Over the past few months, Facebook has increasingly come under fire following revelations about the extent to which user data and on-site interactions had been exploited and manipulated, particularly in the run-up to the 2016 presidential elections. Being a Charlotte, NC internet marketing company, we feel only barely insulted from Washington politics, which might be beneficial to our understanding of how those politics affect the entire industry, spanning not only the nation but also the world.

Whether you’re doing business with another Charlotte internet marketing firm or a social media manager all the way on the other side of the United States, you would be well advised to make sure that the providers of your web services are making a concerted effort to stay informed about emerging controversies. Doing so means being in a better position to react if those controversies result in significant changes, whether they be to major sites’ algorithms or simply to the public perception of certain platforms or types of interactions.

If you’ve been paying any attention at all, you know that Facebook is actively making changes to the way it operates. Mark Zuckerberg has promised as much in a rare blog post and in testimony on Capitol Hill, and the company has even begun running television advertisements to that effect. These can almost be seen as warnings to internet marketing companies, prompting due diligence for the sake of continuing to get the greatest benefit out of social media advertising. But of course, the more obvious purpose of those ads is to guard against the site hemorrhaging users.

This raises the question of whether our Charlotte internet marketing company should begin entertaining the possibility of a major platform shift in the social media landscape. But of course, there is no real sign that Facebook’s dominance is at risk. On the other hand, it bears mentioning that that dominance was never a foregone conclusion. Some readers may be old enough to remember a time when it wasn’t clear whether Facebook or MySpace would own the future. And just as social trends pushed people toward one over the other, they could do so again.

This may still seem unlikely, but it is something that no competent internet marketing company should discount as a possibility. The social media industry is more dynamic than many people give it credit for, especially when you start looking at specific demographics to determine whether your advertisements are better direct toward Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or something else.

And even if the answer to this question is definitively locked down, there is still a distinct possibility of people changing the way they interact on any given platform. The ongoing Facebook controversies might make some users more cautious in their interactions, and less likely to be taken in by “black hat” strategies, although a good internet marketing company should never have been using these in the first place.

Whether or not you think the social media landscape will change in the near future, and whether or not you think it should change, the fact remains that the better internet marketing company is one that acknowledges the possibility of such change and remains prepared to change strategies accordingly.