Why Social Media Really Works in Civil Actions

Issues for protest or causing some form of unrest aside, the real reason social media tools have been a key technology in driving significant societal changes comes down to one reason we propose – lowered individual risk and group comfort. One person protesting in front of city hall is unlikely to cause a change. You need a lot of people. Our research into Keystone XL and the use of social media by civil society groups showed how now even groups can connect with other groups to take action on issues.

Herd Mentality
The truth is that we as humans prefer to act in groups. We have to. One person alone cannot build an office tower. When we see others gathering, we are more likely to join in when we share that groups values, ideas, opinions or vision.

Social Media Shows Commitment
Look at a Facebook group page on an issue of society, a celebrity or brand. If one group has thousands of followers we assume that group is generally more popular. A group page with just a few members isn’t as compelling. We’ll go for the group with more people – in general. An individual will go where there’s the perception of others with similar views. As social media tools thrive on high volumes of users, require little to know technical skills and are available through mobile devices as well, a person can quickly see when something is becoming popular. When we see others are committed, we’re more likely to commit.

Digital Mob Mentality
When an issue takes off, like #Occupy, Egyptian revolution or the London riots of 2011, people go into what we term Digital Mob Mentality. They are fast to comment and quick to share with their peer networks. This becomes a feeding frenzy of information. Coordination is quick, communication is essentially at zero cost and there is no friction. To those that suggest “slacktivism” takes place, yes, to some degree. But as the above events and many others show, the slacktivists are far less than those who can and do actively participate in the issue.

Hyper-Momentum & Networks
Because of the significant increases in the use of mobile data devices (SmartPhones and Tablets) and the easy access to social media technologies over increasingly higher bandwidth networks, an issue gains what we call hyper-momentum. The story spreads fast and furious. Far faster than ever before in human history. No one has to wait for mail to arrive or has to be at home to take the phone call. And every one of us has social networks of friends, family, co-workers etc. And we trust news and actions of friends very quickly. More so than official government communications. In several research projects we’ve done for governments around the use of social media in both natural and man-made disasters, we see a greater reliance on information passed through social networks or the social graph than that coming from government (including policing and fire services.)

In Summary
When we see other people taking part in something we are curious. Whenever we see a crowd, we are curious as to what has drawn other peoples attention. These behaviours are simply translated to online services through social media. The more we see others with a similar view are committed to an action, the more likely we are to participate. It’s as simple as that. And we have plenty of evidence.

Klout or PeerIndex & Their Value or Non-Value

We’ve been knocking about the value and veracity of Klout and others like PeerIndex in our offices for some time now and we posted before on the issue of Klout. So we looked at Klout and PeerIndex a little deeper recently, to try and sort out just where these tools sit in the greater scheme of marketing. We then went out to look and compare Klout with PeerIndex to understand their place in the social media ecosystem.

Where Klout is Good Etc.
Klout: Is all about marketing. For the individual, it is an “ego tool” kind of like the social media version of “ego surfing”. Perhaps if you were a geek or nerd in high school you may find some greater comfort in having a higher Klout score that the “in” crowd you were left out of.

Aside from the ego aspect, Klout wants you to publish more content and build more of a network because that is vital to their business model. Their business value is eyeballs and people that appear – the word appear is key here – to have some “influence” in one or more online communities. Your value to Klout is how many people you might potentially have some level of influence with. They sell peoples apparent (not real) influence to brands and products. You as a consumer may get some free products in return for mentioning these products or services. We find no problem with this and quite frankly, it is a great marketers tool. It relies on human’s competitive nature and as a result, will likely do fairly well. Klout will also likely anger consumers as much as Facebook. It is the love-hate relationship many consumers have with social media tools.

Where Klout Fails
But Klout will not help with understand the true “authority” of someone. Influence is, well, interesting, but in real terms, it’s not influence that matters, its authority. This is where Klout fails. It also fails in matters of small, but powerful communities. Klout looks at the Really Big Picture – for brands like Coca-Cola, Nike, MacDonald’s or Wal-Mart. But it fails at a very local level and it fails when it comes to non-marketing issues like civil society.

Where PeerIndex Wins
PeerIndex has taken the approach to “authority” by looking at the topics people discuss the most in primary social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Don’t be mistaken, they are targeting to sell this “authority” to brands in the same way as Klout. And why not? They are a business and the purpose of a business is to make a profit. PeerIndex is a second to Klout who has gained more media and social media attention and holds first-mover status. So PeerIndex has a catch-up job. We found that compared to Klout though, PeerIndex was “trusted” far more than Klout at a 3:1 ratio. The key will be if PeerIndex can attract the eyeballs and conversion. Klout has lots of well, inexplicable dashboard things like “reach” that really don’t tell you anything. We see PeerIndex as being a bit more focused on methodology and greater transparency on their science.

Where PeerIndex Fails
Where Klout is focused on “influence” it seems PeerIndex has chosen “authority”. We find the PeerIndex approach easier to understand than Klout, but they exclude the level of influence. PeerIndex, like Klout, also excludes the cultural and smaller social networks where greater value can be found. PeerIndex is focused on more channels than Klout, which helps (including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, plus Quora and some blogs) but they too miss the secondary, but often more active networks that could yield a greater sense of authority. They may include an individuals blog that signs up for PeerIndex, but they don’t capture (and it would be a challenge to do this) the broader blogosphere or Blog Rings.

Where Klout & PeerIndex Utterly Fall Down
Both Klout and PeerIndex pretty much ignore non-major social media services in North America such as Orkut, BigAdda, MySpace, hi5, AllAfricans.com and many other vital cultural and hobby-based networks. Essentially, both Klout and PeerIndex really only care about the big brands and the U.S., UK or Canadian markets. They completely miss the influence and authority of the Web as a whole and its interconnected communities which is very multicultural and global in scale.

In Summary
Klout and PeerIndex both offer some value for marketers. In major Western markets and well, that’s where the big bucks are and they’re businesses. But when it comes to where the next growth area is in social media, which is civil society, they both fail terribly. But then so do all social media monitoring and reputation management tools. PeerIndex hopes to own the “authority” segment while Klout wants to own “influence” and there is a difference between the two. Someone should own, or attempt to, both influence and authority. That will be a challenge, but isn’t impossible. So choose your poison as a marketer.

Are There Too Many Social Media Apps & Tools?

SmartPhone growth is increasing rapidly and the adoption of tablets like the iPad and Galaxy are keeping apace. But these are the gadgets themselves, not the apps. And we’re starting to see some decline of levelling off on the adoption and use of a number of social media tools. Most notably with geolocation services and augmented reality apps.

A recent study by Forrestor Research indicates that 70% of American adults don’t even know what a geolocation service (e.g. Yelp and FourSquare) is…that’s slightly better than the 85% just over a year ago. While that may give someone some heart (if you’re in sector) that there is hope, our research shows a decline in use of these tools across the U.S. and Canada as well. Less often do we see services like Yelp come up in our research and when we do, it’s mostly the under 30 age group using them. The +30 segment seems to prefer Yelp over FourSquare which we find lands, well, squarely, in the 19-29 demographic.

When it comes to Augmented Reality tools, they too have grown in use, but not significantly. In two research projects for clients in the marketing sector we found a decrease in mentions of Augmented Reality in the US and parts of Canada and negative sentiment was still fairly high on average. Most common was the complaint of using the tools to be clunky and often not working even after a software download. We don’t see significant adoption of AR until it becomes as easy to use as QR codes and doesn’t require all kinds of software to download.

Speaking of QR Codes. A recent study by Archrival in the U.S. showed that 80% of university students found using QR codes difficult and awkward. We’ve seen similar statements of confusion or non-interest in Canada in some of our research for clients.

Are We Saturated?
With over 300 blogging platforms, 200+ social networks, over 80 microblog platforms (no, Twitter is not the only one), and thousands of other services and tools along with the ecosystem support tools (e.g. Twitter clients like HootSuite or Seesmic) and plug-ins, well, perhaps it’s a little crowded. In our research, we are seeing that the majority of the market is using an average of 3 services regularly (social network, microblog and one other) and 2-3 additional in an irregular basis (bi-monthly or quarterly.) We see this indicating that we may be seeing consumer fatigue over the volume of technologies and apps rolling out. A lot of new technologies are just not seeing mass adoption anymore. For them to be successful, these tools and apps have to move out of the echo chamber of the Technocrats and techy pundits into mainstream. When Twitter found its way onto CNN and Fox News it grew significantly.

So What Does This Mean? The Bar Is Raised!
For marketers it creates a nightmare of channel fragmentation which means more up front research and constantly re-evaluating where to put the chopped up marketing budget. For developers of new apps and services they will need to significantly raise the bar into 2012 or face slow or no adoption. For investors and VC’s, they’ll likely see more failures unless they do good due diligence up front to determine the significant difference and value. Consumers only want to use so many tools. Civil society from that context is the same.

Innovation is vital to a good economy and we have no doubt these innovations will continue, but it will be even harder into 2012 for new services to get adopted. We may also see QR codes fall increasingly by the way-side. That’s okay. It’s all part of the evolution of this fascinating period in time where humanity and technology intersect.

The Next Big Thing in Social Media is Television

Yes, television. That old hunk of electronics is going through some major overhauls and it may very well be where Apple will be disrupting things yet again. You can easily connect your telly to the Internet today. Most via devices like AppleTV or Boxee, SlingBox and others are simply streamers of content via online channels. But the biggest problem isn’t the features and functions of these devices. Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba and all the others are building in processors to their TV’s already with no need for hanging devices like an AppleTV. The biggest issue is input – it’s just not easy to use a little remote control to type in a blog post, let alone a “tweet”. Added to this is little capability for engagement – its much like the Internet pre-social media.

But that engagement is coming. Within a two years, perhaps less, you’ll be able to send a “tweet” when watching a show telling others what you’re watching. Perhaps rate, tag and comment on a movie you’re watching or songs you’re listening to. Already Apple has enabled the use of an iPad via Apple Remote to interface with an AppleTV.

Once software companies and major social media technology brands like Facebook and Google+ figure out easy ways to input and interact with the television set a whole new slew of tools will be available and television will see a renewal of content and applications. This will also present several new challenges in regards to privacy, content rights and revenue models. On the revenue side, it will likely impact in increased “splitting” of fees amongst carriers and creators. To offset broadcasters and carriers desire to have “metered” access, content creators will likely pay “gateway” fees to have their content delivered over networks. Eventually the consumer will pay for this. We also suspect that micropayments will take off significantly when the integration of television and the Web happen – already we see this with Apple in regards to shows and movies. Consumers will face greater complexity in buying and leasing content in the near term. A complexity that may damage the business models. It’s been quite easy to turn on the telly and just flick through channels and that form of media consumption will not change for a very long time.

But social media tools and services will hit television and it will spark a new level of application development and entirely new social media tools and interactions. We continue to see in our research the adoption of more “social technologies” and limited growth in “single user apps” such as photo editing software (even those apps are seeing integration of social elements.) We have little doubt that in short order, televisions will come with a hard drive.

So the question then becomes…what are men going to do when the easy to hold remote is gone?

The Opportunity for Social Media Apps is Niche Markets

Facebook has become the biggest social network. Twitter dominates the microblog segment and WordPress all but rules the blogging world platforms of choice. The stakes have been stuck in the ground for the cyber digital territory of “mega-apps”. Our research is showing that the new opportunity for social media apps is servicing niche communities (for social networking) and for other tools it’s also all about the niche.

While we wouldn’t say for sure that there couldn’t be another Facebook or Twitter size of social media app, it is unlikely until technology becomes more invisible. Now it is all about servicing niche groups. And the most successful of those will likely be on mobile devices such as SmartPhones and tablets. We see this trend continuing for the next 2-3 years.

Why?
Out of the 50 research projects we reviewed for data on social media apps use, we have noted  that people will maintain a Facebook presence, but  will be 34% more active in a niche social network (e.g. for golfing or other sports.) This is a 18% increase over 2010 and 36% CAGR since 2009. Facebook has failed to hang on in any meaningful way to niche groups. Google is attempting this with Google+ Hangouts. We are seeing some traction for Hangouts but it is too early to know and the API’s into Google+ are not available yet to analyse. The reason, we speculate, is that people will be most engaged in the places where they’re the most interested. Even recently launched UnThink is a niche play and will never be on a scale of Facebook.

Why This Is Good
For those services like FourSquare, Yelp, Vimeo, UnThink or newcommer Trapit, this is actually not a bad thing. The customers/users they do gain will tend to be more loyal and once established there, they will prefer to stay there. We note that there is an “economic value” to a persons information (i.e. social graph, contact info, avatar etc.) and once established, they are unlikely to move. Our research indicates that the longer someone stays in a social media service, the less likely they are to leave. Even if they don’t engage that often.