Research, Thunking•
on March 10th, 2010•
There’s two clear trends we’re seeing with regard to Social Networks (i.e. Facebook, Bebo, Ning etc.) in our research;
1) Specialization: There’s a growing number of specialized Social Networks for people’s hobbies, cultures or activities. Such as sailing, Indians, African Americans and more, we call these SSN’s (Specialized Social Networks). Then there’s services like Ning that enable social groups to connect and organize.
2) Consolidation: People are getting over the mad rush and excitement of new stuff and staying put, including consolidating where they are and what services they are using. If they’re on Facebook, they’re staying.
In terms of global Social Networking services, Facebook has won, as LinkedIn won for business networking. MySpace, Bebo, NetLog and others can try all they want, but pulling in people from existing services is going to be a tough job. Why?
It’s Not Contacts It’s Relationships & History
Sure, Buzz already enabled your Gmail contacts to easily migrate into Buzz (a problem with privacy in and of itself) and Facebook and the others offer the same service. But it’s not about your contacts. It’s about your content history (the photo’s and videos you’ve shared, commented on, laughed and cried over, the notes you’ve made and shared and more.) This is the real value inherent in a Social Networking service.
While it may be easy to import contacts, it’s much harder to convince all your friends and connections to move to a new service. Because they too have a history on that service. And they don’t just connect with you. They too have their own family and friends they’ve established relationships with.
For new services that want to compete directly with Facebook, this is their biggest challenge. And relationships and that history are not transferable. It’s just not technically possible.
Specialized Networks Have Opportunity
This doesn’t mean there isn’t still opportunity. We see a trend toward specialized Social Networking services, such as AllSailors or ConnectedSailors or singles dating for sailors like LoveSail in the UK. Then there’s Ning where you can set up your own Social Network for whatever hobby, sports group, community group you want. Easily and quickly. These specialized Social Network services are growing and what we’re seeing is that people are keeping their Facebook, NetLog etc., services and then engaging with specialty Social Network related to their hobby. We have seen as well, that people who are passionate about a particular topic, cease engagement with general services like Facebook; this will represent a monetization challenge to these services.
Age Related Context
Tied into this is that the under 20 demographic is most active in broad social networks, it’s the 20+ crowd who are establishing hobbies and extra interests that are migrating more to Specialized Social Networks (SSN’s), especially the 35+ demographic, men and women alike.
(Author: G. Crouch)
Media Analysis, Research•
on March 8th, 2010•
Perhaps “killing” is an aggressive word, another might be maturation or natural selection. Our nearly three years of researching consumer and citizen behaviour in Social Media has taught us a lot and enabled us to see some interesting trends now that we’ve been at it a while. Chief among them now is how people are deciding the fate of existing and new Social Media apps and services. We suspect 2010 may be a year of attrition and consolidation.
Consumers in the U.S., Canada and England tend to actively (i.e. create content and interact) use only 3 services on a regular basis (more than 4 hours per week.) Other services are used about once every two weeks, on average. This is usually tends to be one Social Network app (i.e. Facebook or Bebo), one time-sensitive app (i.e. Twitter or Instant Messaging) and one video app (i.e. YouTube.)
Other services that fall behind the actively used ones are photo sharing or editing (Flickr, PhotoBucket or PicNik), blogs and Wiki’s.
We can clearly see the economic concept of the Solidarity Value at work in Social Media. As in the more people using a service the more inherent value it gains, socially and economically. Twitter owns the microblog space; Plurk and Identi.ca lost out. Facebook owns the Social Network space, MySpace is on a steady decline and lost that race. Facebook has already acquired FriendFeed in August of 2009.
But what we’re also seeing is an interesting trend towards specialized Social Networking sites; such as for cultures, hobbies or life-interests. This trend is just emerging as far as we’re seeing, but has been trending upwards over the past 6 months. For marketers, we suggest monitoring this trend since people tend to spend the most time on the things that they are most passionate about.Obviously.
As we have an abundance of information and a scarcity of attention, the same goes for Social Media services – people can only spend so much time using any set of services. And now we’re starting to see habits emerge as these channels and services become more commonplace in our daily media consumption lives.
When it comes to age groups and this pattern, it repeats itself. In fact, the younger the age, the more “closed” loop they like their services to be (i.e. txt messaging, IMing and Facebook.) Added to this factor is the increasing “interoperability” between services (i.e. aggregating your activities into one place like Buzz or Facebook.) More on that later.
All of this is pointing to a trend that will see a significant increase in the fight to gain peoples membership in free and freemium services and to keep them there. That will be a tough challenge ahead.
(Author: Giles Crouch)
Research, Thunking•
on March 5th, 2010•
Those who study human communication habits say that 60% of our communication with each other is body language (hand movement, facial expressions, posture etc.) so other than using video chat tools, essentially, Social Media is missing 60% of the message in text and audio tools. Video enables this to some degree, but unless you’re in a two-way video chat/conference you’re only communicating one-way.
As is our nature, we compensate to some degree in text-based tools by the use of “emoticons“, changing font sizes and using perhaps bold or italics. which helps to a degree.
It’s also still a leading source of communicating in Social Media channels. Video still has issues such as connections, poor images, incompatible systems/camera’s, bandwidth hogging and sound delays. All of which is to say, we’re still missing something.
We’ve kind of hit a plateau with Social Media I think (more on that later) and we’ve adopted these tools. But where does it go from here?
Will text-based social tools still stay dominant? If video starts to take over eventually, how will we deal with the critical aspect of linking to reference each others work?
(Author: Giles Crouch)
There’s a lot of nasty behaviour online – understatement of 2010. A tweet from a smart communicator, Lauren, lead me to a post about Richard Dawkins feeling slighted over improper behaviour on his forums. The irony of the subsequent comments on that blog post were rather enjoyable.
We’re facing a complex set of new issues around social rules on the Web; in Social Media channels and other online channels. As humanity, these technology tools give us an ability to express ourselves unlike ever before.
Given all the research we do on Social and Digital Media, behaviour is something we look at regularly. We wade through an immense swampland of comments and discussions daily. And probably 85% of it is junk. Spam, nasty comments that are destructive rather than constructive. Porn spammers and the rest. The problem is, we face a challenge in moderating this behaviour in Cyburbia that we don’t have in the real world.
In the real-world in a group of people gathered for whatever reason, a naysayer or nasty person can be quickly shut down and asked to leave. In forums, newsgroups or blog/newspaper comments, there are moderators or a person can be deleted from a forum (but they can easily re-register.) So there are limits to what can be done effectively in Cyburbia. Then you get to issues like Richard Dawkins’ and the final result is to shut off the channel altogether, then we all suffer. Something that can be avoided in the real world.
We often call this online behaviour “childish”. Perhaps because that is exactly the phase we’re in with Social Media; we’re just finding our “Voice of Humanity” and so much of our behaviour is immature. We haven’t established many social rules yet. The “culture” of the Web is unsettled and as yet not entirely defined. It’s easier too when we can hide behind anonymity in these instances – another issue that will need addressing?
Over time I suspect, we’ll develop rules. Ways to shut out overly negative behaviour. It will take time. So meanwhile it’s just part of the “noise” that we have to learn to self-filter or we all suffer for one rotten apple. Issues like this is part of the reason governments are starting to look more closely at online regulations and legislation.
What do you think? What stage are we at?
(Author: G. Crouch)
Apparently, the Obama administration, who has broken new ground in using the Web for a more transparent and engaged government with citizens, is no longer just “leaving it alone.” This marks a significant shift in U.S. government policy regarding structure and legislation on Internet activity. That may just be a good thing and about time. It certainly marks a point of maturity for the Web and the Internet in the U.S.
Here’s our view on why we think this presents some upsides overall and what it may portend.
1. Necessary Protections: Let’s start with child protection. It’s needed. That is an undeniable fact. Canada and the UK would likely follow suit and we’d have better protection for children. Let’s follow that with the Nigerian 419 scams and all the Phishing attacks, spam-bots and Malware sites. Which will only get worse and threaten an entire economic model that has evolved. This is one of the key areas covered by “Internet Policy 3.0″ by the Obama administration.
2. Social Network Implications: Strikingly, in his statement, Senator Larry Strickling shows that government fully acknowledges the voice of the citizen in this new medium as the Internet (sic. Web) is a social as well as business network. That is a significant point of identification of a medium that shouldn’t be missed.
3. Copyright Protections: As per the Digital Economy Bill going through the UK parliament to provide legal protections on copyright, so the US is making these considerations. People who have worked hard for their content deserve some form of protection. The Creative Commons only goes so far and has not entirely resolved these issues.
The implications are broad and some changes will not be welcomed. No doubt they will change the landscape of the Web around the world. What you may be prosecuted for in one country, may be legal in another. We’ve already seen the impact on the U.S. gambling laws for the Internet; it shut down some foreign operators entirely. Likely we will see “underground” networks proliferate, creating a whole new level of policing pressures on government. More perhaps, than now. But to make open government work, some legislation is necessary. The question is “how much” and I don’t pretend to have that answer. Whoever does is set to make some good money though.
At least the U.S. approach is more moderate and open-minded than places like Italy who jailed Google executives recently. Then there’s the UN’s Internet Governance Forum, which is seeing increased input from donor nation governments, that’s not necessarily bad, or good.
This won’t be easy, for either government or citizens. But the lawless days of the Web are drawing to a close and it will be a new landscape in a few years. I suspect we’ll end up with a more transparent and collaborative government with a more engaged citizenship. The Web has grown up a little this year already. Perhaps now it is a teenager than a rampant two-year old?
(Author: G. Crouch)
Research, Thunking•
on February 25th, 2010•
Why doesn’t government and politicians take activism on Social Media services seriously? To some degree they do. For elected members activity on blogs, comments on news sites, some Twitter commentary; can be an indicator of citizen sentiment on an issue. But what about petitions and gaining change within government?
My theory is that there’s a few issues at work here, legitimate ones for government. Issues that will need addressing in the future.
Content Quality: Let’s face it, often times the “comments” left in online news services and blogs are often crap. They are highly opinionated and often without the evidence needed to make the opinion based on some qualified research or data. Often they are rants and by people who likely can’t be persuaded to an alternate stance anyway; politicians and government understand this. It’s not worth the effort to address them.
Anonymity & Identification: This to me is a serious element. Most people post on blog comments or news media site comments under an assumed false name or “handle” like “opinionator123″ and don’t use a real name. One has no idea if that person is a smart 12 year old or a 40 year old, male or female or living within the jurisdiction of the story being addressed. This then goes to the issue of identification and validating the responses or discussion.
What Will Be Needed?
Today, there doesn’t exist a way to truly validate an individual (beyond online voting systems, which are not scaled to go beyond electoral requirements and time lines.) Outside of Cyburbia, we have established means of determining personal identity (drivers license, identity cards, passports etc.) which we do not have in Cyburbia. Hand written signatures on a petition are acceptable because there’s a proven means of validation, trusted and accepted. But there isn’t for our lives in Cyburbia.
So Where Does That Leave Us?
For now, I think that just leaves politicians and government bureaucrats with taking Social Media seriously – but only so far. More in terms of “general sentiment” or identification of potential issues to cross over into voter or constituent actions. But that’s it. Government has a responsibility to the public to make decisions based on quantifiable sources and via accepted means.
So until some form of personal validation system is developed and validated by governments, we can’t expect activism in Social Media services and channels to be taken overly seriously. Services like Move On are gaining momentum, but still remain on the fringes of acceptance. In India such activism is taking hold, but only hits the “elites” or those that can afford computers and Web access; still missing the majority of the population.
What do you think?
(Author: G. Crouch)
Research, Thunking•
on February 24th, 2010•
Just for fun, I was pondering what types of Social Media services there might be 5-10 years. So here’s some and maybe you’ve got one or two to add?
Privacy Chip: This will be a “chip” or chunk of software that automatically defines your privacy settings with any new Social Media service you sign up for, like the Disqus system for comment moderation on blogs. You pre-program your settings and it ensures only certain information is public.
Social Chip: Embedded data on your Social Networks and services, with privacy info defined by type of service (kind of like the Poken now, but embedded into your mobile and credit/debit cards with permission marketing levels.)
The Permission Card: Maybe it’s same size as a credit card, or maybe it’s loaded into your mobile device – essentially, it details what marketers can and can’t do with your contact info. You set the preferences on how marketers communicate with you, if they behave you can “rate” their behaviour.
The Anonomator: A little piece of bot software you control. It can go out and destroy any content across the web or a connected device that is negative about you. It coincides with your Privacy Chip for validation and Social Media services must comply….so when you discover those pics of you drunk at the party…
The One Device: It’s your mobile phone, includes your social chip and privacy chip data and can allow you to connect to publicly available terminals anywhere and has all your data there – text, audio, video, pics. It has your credit and debit card data, even your ability to vote in elections…everything digital.
Insta-Rater: Having lunch at a decent place and want to rate it? Aim your One Device at the code on the wall, rate it by stars, add a text note if you like…voila! all done, no registration process, your device handles all the validation, and it works with AR (Augmented Reality) services as well.
Have any ideas for the future of social technologies
(Author: G. Crouch)
Media Analysis, Research•
on February 22nd, 2010•
We’re always doing research into how people are using Social Media, much of it for clients, much of it the result of the research we do for clients. One interesting trend we’ve noted over the past few months – people are turning off the garden hose. We’re learning to filter.
As humanity, we’ve suffered from “filter failure” ever since more books were printed than a human could read in their lifetime. All we’ve done is increase the volume, now more significantly.
When we do research for a client, we always look for the “power user” those engaged more than others. We also look at the Echo Ratio (our own stat based on the Solidarity Value of economics) and applying the Power Law Curve. I’m just stating our process here.
Up until 3 months ago, the average joe user of Social Media (i.e. engaged 5-10 hours per week in social media channels) had 5.4 channels they engaged in (that most often comprised in Canada, UK and USA of a social network, microblog, email, blog and one or two others.)
Over the past 3 months we’ve seen that decline quite significantly, down to an average of 3.25 apps per average user of social media channels.
Are we learning to apply filters? We’re now looking at heavier users. I like the posting recently from David Armano on a similar vein.
What do you think?
We’ve done a fair amount of research into the financial sector in the past year, both Canada and the United States. Most of our data is of course, confidential to the client. But we can speak in “aggregate” terms of our findings. The broad strokes so to speak.
To put it bluntly, there is a lot of anger, frustration and distrust out there. No surprise given the tail end of 2008 and the subsequent spiral into a financial quagmire. Canada may have gotten off a little better, but it still saw a wallop at the banks in terms of consumer mistrust.
There’s lots of chatter going on, as might be expected. We found women tend to discuss bank services more than men (62% female overall) and that the most popular age group for discussion was 30-45. We looked at commentary in online newspapers, newsgroups and forums, blogs, microblogs and some social networking sites. Over 1.7M “conversations” in total across Canada and the U.S.
The topics that ranked the highest for consumer negativity towards the financial sector;
1. Mortgages
2. Fees and service charges
3. customer service
As might be expected, the larger the bank, the more negativity. Smaller, more localized banks in the U.S. had higher consumer sentiment while in Canada it was credit unions that saw the most positive sentiment. People are frustrated. Banks that used “trust” statements in their slogans were hit the worst with re-purposed content turning those slogans back on themselves.
So what does this all mean? As an industry sector, the financial world of businesses has a lot more trust building to do with consumers. It’s no small surprise, but banks and other financial institutions are likely addressing this issue. One wonders how consumer sentiment might be in a year or two from now. The volume of discussion is still rising across multiple social media channels as well. We expect to see a peak by May or June of this year, but that remains to be validated.
Because it’s boring. Email is boring.
But more people use email than Facebook or Twitter. Combined. Every day. Still.
Email spans a wider demographic range than any other social technology application. We’re already seeing (in our own research and others) that age groups are defining social technologies…more on that later.
Email is ridiculously simple and it’s boring. Across many age groups, we’ve mastered email, whether that’s via a Web interface like Gmail or Hotmail or if we have an email client like Mail or Entourage or Thunderbird. Most of us already have our various “groups” that we send stuff to. We don’t think about it, we just “forward”, “reply” or create new, copy/paste or drag/drop and hit “send.” And we’re done. Boring. That’s when social change comes about from a technology; when it becomes boring.
Jody Williams won a nobel peace prize for land mine activism – mostly using email and faxes. Two boring technologies.
The phone eventually enabled the ability to have 911 service, of which a TV show was created. Because it was boring and we all knew how to dial a phone. In the 1930’s phones were pretty much banned in offices.
Facebook is not an email “killer” because it’s still complicated and not boring yet. Same thing with Twitter.
A new social media technology that is now pretty much boring is SMS/txt messaging and perhaps the first instance of txt messaging benefiting society was Haiti – that most of the money raised in the US, Canada and UK was through SMS donations. In the 2005 Orange Revolution in the Ukraine, it was txt messaging that played the key role in gathering people to protest the election results and promoted democracy. It’s getting boring.
So, what do you think? Is email still the number one social technology?
