A couple of recent stories on social media stats got me thinking about how we’re often trying to apply traditional lenses to social media’s reality. It’s neither a good or bad thing, it just is, but we wrestle so much with those that promote social media too heavily for the sake of it (i.e. the dreaded “guru” speaking at a Holiday Inn near you) or those who seem to will its destruction because they just can’t stand it (the “traditionalist” – kind of a hipster for luddites). There’s no shortage of information and statistics in social media, but it’s the lens you apply that will tell you the most about how this data applies to your environment.
Boys vs. Girls
Royal Pingdom used Google’s Ad Planner to take a hard look at the gender breakdown in social networks. Their results aren’t entirely shocking, but there were a few nuggets.
“The social news sites Digg, Reddit and Slashdot have significantly more male users than female. The standout here is Slashdot which takes male geekdom to new heights with 82% male users.” – Royal Pingdom
They point out that if you remove those three social news sites (i.e. take out social news altogether) you end up with the number of females outnumbering males across the board in the major networks.
I was particularly surprised to see that LinkedIn was now dead even female-to-male, in a landscape once edging more male. The 60/40 rule for female to male on major networks stayed relatively true for the biggest of them, MySpace still maintaining a higher female-to-male than Facebook.
My two cents: While these stats are interesting, remember that this does not cover all social media. For the most part we’re only speaking of massive social networks designed for just that purpose: to provide an infrastructure for a large amount of associated and disassociated people. There are a few channels here dedicated to a subject (such as Last.fm’s music purposes) but it’s still a way for anyone to dive in and then self-select once inside to various groups. I stress this distinction because we have to be careful to only focus our efforts on the critical mass builders – particularly because that’s not always where the most passionate are. A nearly hidden message board run out of someone’s basement in Omaha might have 3,000 of your most ardent fans that can tell you more about your brand reputation and inform product development than the 400 “Fans” of your Facebook Page. Both elements are necessary and critical to understanding, interacting and studying the social media landscape.
Numbers Game
Which brings us to the TechCrunch article proclaiming, “77 Percent Of Facebook Fan Pages Have Under 1,000 Fans.” At first, as a headline, it grabs your attention and delivers a potentially damning comment on Facebook’s critical mass. But here’s where we need to first gut-check our reasoning for being surprised by the figure: what percent of all Facebook Fan Pages are major brands? Small businesses? Products (vs. manufacturers)? The sub-1,000 fans statistic is only powerful in the correct context.
The Sysomos study of 600,000 fan pages (see their original post here) is incredibly interesting, although I suggest you strip away the TechCrunch focus on “fame” as the lens through which you view it. (TechCrunch even points out that “so-called celebrities only make up 7 percent of all fan pages” – so why are we looking at this from a fame angle?)
One of the biggest stunners for me is that out of the 600,000 Pages studied, “Facebook fan pages tend to be updated only once every 16 days” which I have to believe is a statistic skewed by those who don’t update at all.
My two cents: The surprise isn’t that a majority of Facebook Pages have fewer than 1,000 fans – look deeper into the Sysomos post:
“On average, a Facebook Page has 4,596 fans.” – Sysomos
Now THAT is pretty remarkable. Especially since that average Page comes from such an evenly-distributed set of categories*:
From Sysomos 2009 Facebook Page Study
* NOTE: Facebook’s available categories are horrendous. They don’t even match up evenly based on national or local subsections and lump some industries in strangely (such as a national healthcare company being under “Health and Beauty” while on a local level there is a “Medical Service” choice- neither of which appear on the other list).
Another very interesting revelation is how social interaction begets more social interaction:
“Pages with more than one million fans have nearly three times as much owner-generated content as the average Facebook page. (Where ‘owner-generated content’ means things like photos, videos, and links posted by the page’s – Pages with more than one million fans have nearly 60 times as much fan-generated content (photos, videos) as the average Facebook page.” - Sysomos
The most important thing to take away from both of these studies is to at the very least look past the headlines. But on a much deeper level it hints at the power of a self-selecting group of people. Whether it’s on Facebook or on an obscure message board, we have to find out where the interaction lies in order to learn from it. What I would really like to see is the Facebook Page data on number of fans and interactivity crossed with the age of the Pages – who has retained their Fans, their brand families, their second-time-shoppers.
There is no shortage of data, but be careful to not get caught up in the easiest zeroes and ones (or clever headlines) and apply your own filter. Not for the sake of generating more Pages or work for your social media team, but for the sake of learning more about your once and future fans and how you can best take care of their health and yours.
Feedback LLC today announced its November ’09 charitable contribution has been sent to the Central Virginia Foodbank (CVFB), a non-profit organization that provides food to 31 counties and 5 cities in central Virginia, including the Richmond Metro area.
“We have been blessed in so many ways and are thankful to be living in Virginia,” said Jeff Thompson, President & CEO of Feedback, “and we want to make sure we are helping others who need a hand. This Thanksgiving, we encourage other businesses in Richmond to contribute to this outstanding organization.” Click here to make a donation. Find them on Twitter here: @cvfbfeedmore.
Each month, a portion of all revenues received by Feedback is donated to different charities around the United States, and the company welcomes suggestions for recipients of future donations.
Feedback LLC is a Richmond, VA-based company providing advanced social media services to leading advertising agencies and PR firms.
Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday full of family, food, football…and in this case, social media. I have created a social media guide to Thanksgiving, with 5 picks to make sure you have a tech savvy, and of course, a Happy Thanksgiving.
Tweetsgiving
Bring social media and giving together this Thanksgiving- with Tweetsgiving (@Tweetsgiving). Tweetsgiving is a global celebration created by Epic Change that is scheduled for November 24- 26, 2009. The whole idea is to give thanks using social tools and give back to a common cause.
You can participate by attending a gratitude party, spreading gratitude on the web, or by hosting a house party: http://bit.ly/1VoyKS
There are tons of free, pro football apps (the one I use is Pro Football Live) that you can get scores with- so you won’t have to miss a touchdown while at the table on Thanksgiving.
Also, NFL online has your Football guide for Thanksgiving day. Here’s the line-up:
Packers Vs. Lions
12:30 pm on Fox
Raiders Vs. Cowboys:
4:15 pm on CBS
Giants Vs. Broncos:
8:20 pm on NFL Network
Black Friday
If you love technology as much as I do, you’ll want to know what deals are out there on all the latest and greatest high tech gadgets…especially on Black Friday.
I’m sure your Thanksgiving menu is almost complete, but if you find yourself in need of a last minute recipe, you can turn to Facebook or your iPhone for help.
The Food Network on Facebook has a whole page dedicated to recipes for Thanksgiving. You can even “attend” an event called “RSVP for Food Network Thanksgiving” and get special planning tips and recipes.
Other ways to embrace social media on Thanksgiving:
• Send your friends and family special Thanksgiving wishes via Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace
• Post your favorite pictures from Thanksgiving on Flickr
• Check-in on FourSquare while running around on Black Friday
Twitter has finally, after an announcement earlier this fall, thrown the switch on an API allowing for Tweets to carry a tag for your specific location where the Tweet is sent from. Here’s the setting:
This means all sorts of potential uses, from even more specific community uses to a very robust search angle (ReadWrite Web does a great run-down here). For now we’ll have to watch as the first to bat roll out the feature in third-party applications – Twitter hasn’t actually devoted any new features on their own website toward the feature. In fact, even their more powerful search tool (based on Summize, R.I.P.) still bears the older location-search based on the city users name in their account.
One of my questions with the opt-in model is whether opt-In refers only to whether my Tweets communicate to the public where I am—in other words, does Twitter have a way to know where I am even if I’m not including it in my Tweets? Before last week they tweaked the privacy policies of Twitter users to nod to Geotagging:
“You may choose to note your location in your Tweets and in your Twitter profile. You can control your location information in your account settings.”
Seems clear that it truly is turned off from a Tweet standpoint- but is there an angle where you have not chosen to make information public but Twitter could still collect it? In Twitter’s policies there is an interesting line:
“Most of the information you provide to us is information you are asking us to make public.”
Huh. “Most.” Hmm.
“We engage certain trusted third parties to perform functions and provide services to us. We may share your personal information with these third parties, but only to the extent necessary to perform these functions and provide such services, and only pursuant to obligations mirroring the protections of this privacy policy.”
A thorough description of Geotagging on Twitter exists on their Zendesk help forums here. In it one can find a few key phrases that aren’t as comforting:
“Anyone can see it: even if you delete it, we cannot guarantee it will be removed from every partner.”
Translation: Twitter has “partners” that will be caching (or already are) your Tweets. Note the language change here – they specifically refer to “apps” and “application developers” prior to this in the piece, but in this line they use the word “partner” explicitly. Given recent announcements by Microsoft, Google and just last week Yahoo, this bodes well for the longevity of Tweets being extended beyond the short shelf life they have now.
“Turning it off does not remove historical data. You can, however, remove all of your prior data.”
Translation: Twitter sees a distinction between “historical” data and “prior” data. This may seem confusing, but it’s an important point when you look at it in context of the “partner” comment—Twitter may not be the one archiving its history.
In the section, “How do I remove location information from a tweet?” they instruct:
There are two options for removing location data:
“Delete the tweet”
or:
“Remove all of your location history by clicking the ‘delete all location data’ button on your settings page. This can take up to 30 minutes, but it will scrub all location information from prior tweets completely. It is good to note, however, that this does not guarantee the information will be removed from all 3rd party application’s copies of the data.”
Translation: If it takes 30 minutes, this means they have to scrub the location from each Tweet, insofar as a “Tweet” is an archived and distinct piece of data that has several moving parts. It does make me wonder whether this signals an opportunity to have discrete parts to Geotagging rather than just the binary on or off. For example, perhaps I just want to indicate the city rather than my exact location (and don’t want to go through the tedious process of updating my account profile every time)? This kind of nuance has been available with Brightkite for years now, it will be interesting to see where Twitter goes and how quickly others like Foursquare can adapt and incorporate.
Geolocation is certainly a good thing, and exactly what we knew Twitter had to add. Watch how fast Facebook starts pulling back the curtain on what they’re working on. But in the meantime: Does all this mean custom ads based on Geolocation? Tweeting habits crunched and analyzed by Twitter and “partners” for all sorts of advances? Lots of ways this could shake down. Grabm your popcorn folks and watch what plays out as the app developers scramble to let your holiday travel Tweets tell us you’ve gone over the river and through the woods…
Do you have time to search the web everyday to find the newest and coolest social media tools? If the answer is no, then you have come to the right place. I have searched the World Wide Web for social media information all week, and stumbled upon a few favorites along the way. Here are my picks of the week:
Flip for WiFi
If you like taking short videos and uploading them onto YouTube or Facebook, you’ve probably heard of Flip Cameras. Heck, you probably own one. Well, hopefully you’ll Flip for this: their cameras just got even better. In early 2010, a new Flip, with built in WiFi, will go on the market. So, now when you don’t feel like plugging in to the computer to upload your videos, you won’t have to.
Upload with Ease
Find adding photos onto Facebook a hassle? Well, Facebook addressed this issue on Wednesday when they announced that they were rolling out a new and improved photo uploading process. The new photo upload tool, which is just a prototype for now, gives you a preview of the upcoming replacement.
If you’re not excited to upload an album onto Facebook, maybe you’ll be excited to upload a video onto YouTube. On Thursday, Google announced that everyone now has the option to add captions to their YouTube videos automatically.
The Google Phone
Google is in the process of creating the latest android phone. Although details are still slim, we do know that they are creating and manufacturing a phone that will compete with the likes of iPhone and Droid. & According to sources, it’s coming soon. For more “well-sourced rumors,” read this TechCrunch article.
Foursquare Adds Fifty
Foursquare is a social game/application that is gaining popularity. Mashable has even named it “The Twitter of 2010.” Another thing Foursquare is gaining: ground. On Thursday, Foursquare announced that the mobile application is now available for 50 new cities, all around the world.
Retweet
I heard the announcement that Twitter was incorporating a Retweet action (making it easier for users to Retweet), and saw friends tweeting about how they were using the new feature. But it wasn’t until this week that I finally got to test it out myself. & Now, everybody can try it. On Thursday, Twitter tweeted that the Retweet feature has gone live for all.
So twitter limits you to a pithy 140 characters and Facebook keeps you in a 420 character pen for status updates (for a reason I’m still unsure of). But what about 50,000 words? Think you could write that? Go ahead and start, we’ll give you a month.
I’m referring to what is affectionately called “NaNoWriMo” or, National Novel Writing Month. It takes place every November, where a heap of unbalanced humans attempt to keep normal lives while banging out 50k words in an attempt to write an entire novel of some distinguishable size.
I bring it up here because while the effort itself is not explicitly tied to social media, the social component that is not only possible but encouraged has taken many social networks by storm.
urbanpar: It takes 10,000 hours of practicing before you become a master at anything. #amwriting#nanowrimo. So I’ll be great at 30?
iAMSAMmet: Hit 27k! And still writing! Finally getting back my inspiration and it’s feeling great! My best chapter so far. #nanowrimo
kerstyn_leigh: Managed to write a few hundred words while still taking notes and listening attentively. I’m getting better at this. #nanowrimo
The main website has some nice social tools, from old-fashioned message boards to author friending, wordcount meters and more.
NaNoWriMo writers end up using all kinds of apps. I use My Writing Nook which keeps my novel in the cloud and lets me write on it via web or iPhone.
It’s just funny, that in this era of an economy of letters, numbers and symbols, when I’m stripping sentences down to some ur’s, OMG’s, and w/’s , there are arguably more long-form writers than ever, producing sizable work. And more to the point, they’re using social media to take breaks and communicate their experiences in writing, producing thousands of Tweets a day in between thousands of chapters.
P.S. My profile on NaNoWriMo is here, with my novel falling way behind in word count (let’s blame Feedback’s exciting start and work). I’m writing a book of a story my 5 year old daughter and I came up with, so it’s a labor of love.
Do you have time to search the web everyday to find the newest and coolest social media tools? If the answer is no, then you have come to the right place. I have searched the World Wide Web for social media information all week, and stumbled upon a few favorites along the way.
Here are my picks of the week:
Google’s Holiday Gift
Whether you’re traveling for business or pleasure this holiday season, the Internet provides a great way to kill time at the airport, especially when it’s FREE. This holiday season, Google is giving the gift of wifi. On Tuesday, Google announced that they were offering free wifi in 47 airports across the nation, November 10, 2009 through January 15, 2010. View the full list of participating airports here.
Tweet on LinkedIn
Last week, LinkedIn was testing out a redesign. This week, they’ve forged a partnership with Twitter. Now you can update your LinkedIn status on Twitter, or update your Twitter status on LinkedIn. View some tips from Mashable on how to get more out of LinkedIn here.
Gaming Gets Social
We’ve heard news that social networking features were in the process of being integrated into Xbox Live. In fact, the new Facebook and Twitter feeds will be available for Xbox Live next Tuesday, November 17, 2009. View a preview video here. What we didn’t know until it was leaked this week was that social networking features are most likely coming to PlayStation 3 as well. Although Sony declined to comment, there are still claims that Facebook may soon be available on PlayStation 3.
Follow & Wave
What was a Twitter trending topic for part of Thursday has become one of my picks of the week. On Thursday, Google added a “follow” feature to Google Wave. Now, you can follow or unfollow public waves you’re interested in and receive updates as they happen. Learn more from the official Google Blog here.
Control Your Groups
I have a few issues with Facebook Groups. First off, deleting a group is a hassle. If you want to delete a group you created, you have to remove all admins other than yourself, delete every member of the group, and then leave the group. Second of all, if you are the only admin and you leave a group, anyone can swoop in and take over admin responsibilities. The second scenario was proved all to well when hundreds of Facebook groups were highjacked. Luckily, they were only temporarily taken over by Control Your Info. Their goal: to stress the importance of controlling your information on Facebook.
Dean of Feedback calls in from the road to elaborate on three crucial tips on how those with internships with advertising and public relations firms can use social media to: 1) Listen (following trends, topics, conferences), 2) Shadow (act like a social media ninja with those you admire), and 3) Become a Persona (showing engagement).
Do you have time to search the web everyday to find the newest and coolest social media tools? If the answer is no, then you have come to the right place. (& if the answer is yes, leave a comment with your favorites). I have searched the World Wide Web for social media information all week, and stumbled upon a few favorites along the way.
Here are my picks of the week:
Google Dashboard
Google knows where you’ve been searching, and now, you can know what Google knows. On Thursday, Google launched a dashboard where you can view all of the data associated with your account- be it recent searches, calendar items, or emails. The best part about the dashboard is that it contains direct links where you can control your personal settings, allowing you to increase privacy settings & clear your web history. View the Google Dashboard here
Verizon Vs. AT&T
Verizon & AT&T seem to be battling it out these days. Verizon’s new smartphone The Droid, is positioning itself as better than the iPhone (View “iDont” Commercial here) & Verizon is positioning their 3G Coverage as better than AT&Ts (View “There’s a Map for That” Commercial here). This week, AT&T has filed a False Advertising lawsuit against Verizon. AT&T believes the “There’s a Map for That” ads are misleading, stating that customers might mistake the map portraying 3G coverage for a map portraying wireless service coverage. Oh, can’t you two just get along.
There Really is an App for That
Well, one thing the iPhone does have over all of the new Smartphone’s coming out is the number and variety of apps they have available for purchase. On Wednesday, Apple announced that there were 100,000 apps available at the iTunes store. The surprising thing is that of those only 20% are being used. & keep in mind that over 2 billion apps have been purchased by iPhone and iTouch users. It sounds to me like we have a lot of un-tAPPed apps to discover.
Yahoo’s Search is More Musical Too
In last week’s “Pick’s of the Week,” I discussed Google’s new music search features. This week, Yahoo! announced that they have made their search more musical too. Now, when you search for music on Yahoo!, the results will include popular YouTube videos related to your search. Results will also include videos of top albums and songs.
Facebook: Now You Can Dislike
There‘s been a few times that I’ve wished there was a “dislike” button next to the “like” button on Facebook. Like, when people say “I’m studying all night long for a really hard exam,” or “I have H1N1.” I don’t like when people are stressed or sick. Now, with a plug-in from Firefox, you really can “dislike” something with a click of a button. But, as this article from Mashable warns, be careful what you dislike. You might not want to go around disliking status updates from friends that say “I got a job” or “I’m going to be a mother;” If you do, that you might end up with a few less friends in the process.
Dean of Feedback provides a quick walkthrough of the Last.fm app coming to XBox Live users in November. This special version is surprisingly robust (especially considering the nice but hobbled Facebook and Twitter offerings) and provide a really nice interface for listening to free, clear radio – while continuing to add to the personalization of your Last.fm library.
30
Fixing Lenses: Tempering Our Analysis of Social Media
by Feedback(Thoughts spun from the posts, “Study: males vs. females in social networks,” on Royal Pingdom and, “It’s Not Easy Being Popular. 77 Percent Of Facebook Fan Pages Have Under 1,000 Fans,” on TechCrunch.)
A couple of recent stories on social media stats got me thinking about how we’re often trying to apply traditional lenses to social media’s reality. It’s neither a good or bad thing, it just is, but we wrestle so much with those that promote social media too heavily for the sake of it (i.e. the dreaded “guru” speaking at a Holiday Inn near you) or those who seem to will its destruction because they just can’t stand it (the “traditionalist” – kind of a hipster for luddites). There’s no shortage of information and statistics in social media, but it’s the lens you apply that will tell you the most about how this data applies to your environment.
Boys vs. Girls
Royal Pingdom used Google’s Ad Planner to take a hard look at the gender breakdown in social networks. Their results aren’t entirely shocking, but there were a few nuggets.
They point out that if you remove those three social news sites (i.e. take out social news altogether) you end up with the number of females outnumbering males across the board in the major networks.
I was particularly surprised to see that LinkedIn was now dead even female-to-male, in a landscape once edging more male. The 60/40 rule for female to male on major networks stayed relatively true for the biggest of them, MySpace still maintaining a higher female-to-male than Facebook.
My two cents: While these stats are interesting, remember that this does not cover all social media. For the most part we’re only speaking of massive social networks designed for just that purpose: to provide an infrastructure for a large amount of associated and disassociated people. There are a few channels here dedicated to a subject (such as Last.fm’s music purposes) but it’s still a way for anyone to dive in and then self-select once inside to various groups. I stress this distinction because we have to be careful to only focus our efforts on the critical mass builders – particularly because that’s not always where the most passionate are. A nearly hidden message board run out of someone’s basement in Omaha might have 3,000 of your most ardent fans that can tell you more about your brand reputation and inform product development than the 400 “Fans” of your Facebook Page. Both elements are necessary and critical to understanding, interacting and studying the social media landscape.
Numbers Game
Which brings us to the TechCrunch article proclaiming, “77 Percent Of Facebook Fan Pages Have Under 1,000 Fans.” At first, as a headline, it grabs your attention and delivers a potentially damning comment on Facebook’s critical mass. But here’s where we need to first gut-check our reasoning for being surprised by the figure: what percent of all Facebook Fan Pages are major brands? Small businesses? Products (vs. manufacturers)? The sub-1,000 fans statistic is only powerful in the correct context.
The Sysomos study of 600,000 fan pages (see their original post here) is incredibly interesting, although I suggest you strip away the TechCrunch focus on “fame” as the lens through which you view it. (TechCrunch even points out that “so-called celebrities only make up 7 percent of all fan pages” – so why are we looking at this from a fame angle?)
One of the biggest stunners for me is that out of the 600,000 Pages studied, “Facebook fan pages tend to be updated only once every 16 days” which I have to believe is a statistic skewed by those who don’t update at all.
My two cents: The surprise isn’t that a majority of Facebook Pages have fewer than 1,000 fans – look deeper into the Sysomos post:
Now THAT is pretty remarkable. Especially since that average Page comes from such an evenly-distributed set of categories*:
From Sysomos 2009 Facebook Page Study
* NOTE: Facebook’s available categories are horrendous. They don’t even match up evenly based on national or local subsections and lump some industries in strangely (such as a national healthcare company being under “Health and Beauty” while on a local level there is a “Medical Service” choice- neither of which appear on the other list).
Another very interesting revelation is how social interaction begets more social interaction:
The most important thing to take away from both of these studies is to at the very least look past the headlines. But on a much deeper level it hints at the power of a self-selecting group of people. Whether it’s on Facebook or on an obscure message board, we have to find out where the interaction lies in order to learn from it. What I would really like to see is the Facebook Page data on number of fans and interactivity crossed with the age of the Pages – who has retained their Fans, their brand families, their second-time-shoppers.
There is no shortage of data, but be careful to not get caught up in the easiest zeroes and ones (or clever headlines) and apply your own filter. Not for the sake of generating more Pages or work for your social media team, but for the sake of learning more about your once and future fans and how you can best take care of their health and yours.
-Dean (@dbrowell)