Passive & Active Social Media: High and Low Engagement

It was noted today that Twitter surpassed Digg for traffic this past month. What is this a trend indicator of? Well, we view Social Media as two primary types; 1) High Engagement and 2) Low Engagement. Although both enable engagement, the level of engagement varies, and most vital to these two are the cost of the transaction.

Low Engagement: Here we clump Mixx, Digg, Newsvine and similar as well as Social Bookmarking. We label them as “Low-Engagement” since the transaction cost is rather much higher than active Social Media services that encourage broader engagement. They are “passive” because discussion of an issue is not easy, and spreading the word is also not easily done. They are based on “voting” principles rather than true “sharing” such as Microblogging services like Twitter. The stories lie relatively dormant until people find them. These services are far more passive.

High Engagement: A prime example here is Microblogging, as well as SMS, IM services and Forums. Once registered, the transaction cost is low and the engagement level is high. Services such as Twitter are instant and generally very viral since “Re-Tweeing or RT” is easy and sends the “content” across broader reach faster than Digg or Mixx. Witness the US Airways crash last week, the terror attacks in Mumbai and even the small earthquake that hit LA last summer – the news was out on Twitter before traditional news media picked it up in all cases. This is highly-active and sharing audio, text and video is simple and fast – low-cost to the user. More is shared faster. This is highly-active.

So what does this mean? It means another “shift” in how people are deciding to use Social Media tools. Services like Digg and Mixx will be where content might reside, but Highly-Active services like Twitter or Identi.ca will become the primary distribution channels, perhaps more so than email.

(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner)