentum, while longer formats supported nuance, credibility, and retention.
For planning ahead, the takeaway is balance: use short-form to open the door, but don’t expect it to do all the work once someone steps inside.
Prediction 5: Platforms evolve into end-to-end ecosystems
Verdict: Accurate, but uneven across platforms
At the start of 2025, the prediction was that platforms would try to keep creators inside their walls by offering more of the full workflow — creation, publishing, analytics, and audience management — in one place.
That shift did happen. But it didn’t happen evenly.
Some platforms made meaningful progress toward becoming all-in-one ecosystems, while others focused on narrower bets or moved more slowly on creator-side tools.
Key proof points:
Instagram and Facebook expanded native creation features, including multi-clip editing, AI-assisted captions, audio recommendations, and scheduling — reducing the need to bounce between editing apps.LinkedIn introduced deeper analytics and more robust creator dashboards, supporting its move from a posting platform toward something closer to a publication environment.Threads, Instagram, and Facebook became more interconnected, reinforcing Meta’s broader ecosystem approach through cross-posting, shared recommendations, and unified inboxes.YouTube continued refining its long-form, Shorts, Community, and Live ecosystem. It remained one of the strongest single-platform hubs, but most updates in 2025 were incremental rather than transformational.
Where the prediction fell short:
Not every platform pushed equally toward end-to-end workflows.
TikTok leaned more heavily into commerce and search than creator-side production tools. X focused on monetization experiments, with fewer additions to creation features. And many platforms still rely on external tools for editing, planning, or collaboration.
Why it mattered:
For creators, this shift subtly changed how time was spent.
In 2025, more work happened inside platforms — editing, publishing, reviewing performance — instead of entirely across third-party tools. But the experience wasn’t consistent. Some platforms began to feel like full creative environments; others still functioned mainly as distribution endpoints.
The takeaway going into 2026 is flexibility. Platform-native tools can simplify parts of the workflow, but relying too heavily on any single ecosystem can also limit control. The most resilient setups balanced convenience with independence.
Prediction 6: Creator business models evolve beyond “solo”
Verdict: Partially accurate
At the start of 2025, many experts predicted that creators would move away from one-person operations and toward more traditional business structures — small teams, clearer roles, and diversified revenue streams.
That shift did happen, but mostly at the top end of the creator economy.
For many others, growth looked different.
Key proof points:
Full-time creators with large audiences started hiring to expand their offerings, as evidenced by the constant stream of opportunities in newsletters like The Publish Press.Creator-led brands continued to expand, particularly in areas like education, finance, fashion, and digital products.Products like templates, courses, and paid communities remained steady, predictable income sources for mid-sized creators.
Where the prediction diverged:
The idea that “growth means building a team” didn’t scale across most creators.
Instead, many creators stayed intentionally small. They leaned on AI, batching, and repurposing workflows to increase output without adding people or overhead. For this group, efficiency replaced expansion.
At the same time, a parallel trend became more visible: founder-led content and the rise of storytellers.
In 2025, more business owners and teams showed up as creators sharing lessons, experiments, and behind-the-scenes work. In some cases, this flipped the original prediction on its head. Rather than creators becoming companies, companies became more like creators.
Why it mattered:
The creator economy did mature in 2025 — but not in a single direction.
Success didn’t automatically mean hiring or scaling headcount. More often, it meant building systems that supported consistency without burnout. For some, that looked like teams. For others, it looked like better tools, clearer workflows, and tighter focus.
Looking ahead, the takeaway is flexibility. Sustainable growth doesn’t have one shape. The creators who thrived were the ones who designed businesses that fit their capacity — not someone else’s playbook.
Prediction 7: World-building becomes a core creator strategy
Verdict: Very accurate — but in an unexpected way
In 2025, world-building did become more central to how creators grew their audiences — just not in the way our predictions imagined.
Serialized storylines and cinematic content universes didn’t entirely take over social feeds (although they were definitely present; see Bilt with the popular series, roomiesroomiesroomies) Instead, creators began extending their worlds beyond the screen, building experiences that audiences could step into offline.
That shift reflected something deeper: audiences weren’t just looking for more content. They were looking for connection. And the worldbuilding of 2025
Examples from the year:
Entertainment brands and creators experimented with immersive, in-person experiences tied to digital IP. Netflix launched immersive Stranger Things and Squid Game experiences, while MrBeast opened Beast Land, turning YouTube IP into a real-world attraction.Large creators turned online audiences into live events, tours, and physical spaces. Colin and Samir expanded The Publish Press into a physical New York space in partnership with Spotify.Media brands and creator collectives hosted summits, meetups, and pop-ups that brought online communities together in real life. The All-In Podcast held a major in-person All-In Summit and creator groups like Dude Perfect continued turning digital fandom into live tours.
Rather than expanding narratives purely through content, creators expanded them through presence.
Why this mattered:
World-building in 2025 was focused on creating a sense of belonging: something audiences could recognize, participate in, and return to.
These offline extensions reinforced trust and loyalty in a way algorithms can’t. A live event, meetup, or shared experience made the creator–audience relationship feel more durable than any single post.
What this means for creators:
World-building doesn’t require massive budgets or spectacle. It can be as simple as hosting a workshop, running a small meetup, or creating spaces where people connect with each other — not just with you.
The creators who leaned into this shift weren’t chasing novelty. They were responding to a very human desire: to feel part of something that exists beyond a screen.
Conclusion
As we head into 2026, the most interesting question isn’t “What’s the next big platform shift?” It’s “How do creators stay adaptable when change is constant?”
Looking back at these predictions, a clear pattern emerges. Growth in 2025 didn’t come from chasing every new feature or format. It came from making thoughtful choices about where to show up, how to connect, and what kind of work was sustainable to keep creating.
Creators leaned into platforms that supported trust, not just reach. They paired public visibility with private connection. They used AI to reduce friction, not replace their voice. They balanced short-term discovery with long-term depth. And instead of scaling blindly, many focused on building systems or communities that fit their capacity.
In other words, the creators who thrived weren’t trying to “win” the algorithm. They were building relationships that could outlast it.
That’s the real takeaway from 2025: tools will keep changing, platforms will keep evolving, and predictions will always miss something. But clarity, consistency, and care for your audience remain durable advantages that everyone can access.
As you plan for the year ahead, the goal doesn’t have to be doing more. It can be doing what already works but more intentionally, more sustainably, and with a clearer sense of why you’re showing up in the first place.
That mindset will matter far longer than any single trend.
