Social Life and Social Media

FALL 2009WHITE PAPER

SOCIAL LIFE AND SOCIAL MEDIA

WHITE PAPER: SOCIAL LIFE AND SOCIAL MEDIA 3

In October 2009,

Euro RSCG Worldwide

commissioned a survey to

map the trajectory of social

life and social media usage

in the United States, quizzing

1,228 Americans from all

online demographics.This

white paper looks at the

macro developments in social

media; it also brings in

numbers and verbatims about

people’s hopes for their

social life online and offline

before finally drawing

conclusions and implications

for marketers and

their clients.

INTRODUCTION

Recent headlines have been dominated by the economic crisis, Barack Obama, wars inAfghanistan and Iraq, and health-care reform, but just behind those

headlines has been a steadily growing buzz about social media.Corporations everywhere have been keen to install knowledgeable

executives to help get them up to speed.

A notable example came in early 2009, when The NewYork Times named Jennifer Preston its first social

media editor.i A document that apparently is aninternal memo about the appointment raised ideasthat apply to many organizations. It’s a clear,cogent and jargon-free explanation of socialmedia: “…an awful lot of people are finding our work not by coming to our homepage or looking at our newspaper but through alerts andrecommendations from their friends and colleagues.So we ought to learn how to reach those peopleeffectively and serve them well. At the same time,more of us are using social networks to find sources,

contacts and information.”

Anyone who hasn’t heard or read the words “socialmedia” many hundreds of times this year has either

been on a retreat or a round-the-world sailing trip. Ormaybe they haven’t realized that Facebook, Flickr,

YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia, blogs and online forums are allforms of social media. What makes these forms of media

different from traditional media such as TV and printed newspapersand magazines is their scope for interaction. As social media pioneer

Robert Scoble put it on his blog in 2007, “When I say ‘social media’ or ‘new media’I’m talking about Internet media that has the ability to interact with it in some way.”ii

The graph shows the rise in the search volume index of the term “social media” on Google, meaningthe change in the proportion of searches using that term relative to total searches on Google.

4 WHITE PAPER: SOCIAL LIFE AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Scoble and plenty of other digerati aren’t too keen on the term itself. But all these new,related phenomena need some sort of collective term, and “social media” seems to havestuck; it’s now the shorthand term increasingly used to refer to interactive media. TheGoogle Trends graph on the previous page shows its steady rise over the past threeyears. So for the purposes of this paper, we’re using the term social media.

The key factor of social media is the network effect. With traditional media, eachadditional user is just another set of eyes for the media owner and of no benefit to theother users. With social media, each additional user is potentially another resource forall other users. The bigger the user base, the more attractive it becomes for otherpeople. As users are now connecting with real-time digital technology, the speed andscale of changes are both increasing rapidly.

At the time this was written, more than five billion tweets had been posted on Twitteriii

with around 20 million a day being added,iv compared with three million a day in March2008.v Facebook reckons to have 300 million active users, of whom half log in on anygiven day. More than 65 million users access Facebook through mobile devices, andthey’re twice as active as nonmobile users.vi Wikipedia had 67 million unique visitors inSeptember 2009vii and counts around 85,000 active contributors.viii

These huge numbers for social media speak volumes—but always bear in mind that theymove fast and are quickly out of date.


HYPE, FEARS AND REALITY

Like most rapid new developments, social media are hyped to the skies by some, fearedby others, ignored by many and used pragmatically by a smart few.

There are the oh-so-smart early adopters and the wide-eyed technophiles and thedigital foghorn evangelists and the bandwagon-jumpers and of course the social mediaprofessionals; they are all proclaiming social media as the ultimate game-changer.Then there are the doomsters warning that social media could cause terrible damageto everything from children’s development right up to democracy itself. There are theskeptics, the technophobes and the traditionalists who think it’s all a passing fad. Andthere are the pragmatists—experimenting, watching and seeing what works.

Which of them is right? When in doubt, look at the evidence.

From 2007 through his inauguration in 2009, Barack Obama’s presidential campaignmade astute use of Facebook and MySpace. His campaign mastermind, David Plouffe,has described it as a marriage between digital technology and grassroots campaigning.Despite the proclamations of social media boosters, Plouffe made it clear that old-school technology was crucial.ix

In the run-up to the Iranian presidential elections in June 2009, the governmentblocked access to Facebook, which was being used by candidates running againstPresident Ahmadinejad. In the dispute following the election, one of the mainchallengers, Mir Hossein Mousavi, used Facebook as a way of getting his message out.x


Interactions with friends far and near become more meaningful as social media matures.”“

Protesters in Iran and their supporters outside used Twitter messaging to report newsand coordinate activities. The White House even asked Twitter to delay a networkupgrade in order to protect the interests of Iranians using the service.xi The protestsmade a mark, but the election result was upheld.

In October 2009, a British member of Parliament asked a question about an oilcompany in the House of Commons. The company’s lawyers served a media injunctionpreventing any reporting of the question and a so-called super-injunction preventingU.K. media from mentioning the original injunction.xii Within a very short time, the keyfacts were all over Twitter and the injunctions were withdrawn.

Probably the most convincing endorsement of social media has come from the experts inepidemics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S. Its webpage“Social Media at CDC” (cdc.gov/socialmedia) offers an impressive range of social mediaoptions for people to stay in touch with the latest on issues such as H1N1 (aka swineflu). There are links to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, DailyStrength, CDC’s YouTubechannel, CDC’s Flickr site, CDC on iTunes and CDC’s Second Life Island,xiii as well asblogs, buttons, badges, content syndication, e-cards, e-games, mobile services, RSS feedsand widgets. From a social media perspective, CDC might well be the most viral of allorganizations.


KEY TAKEAWAY: In most cases, social media can’t be expected to do the whole job on their own, whatever

the job is. However, they are now a vital consideration in any communications strategy in any country where

digital media are accessible to citizens and consumers.


I hope to keep my quality relationships better face-to-face by being able to keep up with friends more in their daily lives online.”

Online is cool to get back in touch with friends or maybe find like-minded new friends, but the real fun is hanging out with them.”

Online is a convenience, like a phone. The experts were sure phones would kill face-to-face interactions, but they just keep us betterconnected. It’s true for e-mail as well. I was housebound for months some years back, and my online life kept me sane and social.”

Being part of the acting community in Atlanta, I meet fellow actors,network and get early warnings of possible acting opportunities,which are later followed up by face-to-face most times.”

I enjoy having the opportunity to spend time with friends and laugh, and enjoygood company. Online socializing allows me to continue to share those sameexperiences with friends from the past who are separated geographically.”

SOCIAL MEDIA MEANS A BLURRING OF SOCIAL AND MEDIA

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Although the social media handle might not be to everybody’s taste, it’s a prettyaccurate shorthand of what we’re talking about. Media are the various means ofstoring and transmitting communication, typically about news or products andtypically to multiple recipients. Social refers to the interaction of people, normally inan informal way.

In social media, the two elements blend and blur in infinite combinations. Consumers useonline and offline elements to create the social interactions they need.

Whatever the platform, whether Facebook, Twitter, local community or special interestforums, there are a lot of the same elements typical of face-to-face socializing:discussions, opinions, requests for advice, gossip, chitchat, jokes, jibes, gripes and games.Unlike in most face-to-face interactions, however, social media make it possible to pull inand share media content there and then, such as images, videos, sounds, news stories andproduct information. Anything that’s on the Web, or that can be uploaded to the Web,can be brought into the social interaction.

What’s more, that Web content isn’t just shared remotely; it’s often shared in person. Ithas become increasingly common to see people, especially young people, crowded arounda computer or smartphone screen watching funny, amazing or outrageous videos. Anargument over dinner might be settled by consulting Google on a mobile device. Theboundaries among types of media, entertainment, news, gossip and social phenomena areincreasingly fluid.

Earlier this year, for example, middle-aged talent show contestant Susan Boyle wascatapulted to global fame thanks to hundreds of thousands of people telling friends andfamily, “You’ve got to see this.” The YouTube video of her first appearance on the showhas scored more than 78 million views.xiv It started as entertainment on a single TVchannel in the U.K., then became a viral video that spread over the Internet and to TVshows around the world, becoming a news story in its own right that millions of peopleshared with links on social media.


Top Two Box Agreement Total Female Male 18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65+

Base (All Respondents) 1,228 626 602 76 279 318 254 183 118

Interaction through electronic means is more convenient than face-to-face. 48.7% 51.4% 55.6% 48.7% 48.0% 56.0% 55.9% 59.0% 49.2%

Social groupings online can be truly social. 39.9% 43.0% 36.7% 39.4% 41.6% 38.1% 40.6% 43.7% 33.9%

Social media online enhances my social life offline. 27.6% 28.1% 27.0% 35.5% 32.6% 29.6% 25.6% 24.0% 14.4%

I don’t feel a big distinction between online and offline; it’s all interaction. 25.6% 24.8% 26.4% 23.7% 29.4% 23.6% 23.6% 24.0% 29.7%

Online socializing is for sad,antisocial types. (Disagree) 57.6% 65.7% 49.4% 51.3% 56.6% 54.1% 59.4% 59.0% 67.8%

Susan Boyle’s tally is a huge number, but it’s just a fraction of the one billion views aday, or 11,574 views per second, 694,444 views per minute and 41,666,667 viewsper hour that YouTube now scores.xv

As traditional media such as newspapers and TV channels go online and adopt someof the technologies and techniques of purely social media (e.g., Facebook), they blurthe lines between news and social chat. Those outlets now provide space for registeredusers to respond to news items and editorials, which often turns into lively debate.And they increasingly provide one-button options (“Share” or “E-mail”) to showsomeone else the piece on social media platforms.

THE RISE OF HYPERLOCALISM

If social media is a concept most familiar to geeks, techies and marketers, thenhyperlocalism is even more of an “insider” notion. It’s about the sort of new ways ofcreating the local awareness and connectedness that virtually disappeared whenconsumers stopped walking down Main Street and started relying on TV for theirnews.

In the world of cocooning and commuting, consumers were in one of three places: athome, in transit (typically in a car) or at work. Commutes were getting longer(because of traffic congestion), working hours were getting longer and homes werebecoming complete entertainment and communications centers. In the world ofcocooning and commuting, it was perfectly possible for things to happen just a blockor two away without anybody in the wider neighborhood knowing.

Social media are making it quick and easy to create connections with people andbusinesses in the immediate vicinity. This is happening informally as add-on apps toservices such as Twitter and Flickr enable users to find fellow users near them. It’shappening as people meet up by chance and swap social media coordinates. It’shappening more formally as community websites are established, enabling consumersto bookmark special interests and write about local initiatives.


KEY TAKEAWAY: Convergence rules. With social media it’s impossible to predict whether, when, how,

where and in what forms bits of communication will spread. As most traditional media converge online,

communication flows among them and consumers themselves become messengers.

I would like to make more friends online that are local that I could hang out with offline face-to-face.”“

Technologies are popping up to help aggregate locally relevant information. Servicessuch as EveryBlock,xvi VillageSoup,xvii Topixxviii and Outside.in track discussions on theWeb and map them to specific locations; they then organize the content by city, state, zipcode, neighborhood, street address, latitude/longitude and discrete place. As hyperlocalismgains traction, social media commentators see signs of mainstream media getting in onthe action. In October 2009 the Omaha World-Herald Co. announced it had acquiredWikiCity, a community-based social website that serves as an online city guide, providinginformation on places, events and people in 22,000 U.S. towns.xix WikiCity lets readersupdate their own community pages, giving a bit of a Wikipedia feel.xx

Social media enable people to connect more with each other locally, which helpsstrengthen casual relationships and introduce issues of common interest (Who knowshow to install a new printer? What’s happening about that dangerous crossing?). Itprovides incentives for people to take a more active interest in their locality, stimulatingconversations, blogs, citizen journalism and local advertising.

The hyperlocal space isn’t just being left to local people and startups. With plenty ofregistered users through services such as MyYahoo! and Flickr, Yahoo! has built a strongposition in local services. Google is looking to develop local listing ads as another line ofbusiness. Explaining the concept, the search engine says more than 80 percent of peoplelook to it for local information; using the LLA facility, advertiser details will show up onboth Google main search and Google Maps.xxi


KEY TAKEAWAY: The Web is worldwide, but its emerging power is hyperlocal. This is the space where

what’s virtual (online) meets what’s tangible (offline), with each reinforcing the other.

ME/MINE: INTENSE EMPHASIS ON SELF

People who spend a lot of time talking and writing about social media sometimesrefer to it as SoMe. How right that is. SoMe (not to be confused with some) is very,very personal. It puts each individual right at the heart of his or her social mediaworld.

Social media me/mine is hyperlocalism to the nth degree. Individual consumers cantailor absolutely everything to their own specific taste: the look, feel and themes oftheir social media gadgets (computer, mobile device, phone); the name, look, feel,themes and content of their blog and their SoMe platform profiles (on Twitter,Facebook, etc.); the people they connect with; the content feeds they subscribe to; theplaylists they publish; and the reviews they write.

Me/mine is the logical extension of the trend toward personal and personalized thathas dominated thinking for decades now: personal computers, personal digitalassistants, personal trainers, personal coaches, personal finance and, most recently,personal branding and personalized medicine.

The rising generation born since the 1970s, millennials, is absolutely at home withdigital technology and social media—and apparently takes it for granted that the selfhasn’t always come first. Jean M. Twenge’s book Generation Me comes right out and


says it in the title, going on to explain: “Generation Me has never known a world that putduty before self and believes that the needs of the individual should come first. This is notthe same thing as being selfish; it is captured, instead, in the phrases we so often hear:‘Be yourself,’ ‘Believe in yourself,’ ‘You must love yourself before you can love someoneelse.’”xxii

Whether Twenge and the critics of modern narcissism are right, there’s no doubt socialmedia put each individual at the heart of his or her media universe and offer a hugescope for self-promotion.

MORE DARING—BUT EXTREMES GET MORE EXTREME

One of the great benefits of social media is being able to find people with similarinterests and attitudes to one’s own. That can also be one of the big problems; it canfoster polarized opinions, which in turn create political problems.

James A. Thomson, president and CEO of RAND Corp., has said numerous bloggers,Internet forums, social media, online commentators and talk radio have led to a situationin the United States in which there is political warfare rather than political debate: “Theproliferation of new, low-cost media, able to aim only at a niche audience, allow people tohear or to read only what they want to, not exposing them to any challenging thought oruncomfortable opinion.”xxiii

This is one aspect of the echo-chamber effect of social media. Someone picks up acomment or a snippet of news they like, passes it to connections who are likely to like it,and they in turn pass it on. This can easily result in narrow group-think getting narroweras it feeds on itself.

Social media can also, paradoxically, encourage some decidedly antisocial behavior. Wheninteractions are mainly online, some participants feel less inhibited than they would ifthey were interacting face-to-face, in person. Online, there are no moment-by-momentnonverbal cues that help keep (most) conversations civil and decent. Words can bemisused or misinterpreted, humor might not be understood as intended and people canfeel they need to express themselves more strongly to make their point or defend theirposition.


KEY TAKEAWAY: Social media enable consumers to be more socially collaborative and to share easily

across media types. They also, however, condition users to expect quick responses and clear payoffs; after all,

the next big social media thing is only a click away. The underlying question is always: What’s in it for me?

This so-called cyberdisinhibition can lead consumers to do ill-advised, inappropriatethings such as engaging in flame wars, cyberstalking and posting compromising ordefamatory content that can be damaging to reputations all around. The notoriousYouTube video of a Domino’s Pizza employee is a case in point.

By the same token, a mild-mannered customer such as country singer Dave Carrollcan feel emboldened to take on a major corporation. Setting off on tour in 2008, his$3,500 guitar was mishandled by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago andbadly damaged. After nine months of communications, the airline finally declined tocompensate the loss. So Carroll created a music video about the experience, “UnitedBreaks Guitars,” and within 10 days had more than 30 unique placements accruing3.2 million views and 14,000 comments.xxiv


Agree with the Statement Total Female Male 18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65+


I feel less inhibited interacting electronically than I 42.6% 45.1% 40.1% 39.5% 50.2% 40.0% 47.3% 35.6% 34.7%do face-to-face.

Total Female Male 18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65+


Meet new people 48.7% 51.4% 55.6% 48.7% 48.0% 56.0% 55.9% 59.0% 49.2%

Feel empowered to do something you’d been wanting to 31.5% 29.2% 33.9% 34.2% 33.0% 30.8% 30.3% 32.2% 29.7%

Lash out about or at companies or their brands 20.0% 15.8% 24.4% 17.1% 20.4% 23.0% 19.3% 18.6% 16.9%

HAS THE ANONYMITY OF

SOME FORMS OF ELECTRONIC

MEDIA LED YOU TO DO ANY OF

THE FOLLOWING?

Exactly one-fifth of respondents in the Euro RSCG Worldwide survey had lashed outabout or at companies or their brands thanks to the anonymity of some electronic media.Almost half (48.7 percent) had met new people, and almost one-third (31.5 percent) hadfelt empowered to do something they had been wanting to do.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR BRANDS AND MARKETERSEmbrace the trend, ride the fads. Although it’s important for brands andmarketers to get on top of today’s social media platforms, it’s also important not to gethung up on them. Consumers can be fickle, and with digital technology it’s easy for themto switch allegiance. Any of today’s hot social media brands could fall from favorfrighteningly fast if the crowd decides to move on.

The crucial factor is not the specific technologies, which might be fads, but the functionalbenefits of social media for consumers. One of the most-prized benefits of the moment isconnectivity with mobility. ISPs are gearing up to implement ubiquitous wirelessbroadband such as WiMax and Mi-Fi; location-based services are adding anotherdimension of value to mobile devices.

The future of social media is likely to combine sociability, mobility, bandwidth, locationrelevance and low cost. These should be on the checklist of all brands looking to join in.

Aim to participate, not dominate. In traditional media, brands have often calledthe shots; they’ve certainly claimed the right to grab consumers’ attention withadvertising. In social media, most brands are absolutely peripheral much of the time. If abrand comes up in an interaction, it might be because they’ve messed up somehow (e.g.,made a PR blunder), because they’ve made an entertaining video that consumers want toshare or because they have a hot new product.

In social media, consumers are mainly interested in one another, and brands need to beacutely interested in their leaders—the “prosumers,” or proactive, social media earlyadopters who influence other users.

No matter what, a brand has to come into the interaction organically; if the brand triesto orchestrate an appearance, it risks being seen as a pushy salesman making a pitch at aparty. Rather, brands must figure out creative ways to foster and support the socialinteractions that consumers seek online and offline. They must aim to be involved in


KEY TAKEAWAY: The more interactions happen online, with no direct offline contact, the more likely they

are to tilt toward extreme behavior. It’s important to blend both online and offline elements.

interactions rather than be the subject or star of them. And their interactions need tobe “trialogues,” or multi-way exchanges of ideas and opinions among consumers andbrands, which matter now more than ever.

Stop thinking online/offline; start thinking interaction. It’s tempting forold-school marketers of all ages to think in terms of online and offline, old media andnew media, traditional media and social media, just as some still talk about above theline, below the line and through the line. In a world where hundreds of millions ofpeople switch between online and offline interactions many times a day, making adivision between online and offline makes no sense. For brands and marketers, thewatchwords must be “social interaction” by whatever blends of means do the job atthe time.

The “set piece” thinking of the old media world has limited relevance, at best, in aninteractive world of social media where things move and change very fast. Unlike inthe old media world, senior executives now cannot—must not—leave communicationto people lower down in the organization. People throughout corporations have to beusing social media often enough to understand them and their possibilities asconsumers, as real users.

Pay attention to location-specific initiatives. The bigger the corporation orbrand, the greater the tendency for big, remote thinking. This doesn’t play so well withsocial media, because the most powerful interactions are those with “local,” face-to-face qualities.

Typically the challenge for a growing business is how to scale up—to move fromsmall, hands-on and local to big and hands-off. With social media the challenge isbeing able to stay big but scale down and deliver hands-on and local.


FOOTNOTES

i www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/27/jennifer-preston-named-ny_n_208299.html

ii http://scobleizer.com/2007/02/16/what-is-social-media/

iii http://popacular.com/gigatweet/

iv http://popacular.com/gigatweet/analytics.php

v www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/29/end-of-speculation-the-real-twitter-usage-numbers/

vi www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

vii http://siteanalytics.compete.com/wikipedia.org/?metric=uv

viii http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediansEditsGt5.htm

ix www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jun/25/barack-obama-david-plouffe

x http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_presidential_election,_2009

xi www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1905125,00.html

xii www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/16/carter-ruck-abandon-minton-injunction

xiii www.cdc.gov/socialmedia/

xiv www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

xv http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/10/y000000000utube.html

xvi www.everyblock.com

xvii www.villagesoup.com

xviii www.topix.com

xix www.omaha.com/article/20091027/MONEY/710279939

xx www.niemanlab.org/2009/10/omaha-world-herald-rethinking-its-product-buys-hyperlocal-wikicity/

xxi http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=148046

xxii www.generationme.org/aboutbook.html

xxiii www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/10/116_52098.html,www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/2009/RAND_WR683.pdf

xxiv http://mashable.com/2009/07/15/united-breaks-guitars/


PHOTO CREDITS

Cover:creativecommons.org/ianmunroe

Inside front:creativecommons.org/luc legay

Page 3:(from left)creativecommons.org/tata_aka_T; creativecommons.org/tillwe

Page 4:(clockwise from top)creativecommons.org/fortes; Google Trends; creativecommons.org/javier.reyesgomez

Page 5:(from top)creativecommons.org/luc legay; creativecommons.org/Intersection Consulting

Page 6:(from top)creativecommons.org/adamconner; creativecommons.org/Mykl Roventine: Out & About

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Page 14:creativecommons.org/Life in LDN

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Inside back:creativecommons.org/luc legay

MicroDialogue LLC conducted the proprietary quantitative research and analyzed thousandsof verbatims and other conversations across blogs,Twitter and forums for this study.


Social Life and Social Media

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Transcript of Social Life and Social Media