Open and Closed Social Networks: Changes in Social Networking

A trend we’re noticing in Social Networking services (i.e. Facebook or Bebo) and how people are behaving is a move to more specifically focused social networks. Perhaps the first to start this was Ning a few years ago, and Ning has steadily increased. We’ve seen the addition of services like Ning, such as Qlubb, Flux, Grouply and well, here’s a list.

When you compare this to real-world social behaviour, it’s not at all surprising. We all have our hobbies and activities; sports, travel, photography, community service. A number of social technology companies have seen this, it’s nothing new from an availability standpoint.

What is new as a trend we’re seeing is that these services are expanding. It’s changing how broad social networks like Facebook, are being used. We call social networking services like Facebook “Open Loop Social Networks” – meaning they are more open. You can form groups in Facebook, with group and fan pages. There are millions of them, from the sublime to the ridiculous to the activist.

In our analysis of these communities and social group behaviours online though, we’ve seen a 42% increase in use of “Closed Loop Social Networks” over the past 6 months from a sample size of 54,000 profiles. Facebook will always see such group and fan pages being built; but we note that 96% of Facebook groups that are formed are active for only 3 weeks on average. Highly active group pages in places like Facebook tend to be those that are more focused; such as kayakers or mountain bikers.

Specialty group social networking service like Grouply or Ning however, are much more active since the participants are all like-minded. For those looking to market to those groups, look beyond just Facebook and look at other Closed Loop Networks to truly reach your target.

Our Choice Between Broadcast & Social Media

A common theme pops up in our research into Social Media. I often find myself asking “why are we always drawn to social media?” One might ask why we see a phone in our home or a mobile phone so important – as humans, we like to talk to each other. We’re inherently social. Prove me otherwise?

A key factor from our ongoing research that keeps popping up in surveys and passive collection of data is “control” vs. “uncontrolled” or “Linear” vs. “Non-Linear.” Social Media engagement is Non-Linear.

In large part it’s why television remains of interest as are books, magazines and newspapers. Which is also why they likely won’t die. The medium may change somewhat in how we use it. It’s also why a movie like Avatar can become the highest grossing movie of all time. Sometimes we like to be “guided” or “controlled” in our consumption of media. Broadcast media, books, movies are all “linear” with a beginning, middle and end. Some movies today twist that a bit, like Memento which starts at the end and slowly loops around.

Social Media engagement has a beginning (I start a blog here, you the reader add a comment, email it or share it somewhere else) but I do not necessarily know the next step. If it will become a hot topic (I doubt this blog post is anywhere near that juicy.) Or if a huge ongoing conversation will ensue here or in another medium (i.e. Twitter or emails.) But it’s always Non-Linear because it is an ongoing feedback loop, interlocked and interconnected.

That’s the nature of our social engagement with friends, family, co-workers etc., always ongoing with stops and starts, always progressing. Broadcast mediums and contained mediums (i.e. books) are closed-loops and sometimes we like it that way. We want to be told a defined story and go away 2 or 3 hours later…and perhaps that about it elsewhere.

Agree? Do we like to be told stories with a defined beginning and end? Do we like Social Media and engage in it because we tell each other stories that aren’t defined by someone else or controlled?

(Author: G. Crouch)

Social Media Use in Atlantic Canada: 2010 Report

We’re delighted to provide here the 2nd annual Atlantic Conversations II Report on Social Media Use in Atlantic Canada. The information here is downloadable (below) in PDF format and is the data we’ve made publicly available for general consumption under Creative Commons license. A more detailed, 30 page version is available at $450.

Social Media use in Atlantic Canada continued to climb in 2009. The biggest service to see growth was Twitter, while the average age of a Facebook user climbed to 53 this year. In terms of being active in Social Media channels, New Brunswick lead the way. We did see some leaps for Newfoundland & Labrador as well as PEI.

You can download the PDF report here. If you’d like the pay version, please contact us directly.

Will There Be Too Many Media Channels?

What’s “new media” now? We’ve hit the “500 channel universe” on the telly, the Web has become truly “interactive”, smart phones are ramping up for mobile use. We’re texting, tweeting, calling, voice mailing, videoing, gaming in vast virtual realities; creating and sharing content like never before in the history of mankind.

And now on the bleeding edge is “Augmented Reality” (AR) technologies. Think of it as your personal digital butler (see a video of Yelp’s Monocle in use here) using your smart phone to find out information about the real-world objects around you. Add in the ability to instantly add your 2 cents on a restaurant you just ate at or a coffee buying experience – well, you get the idea. We’ve added a whole new media channel. And as McLuhan said, the medium is shaped by how we use it. Will people use it and shape it? It’s simple enough to use. We’re already commenting on things. Then there’s Microsoft’s Natal project for the xbox.

My one area of concern over AR technologies is that studies have already shown people are reticent to use geo-location in their smart phones (less than .23% of mobile users in UK & USA). Using AR technologies requires some loss of privacy; are consumers willing to give more up?

More than anything, I just wonder, how many channels can we as citizens deal with and how many channels can marketers, PR pro’s etc., manage effectively? A lot of our research helps guide companies more effectively, but going from budgeting for 20 channels to 180 and then measuring effectiveness? When many metrics are still being debated and are yet to be defined?

What do you think? When is enough enough? At what point do we see channel decay in media formats? Or will we change?

A Reality Check on Social Media Crises

United and the broken guitar, moms insulted by Motrin, snotty-nosed Domino’s pizza employees; they’ve been analyzed and analyzed. Each element picked apart and pontificated over. I too am guilty of that. Let’s face it, they make fur juicy fodder to citizens alike and those of us engaged in the social mediasphere. Now it’s about to get a lot harder for Joe-citizen to get anywhere with social media.

Time to take a deep breath, step back and look at it from a different perspective. The likelihood of many of them happening again, to the degree that they did, is minimal. Each has changed an industry; mostly for the better. But what happens after the first big crisis in each industry?

United wasn’t the first airline to suffer from a social media crises and it wasn’t the first time United suffered from social media either. JetBlue gets that honour on valentine’s day 2007. Taco Bell will likely wear the unadorned crown of first for restaurants in 2006 with the rat scare and Domino‘s second.

Most of the social media crises have happened with major brands. Not all, however; we’ve dealt with smaller businesses facing more localized crises. These big crises are likely to happen again, but one can speculate they’ll be in different industries. The airline industry groaned yet again with the United issue. Food services with Domino’s.

If citizens want to truly make a point with a negative experience via a major brand, they’ll need to become increasingly creative. Dave Carrol wrote a great tune and added a video behind it. Simply text blogging his experience likely wouldn’t have worked. We picked up on the Motrin issue more because it took a series of practitioners involved in Social Media to push out the message on how flustered moms were.

While it’s not impossible that another video of fast-food employees doing gross things to customer orders couldn’t go big, it’s not likely to happen to the degree it did with Domino’s.

There are still a lot of industries to be hit in a negative way, but as we did our research into the discussion volume around these crises, we found that each time around (with only United and the guitar incident as an exception) the volume of discussion decreased as did the viral factor and the Echo Ratio increased (the story stayed quite contained.)

Essentially, we’re saying that it’s going to get harder for the average Joe to use social media as an effective weapon for change or compensation when done wrong. Messages are 30% less viral the second time around in an industry and 65% less the third time around. The story will also have less of a long-tail effect; although it can stay alive forever in the digital world of Cyburbia.

While this can still be damaging to a company’s bottom-line, it’s less so than before; unless your industry hasn’t been hit. In that case, brace yourself if you’re the first to be targeted. Business will (and are) get savvier in dealing with them and citizens will have to work harder to get the message out.