What’s really happening with privacy today is that consumers/netizens and business are negotiating a new “social contract.” Sure Facebook and Google among others, have made mistakes in how they deal with privacy. So have netizens who post a comment or statement on a blog open to everyone and then get angry when they are confronted with libel or slander by the offended party – you post it where it’s open to the public, it’s your fault.
So how are we going to deal with this?
The reality is, the general public is figuring this out as much as the companies offering social technology services. Both are to blame for mistakes and wins.
1. Business wants less privacy so they have more data on people and groups to sell to product manufacturers and services providers. They want “marketing data”. A business really does not care about an individual. They don’t have the time or resources. As much as the business world talks about 1 to 1 customer relationships the reality is quite the opposite.
2. Consumers want more privacy to protect personal data from marketers. They also want it so they can better manage their social relationships and the relationships they may form with corporations.
The reality is that no one has all the right answers – how could we? The issues of privacy will be settled over time and with that most powerful of incentives in our world today – money. When consumers are truly frustrated with a company or product, they don’t buy it and they don’t participate. Or citizens push (as is their right) government to develop legislation for regulation.
Despite Facebook’s privacy faux pas, they continue to grow rapidly. Google remains the top search engine. Hundreds of millions still use Gmail and other Google services. Twitter continues to grow.
Privacy issues like we’re addressing today have never before been an issue in society. We have absolutely no precedence to refer to. A form of “social contract” existed before because it was quite easy to control privacy. With the advent of CCTV cameras, low cost of networking these services and then the Web, all of a sudden we face new issues on privacy.
The debates and outcries will continue for some time yet. Eventually I suspect a happy medium will be found. Until then, we have perhaps a few more decades before a new “social contract” on privacy becomes apparent. Until then, as citizens, I think we have a responsibility to learn and develop our terms as much as business is learning. It’s people that run a business and successful businesses are always innovating and part of that is pushing boundaries, to understand what is and isn’t acceptable.
What do you think?
(Author: G. Crouch)
As we research social media use across continents and cultural groups, we of course are also always looking to understand how social media technologies can make an impact on our world. Both positive and negative. Listening to Devdutt Pattanaik speaking on mythologies and how we view our world, once can translate that into how social technologies can and are bringing our global community together.
If global trade (finance, exporting/importing, global corporations etc.) are enabling the movement of physical goods and the tumbling of walls into nation states that reflected so much of 20th century, then social media technologies are where people are first developing the relationships through sharing of content and ideas.
As people, we all need an “identity” and that is both a personal identity then social then cultural and finally a nation-state sense of identity. That identity and how we behave is through social activities (meetings, cultural broadcast on TV, radio…the Web) and behaviours. This is arrived at entirely through dialog. You can not form a company or a nation without other people (well, you could, but it would be awfully small and collapse when you die.)
My World: In social media terms, this is the sites and services you engage in to view content on the Web and view what other people have created or said. It’s more singular in nature and based on your behaviour.
Your World: That’s how “my world” see’s anothers world. It is the opening of the conversation or the relationship in the social web. In Cyburbia.
The World: This is reality. This is all the tools and the relative state of the Web as it stands today, globally. This is “the” world of Cyburbia. It is the result of my world and your world coming together.
What I believe we’re starting to see is the use of social media technologies to bring our world together. Here’s some examples I think that help make the case.
Smoking Boy: In Vietnam the father who let’s his 2 year old smoke 40 cigarettes a day. Because this hit YouTube it went around the world. Not only through social technologies, but news media. News media around the world. Prior to the web we likely never would have seen that story outside Vietnam.
Iranian Elections ‘09: Agressive, planned and consistent use of social technologies such as YouTube and Flickr kept the Iranian election front and centre globally and provided people with an insight into Iran and that there are many there who want proper democracy and human rights.
Playing for Change: The global awareness on poverty project that saw people around the world playing stand by me in various cultures (among other songs) uses that universal translator, music, to bridge between cultures.
That’s just three examples. What do you think? Are we going to be able to better understand one anothers cultures better through social technologies? Can we call this the opening phase of Global Aculturalisation?
The most popular and critical tools in Social Media (Facebook, Buzz, Twitter etc.) all came out of the USA. In fact it was in large part the Hippies coming back into San Francisco from their failed communes that developed the initial software that eventually lead to today’s social media revolution.
The impact has been global and is escalating. During the Iranian elections of 2009 it was Facebook, Flickr and YouTube that played a vital role in the democratic parties getting out the message. Democratic parties in Moldova tried to use Twitter. Pro-democracy groups in Egypt have done the same.
America is a model of democracy (set aside your partisan views for a minute) and represents freedom. We in Canada follow the same beliefs, as do all truly democratic countries. Key to good democracy is the ability for people to organize into groups, then to create their content and manage their activities. This is precisely what Social Media tools and services enable.
Although some other great Social Media tools and services have popped up out of Canada, UK, Germany and other countries, it is truly a gift of America. While there may be smaller wars raging, if America wasn’t the hegemony it is today, we’d be in far worse shape.
Social Media channels, tools and services will enable ever greater levels of democracy. Most importantly, these tools are giving people in fragile nations, emerging markets and autocratic states a chance to create global awareness and find help. Social Media tools may help in better managing globalization and systemic risk factors as well.
When I think of Social Media in global terms (setting aside consumerism) one can only conclude that of the many gifts American drive, panache and entrepreneurism has given us, Social Media is certainly in the top three.
What about you? What do you think?
(Author: G. Crouch, MD)
Understanding cultural and ethnic behaviours and uses of Social Media can often play a key role in developing an engagement strategy for Social Media; whether that be for marketing, general communications or other purposes.
In our research, we’ve found that ethnic and cultural groups use tools in similar patterns, no matter the group. What we’ve found is that either a cultural our ethnic group that resides inside a non-indigenous state will use a Social Media tool that can connect them globally across all cultures and also use tools that connect them just within their cultural or ethnic group. Yeah, so what does that mean?
We define Global Social Media Tools as those tools or services that are agnostic to a culture or ethnic group and enable communication in any language (text, audio or image) and have global reach – doesn’t matter what country you’re in, you can access them (for the most part). Examples would be Twitter or Facebook or Buzz.
Then you have what we call Group Specific Social Media Tools. These are tools that are language (usually indicating culture or ethnicity) specific or culture/ethnic group specific. Examples would be Vkontakte which is Russia’s “Facebook” or Sonico.com which is for Latin Americans and Portugese speakers or AbairThusa, a Gaelic speaking Social Network. Ameba is an example of a microblogging service in Japan that is like Twitter but for those speaking Japanese.
In the case of cultural and ethnic groups in countries like Canada, the United States or UK, almost all active people from cultural and ethnic groups also speak English and will have English friends and business connections and so will also use Facebook, Twitter or similar. But the majority of their activity takes place on services that are specific to their culture or ethnic group.
This is important when considering engagement in Social Media. Since you may also want to reach those people and measure activity, within their ethnic or cultural group. This adds a layer of complexity however, since you’ll need to understand their written language.
Think these groups are too small to really be concerned about? Not at all. Societally we all belong to different cultural, ethnic and social groups. Immigrant populations inside a country can be very positively engaged in their new home country. This can offer significant opportunities.
(Author: G. Crouch, MD)
Research, Thunking, culture•
on June 7th, 2010•
There’ve been enough cases of how in some fragile nations in the Global South, Social Media tools have been used to rally protestors for democracy – Iran, Ukraine, Belarus to name a few. But now in Pakistan, Facebook is facing a national ban. Not for reasons of it’s own doing, but because someone posted a page looking for cartoons of Muhammad.
Now even those who would’ve previously been against a ban of a service like Facebook are, for religious and religio-cultural purposes, supporting the ban. This suddenly poses a series of questions and issues;
- One person can post something on a social network (i.e. Facebook) that throws an entire country into overdrive to call for a national ban.
- That some of these new mediums are beginning to have broader socio-political and socio-cultural impacts that can extend beyond a national border to have broader impacts on international relations.
- These technologies are becoming increasingly pervasive and are not the sole domain of the Global North and are a key tool to the Global South.
- Cultures and religious beliefs face challenges they’ve never before known. For a culture is the combination of values, beliefs and more and religion is ideology and theology. These are all, at their heart, ideas, concepts, beliefs – all areas that can be challenged, manipulated, changed, adapted, developed and more through Social Media tools (blogs, Facebook etc.)
What I think we’ll see in the coming years is increasingly fragmented social network services. Already there are cultural, religious and ethnic social networking services (i.e. Bigadda or BlackPlanet or MyChurch.) In business terms, for Facebook this will be their biggest challenge; dealing with culture, religion and belief-systems, and the competitors that serve those interests.
In thinking of the U.S., Canadian and Western European markets, that may not mean much. But when you get into countries in the Global South, that will mean a lot. Facebook, like Google or Microsoft, is seen as part of America and the West as a whole and thus the American/Western cultural system.
Yes, Social Media Technologies as a whole are helping, very positively, to grow a more integrated global community, but there will still be divides. And that will mean walls and some interesting political and economic implications over the next 10-15 years.
Or perhaps, second. First before you engage in a Social Media marketing effort, you need to “listen” to the conversations, to understand them and what channels they are taking place in. Secondly, you need to understand the “culture” of that channel; the way it is used, the “tribe leaders”, the expectations from engagement, the beliefs of the participants and the form of the content.
Understanding this Channel Culture is as important as listening. It’s one thing to know the desired destination, it’s another to know how to engage. Going to England? Are you ready to drive on the left hand side of the road?
Here’s how we define the elements of Channel Culture from our research;
1. How It’s Used: Twitter is used essentially as a news push. Whether you’re expressing what your doing or sharing breaking or interesting stories.The nature and types of content may change as well, based on time of year or week and more.
2. Behaviours: How one “behaves” in Facebook versus a more closed environment such as Instant Messaging is crucial to developing your brands “tone of voice” in that channel. Listening helps to understand the way your marketing team can engage in the chosen mediums.
3. Tribe Leaders: In Twitter and in the blogosphere, there are those seen as “leaders” by the way they engage and how respected they are by their peers in that channel. There are always leaders. Always. How they lead varies. Some may be obvious, others simply through sheer presence and subsequent influence.
4. Beliefs or Values: In Social Media channels, people develop sets of values and beliefs that are evolved as the channel evolves. These may be the type of content encouraged or discouraged, the length of the content, acceptable responses and an understandable link to the nature of the channel with your product. Trying to sell freezers at a golf course is not a smart marketing move.
5. Rules of Conduct: Yes, they exist. Always. They may be established “rules” by the administrator of a chat room or forum (i.e. the moderator) or they may be very informal. But breaking them can get you banished and instantly dropped causing reputation management issues and a potential crisis leaking over into other channels; kind of like Facebook and Nestle.
These elements come together and form the nature of the culture of the channel. Understanding them can help mitigare failure, guide content development, creative opportunities and process of engagement for marketers.
(Author: Giles Crouch, MD)
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?
Media Analysis, Research•
on February 4th, 2010•
If you’re over 30 then I’m sorry to tell you that you’ve “read” your cultural future. If you’re under 30 then you’ve got the sheer delight of “authoring” your cultural future.
If you’re over 30 then you’re spending less than 20 hours, on average 12 hours, per week online; in Social Networks, on blogs, Twittering etc. But if you’re under 30 then that average starts to climb. Under 20? Research shows you’re spending more than 50 hours per week online.
Under 20? You’re creating content on a scale never before known to humanity. Video, photo’s, text. You’re writing the culture of the future. Suddenly, since I’m over 40, I feel rather ancient.
What an incredibly powerful concept; to have the opportunity to write your future culture. Those that succeed in the future, will be able to work in collaborative groups. You’ll come together on political and societal issues. Today, it’s all new and it’s about entertainment, silly simple things.
But then, you’re going to want to start changing things. If we think the Hippy Movement was something powerful, well, we ain’t seen nothing yet. Think anyone under 20 will listen to us 40+ folk? We see this in our ongoing research into Social Technology usage as well. Powerful.
Think about that: Youth is writing our cultural future.
What do you think? Are you helping to write our cultural future?
Thunking, Uncategorized•
on November 12th, 2009•
Before the advent of Social Media, even the Web as a whole, there was argument that Western television was destroying other cultures. Yet the most popular shows in Brazil (still are) are called Telenovela’s made in Brazil, by Brazilians and watched daily by more than 60 million Brazilians – more than ever watched American TV shows produced in the U.S.
Step forward to today. Internet access reaches over a billion people around the world. With the advent of Social Media, we can create content and distribute it globally in just seconds. Never before, in the history of mankind, have we been able to do that. read more
Best Practices, Reputation•
on October 13th, 2009•
In Western nations as we see the steady increase in immigrants, marketers will have to become increasingly cognizant of ethnographic marketing. Advertising messages will take more research and ads that were easily understood before, may reach less of an audience or cause community anger.
In Social Media, it means deeper considerations when engaging an audience. It’s one thing to provide a Cantonese or Mandarin translation on your static web pages. It’s another to engage a Chinese audience in Social Media. Or Punjabi, Hindu, Ghanaian etc.
We’ve seen the rise of Social Networking sites for Latino Americans already. East Indians in Toronto use the Indian Social Networking site Bigadda more than Facebook in Canada – such knowledge can result in a failed Facebook campaign when your market is using an originating-country social media service. As a recent client of ours found out the hard way.
For longer term engagement, it means retaining staff who speak the language – and ensuring they can adequately communicate issues within the organization. More to the point, ensuring some form of sustainability in Social Media marketing efforts is also critical; these segment markets tend to be very loyal to products they feel value their culture and beliefs.
While a significant amount of acculturation occurs with immigrants, the deeper cultural assimilation and nuanced understanding of the country that have taken up their new lives in doesn’t usually happen until the first generation is born and of an age to be receptive to marketing tactics. So the two considerations we’ve found to be consistent is generation targeted and ensuring inter-organizational support while targeting the right Social Media vehicle.
