Age Groups & Social Media: Open vs. Closed Networks

At the dawn of the public Internet, in those ancient times of the mid-90′s, the bad news stories of the Web were all about the pervs and stalkers, spams and scams. Traditional news media, perhaps fearing what was to come for their industry, feasted on each bad news story. And parents reacted, as they should. Parental software controls came out in browsers and we took care to monitor our kids.

Good news. It largely worked. This result is what we see in our research into Social Media use almost daily. Under 25 and this demographic prefers more “controlled” networks. The average age of Facebook users is in the 40′s because it is parents watching over their kids (in large part) and then re-connecting with friends from days gone by.

The under 25 age group in social media engagement are much more wary of who they connect with. While that may seem odd to those who’ve seen teens with 500+ friends and you know they don’t have that many friends, it’s how those relationships are managed. More often, Facebook or MySpace is used to control those they don’t really want to connect with. A common habit of under 20′s is to easily accept “friends” on MySpace or Facebook, but to also drop large amounts every few months.

The “conversations” that take place in Social Media channels are more often held via txt messaging, Instant Messaging services, chat in Facebook etc. Services that tend to enable tighter control of the group. These reflect the tighter social circles found in daily life by teens and youth.

As we age and are exposed to greater forms of social relationships, workplace socialization etc., we are better able to manage our private and public lives (not to say we adults aren’t goofing that up in these new mediums!) thus engaging in services like Twitter, FourSquare or Yelp are easier for adults.

So basically youth (under 25) prefer more “closed” networks while adults are comfortable in both open and closed social networks. Additionally, it’s key to remember that many Social Network services today are used by people to more effectively manage relationships – to hold at bay those they don’t really want to connect with.

(Author: Giles Crouch)

What Newsgroups & Forums Can Teach Us

Newsgroups, forums and bulletin boards. They go back rather a long way in the ancient history of the Web…some as far back as the late 70′s and early 80′s, like the WELL (born out of the Whole Earth Catalog days.) And they remain a key place of conversation and opportunity for engagement.

Yet marketers often overlook them. Likely because those using them have guarded them well as a place for people, not companies. Although some companies have done well. For fans of Anne of Green Gables, production company Sullivan Entertainment has done very well providing forums for Anne fans. Mostly because they clearly understand the value of the newsgroups. While they may monitor them, they stay away from always trying to upsell – but rather wrap the forums access with merchandise. They built a brand following, long before blogs, Social Networks and Twitter popped onto the scene.

Forums, newsgroups and bulletin boards can be excellent sources of information. Sources that 98% of “reputation monitoring” services don’t cover. Gaining access in an automated fashion (i.e. through an API) is not always easy either.

But these social media channels are very active to this day and perhaps the least untouched and least touchable, by marketers. If you’re a marketer looking to push your product, tread gently. Protocols are strong in newsgroups and aggressively enforced.

As we do research into Social Media use, we spend a fair bit of time in these channels. There’s three key things I’ve taken away from spending many an hour validating our search results in them;

1. They are a channel that marketers have had little true success in. They are a place to truly have a conversation with your potential or current prospects. To do otherwise will end up in tears.

2. They are a very rich source of insights for public relations practitioners, product managers, researchers, sociologists an marketers. Perhaps a much undervalued one.

3. Not all online spaces are susceptible to marketing and public relations activities. When people just want to socialize, they can and will, make a place of their own.

A fairly decent free monitoring tool is BoardTracker; although not comprehensive, it does a pretty good job of digging into these channels. No reputation management tool has yet been able to conduct an automatic crawl however, and due to the technology, it may be a while yet. Our mediasphere360 is about as good, but manual validation and review remains vital.

So next time you’re planning for Social Media engagement, having  a look around newsgroups and forums; you may be quite surprised at what you uncover. Good and bad.

(Author: G. Crouch)

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.