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Tag Archives | social networking

Twitter is NOT a social network after all

25th February 2014 1 By

Two birds tweetingLook up the word “Twitter” at Wikipedia and you will discover immediately that it is an “online social network”. Head over to Twitter itself and you see that the company agrees, saying that Twitter enables you to “start a conversation”. And if you read the advice on various social media blogs you’ll also discover that all the experts agree – Twitter is social.

Except it isn’t.

New research confirms what some of us have suspected for a while – Twitter is mostly one-way. It is essentially a “broadcast” medium, a soapbox which gives users a platform to shout out to the world.

The study comes from the highly respected Pew Research Internet Project. They found several different categories of Twitter networks and looked at the interconnectivity within each of them. Of the six different clusters of users on Twitter, only one of them has any real degree of social interconnectivity. The rest is not truly social at all.

For instance, many people use Twitter to comment on or give out political views of all kinds. Yet within this group of users there is almost no interaction between them. They comment and then ignore any later attempts at conversation.

Similarly, in the support networks of Twitter – such as brands with customer service channels – there is no interconnection as such and the conversations as such are short-lived. Again, this is not really social – it is akin to phoning a company, getting an answer and then putting the phone down.

The most social use of Twitter, according to this research, is the “tight crowd” – such as people involved in a specific hobby or those with a passion for a subject. This tends to produce interactivity and connection – as you would expect in a social network.

But the other types of clusters of people who exist on Twitter do not seem to be very social, when you look at this research.

Yet, at the same time, usage of Twitter is steadily increasing. It is an important part of the web with one in five people using it regularly. So it is not something that can be ignored, even if it is not very social.

It means we need to change our attitude and thinking about Twitter. Far from seeing it as a social network, we ought to consider it as a broadcast medium. And given that so many people use it so much without interaction and connectivity that must also mean that users like receiving those “broadcasts”.

Perhaps the reason why many businesses have not taken to the Twitter airwaves is because they cannot cope with having to monitor and work on all those “conversations”. Knowing now that this does not seem to matter to the majority of Twitter users, businesses are now free to use Twitter simply to have another voice. Interaction is nice; but not compulsory it seems. What is required is having something interesting to say which other Twitter users want to look at.

Categories: Social

Social networks could be bad for your future business

20th February 2014 0 By

Thinking BabyJust over a quarter of all Internet activity conducted by people is on social networks, with most of that being on Facebook. Even outside social networks, a large amount of online activity is essentially social – the adding of comments on blogs, the sharing of content and the sending of messages to each other. Social dominates the Internet.

For business owners, social activity brings enormous benefits, of course. The use of Facebook allows you to communicate directly with consumers. LinkedIn helps you find new employees, suppliers, partners and so on. Twitter provides an excellent customer service tool. And that’s all before you even consider the benefits of precisely targeted advertising or the ability to promote your products and services to a wider audience. Without doubt, social networks have given businesses a massive boost.

However, there is always a negative side to things, no matter how positive we think they are. After all, one of the issues of social media activity is the time it takes up for businesses. If your company is going to take proper and full advantage of social networks it requires constant monitoring and changes to working practice, often the employment of additional staff. The benefits of social networks for business are sometimes outweighed by the management issues that arise once you start using such systems.

Management problems, though, can be overcome. With careful planning and training it is perfectly possible for companies to take advantage of social networks at the same time as removing the management issues such activity creates.

The real problem with social networks is a deep and profound psychological one, which researchers are only just beginning to uncover. Thinking.

It looks like social networks have the power to stop us thinking.

One well-known aspect of social psychology is the power of “group norms”. Social groups always tend to agree a “norm”. This provides stability for the group, increases cooperation and makes us all rub along together so much easier. It means we tend to agree more than we disagree.

There is also the phenomenon of “in-group out-group” psychology whereby people within a group protect it by adhering to their norms so that they can exclude people who are outside their group. This ensures the continuation of social groups and also makes sure that its members “stay in line”.

Social groups have tremendous power on us at the unconscious level.

But new research shows that such groups also have another unconscious power – they stop us thinking independently. In a fascinating study, researchers from the University of Oregon found that people in social groups given a problem to solve tend to agree on a solution, whereas people solving the problem independently tend to work out their own answers. In other words, when we are in social groups we tend to accept the overall thinking of the group. But faced with issues alone, we tend to work out new and interesting ideas.

This study is similar to research on “brainstorming” exercises. They have found that when a business group is in a meeting they produce fewer new ideas than when that team is asked to come up with ideas, but individually. It turns out that on our own we think much more deeply and analytically than when we are in a group of people.

For businesses this is a problem for the future. As more and more business is conducted through social networks we are becoming more and more social. That means when we need to come up with new business ideas we will rely more on the agreed thoughts of others in the network, rather than coming up with our own solutions. It suggests that as we progress in the years to come that businesses will become less able to solve things because there will be a reduced level of analytical thinking.

This, rather than the management issue of time wasting, could be the real problem we have to face with social networks.

Categories: Social

Planned Departure Now Allows Users to Will Their Digital Assets to Charities

14th February 2014 0 By

Planned Departure Limited, an award-winning London startup that offers secure digital estate planning, now provides users the option to pass on their social media assets to any organisation that they specify.

The question of what to do with digital assets has recently developed into a serious concern, as loved ones try to deal with scattered and inaccessible online identities of family members who have passed away. The U.S. government recently noted on its official website that people need to make plans for their digital legacies and “Write a Social Media Will.” Planned Departure Ltd. of London is the first company to step in and offer this service, through their new digital vault program, which allows people to control exactly what will happen to their digital assets and identities after they pass away. Furthermore, Planned Departure provides the option of naming different recipients for specific accounts and profiles, so that personal information is distributed according to the wishes of the person who passed away.

“Digital Assets are becoming increasingly powerful,” states Planned Departure’s co-founder and CEO, Komal Joshi. “They have real financial value associated with them. While items such as e-wallets, BitCoins and popular domain names may have direct financial worth, a Twitter account with a lot of followers or a popular Facebook account is actually a valuable marketing platform. Planned Departure makes it possible to donate these valuable accounts to designated charities now.”

The new service will enable members to designate a charity as the recipient of any type of digital inheritance, including social media assets. These assets often consist of hundreds of personal contacts that the individual invested many hours establishing and nurturing. Leaving digital assets to charities that they believe in gives users the reassurance that all their invested time will have a real value in the future, after they have passed away. As Planned Departure co-founder and CTO Anand Ramdeo points out,”Your friends and loved ones will be moved to donate to a cause you care about, as a means of honouring your memory.”

As people store more and more of their crucial personal information online, the need for secure distribution of these multiple access nodes after death has become critical. Time Magazine reports that the identities of 2.5 million deceased people in the United States are stolen every year, creating legal headaches for their heirs.

Furthermore, there are heartbreaking stories published frequently about family members who have been blocked from seeing or retrieving important photos, videos or last words of deceased loved ones. Social media platforms routinely lock down the account of someone who has died, unless that person has left specific written instructions and account access information in a retrievable format. Since traditional wills are not kept up to date on current log-in information, a securely maintained digital vault such as Planned Departure fills an urgent need.

Categories: Social Media News