A couple years ago, I joined up with an online community that essentially dedicated its entire use of social media to humor writing. Mostly on Twitter, sure, but this group has creative endeavors outside the service – editors at legitimate news services, TV writers, cartoonists, ad copywriters, bloggers, authors. Most are in a creative career of some kind; others are simply cube warriors longing for an absurdist, 140-character escape.
This community has grown over the years, and what has come out of it are real-life friendships, serious relationships, business partnerships, and all the negative and positive things that develop from human interaction.
Yet every time I look at what has made this community grow and glue together (or tear apart in places, as any community will do) has been the concept of feedback, and I don’t use that term simply because that’s the name of this company. You can trace this mini society back to a site called Favrd. Now defunct, Favrd essentially turned Twitter’s “favorites” starring feature into a button that said “That’s funny.” If a tweet made you laugh, you starred it. Favrd collected these stars, then ranked the funniest tweets of the day onto a leaderboard (the site was eventually gamed by a few bad apples and taken down by the creator after all sorts of drama, but that’s a different story). But it was addicting: You wanted to know which jokes worked, which ones didn’t, and who liked it. And then you got to know the people who liked your jokes.
Point, please? A successful online community – one where people congeal together, interact, learn and share – must have such a “liking” feature, or some form of feedback that will keep people coming back again and again. It’s a concept that those of us in the public relations and mass communications industries should take to heart. In fact, you can probably track the beginnings of Facebook’s meteoric rise to 500 million to the February 2009 introduction of the “Like” feature. That was really the first time, aside from typing comments, that the site really allowed its users to give instantaneous feedback.
Of course, this concept of “liking” isn’t new, and it’s not found in the latest social media darlings. Stock traders give feedback and get their comments ranked on Nasdaq.com’s social networking service. Think feedback methods in fantasy football, online role-playing games, Digg, Reddit, or even simple message boards. Think about it: Feedback keeps people coming back to a website or mobile service again and again.
The key is creating a place where people can be effectively rewarded.
For an online community to work, and to keep people coming back to it, it must be able to offer feedback. All the successful websites today feed on the human psyche: The one thing anyone wants is to be accepted, to be loved, liked, hearted, starred, whatever term you choose. In a successful community, online or otherwise, this must be a constant.
-Jeff (@jephkelley)
07
A Culture Emerges
by FeedbackAt Feedback we are constantly exploring various demographic and geographic differences as they pertain to our clients. As a part of that, we also explore the various channels these audiences prefer, shun or flourish in at a given time.
There’s been quite a bit of chatter surrounding Twitter demographics and ethicity, however uncomfortable broaching the topic may be. One of the most interesting statistics to come out of it all are the levels of African American users on Twitter, because the figures are so disproportional to the overall U.S. representation.
A study done by Pew indicated that as of May 2011, 25 percent of African-Americans use Twitter as compared to 19 percent of Hispanics and only 9 percent of whites (note: these figures reflect the percentages of Americans as a whole who use Twitter, and not the actual makeup of the service, which is about half white and a quarter black).
A humorous but factual presentation by The Onion’s digital director, Baratunde Thurston – bluntly titled “How to be Black Online” – noted that while less than half of African-Americans have high-speed Internet at home, they dominate mobile broadband usage – nearly double that of their white counterparts. And the ease of Twitter (140 characters or less to update) and access to other people within the service makes it popular for use on mobile devices.
And lastly, a study suggested that Twitter adoption among African-Americans was based on the finding that they are more likely to have a greater interest than other ethnic groups in celebrity and gossip news. And thanks to the fall of MySpace, Twitter has become the online outlet of choice for celebrity drama. Plus, you can shout at them.
In my opinion, it’s the age of user as opposed to race that might be most indicative of how people are using Twitter.
The younger generations (teens and young twentysomethings) of Caucasians, African-Americans, Latinos, and others generally use Twitter as a public instant messenger. It’s more conversational than Facebook, and they can not only message their friends, but also tweet celebrities and read their tweets in real-time. Like Myspace, users can also personalize their pages with colors, designs, and different backgrounds.
Thurston also makes mention of the Twitter trending topics that dominate many evening chats (such as, #thingshoodratslove, #ghettohurricanenames, or #waystogetoffthephone) in the U.S., referring to them as, “blacktags.” It’s even a subject that has entered the halls of academia. From Slate:
These kinds of bonds are obviously not unique to social media – rather, these are cultural distinctions we are merely seeing reflected inside. The nation’s African American community is finding its voice and community on the web, and that platform of choice is increasingly looking like Twitter.
In coming months, we’ll explore ethnicity, age and other personal traits and how different cultures interact online.
-Brittany (@britgary)
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