An introduction to the sociability of social media

1. WARC and Admap presents
Online Research
Conference 2009
London
www.warc.com
March 4 & 5 2009

2. The Social Context of Online
Research
Introduction to the sociability
of social media
Dr Mariann Hardey
Social Media Analyst
mariann@mariannhardey.net

3. What was it like before the internet?

4. The importance of ‘online’

5. The landscape

6. Out of ‘Geek’s’…
Geek 1.0 Not-a-geek 2.0

7. Not ‘new’, but social media
► Recognise interaction; as consumer and
community behaviour
► Collective social tool(s)
► More accessibility; less technicality
Definition: ‘Mostly web-based applications and
platforms that facilitate interaction – based on
collaboration and sharing content’

8. Building blocks of sociability

9. Feeds
► Arrivalof social information
► Constant streams of data
► Social snapshots
► Without boundaries?
► Without consequences?
► Without judgment?

10. Social infrastructure
► Based on collaboration
► Emergence of shared social infrastructure:
Networks, SNSs e.g. Facebook
► Pressure to stay up-to-date, be of-the-moment
► Constant awareness of information
► ‘Transparency’
► Provide new shape for commercial enterprise

11. Recent trends
► Web-based interactions with ‘on-the-move’
technology and live updates
► Built on trust
► Built on personal networks
► Consumer led – track opinion; based on
response marketing – new incentives/outputs for
market research

12. Creating social tracks
► ‘Your
brand is what Google says your
brand is.’
Wired magazine editor, Chris Anderson (quoted in uberpulse.com)
► ‘What ‘Google says’ represents the
‘now’, the who and the what. This is
how we live our lives.’
Dr Mariann Hardey, (quoted in thesocialmediathinker.com)

13. Social Darwinism in progress
Image: Sam Lawrence – gobigalways.com/

14. The semantic web
‘I have a dream for the
Web [in which
computers] become
capable of analysing
all the data on the
Web – the content,
links, and transactions
between people and
computers’.
Tim Berner’s Lee, 1999

15. Possible futures…
► Personalised information
► Real time, location based
► As ‘simple’ updates and/or more complex
‘community’ based services.
► Advanced mobile devices with built-in GPS
► Increased user mobility.

16. Social media etiquette
► New models of appropriate behaviour
► ‘Friend’-centric interactions
► Track the ‘progress’ of our actions
AND our ‘friends’ actions
► We pay attention to others
► Social ‘addiction’
► Need for control
http://properfacebooketiquette.blogspot.com/

17. Now everyone knows…
Cyberspace Social-space

18. Wisdom of crowds. A crowded wisdom?
James Surowiecki (2007)

19. A fundamental of trust

20. Trusted networks
With friends… …and without

21. Have or seem to have…
► Self-created quality control
► Personalised
► Built on reputation
► Of-the-moment, with live updates
► Real, not fake
► Discoverable
Creates a ripple effect…

22. Ripple effect
► Influentialconsumerism, interactive choices
► Achieved with(in) known networks
► As (new) measures of success for business and
commercial enterprise
► Based on the reality of individual’s own ‘market
research’ before they commit to purchase
► Identifiable e.g. Amazon use of real names
instead of usernames, TrustedPlaces share to
Facebook Profile

23. Reputation management

24. Participatory social information
Social networking as marketing and market research tool
►
► Facebook based on the ‘wealth of social information’
offered by users
► Corporate polls – targeted audience e.g. Obama’s
Presidential campaign, ‘Facebook as political ‘stimulus’’
► A gauge what people are doing
Social surveillance
►
► Privacy concerns

25. Social pushing

26. Novel engagement?...

27. Inappropriate social scrutiny?

28. Social surveillance
► Watching, rating acting as arbitrator
► Not only about looking for social trend, also how
we choose to track one another and identify
ourselves
► Everything is public
► Canoffer a significant user-database
► ALSO creates need to safeguard the ‘personal’

29. Cause and effect
► Taken for granted ‘social media condition’
► Qualifiers of our own social information
► More participation
► More control - ‘opt in/out’
► Articulation of increasingly surveilled space(s)
► Communitarian utopia / new hierarchy?
Not (yet) a net of neutrality…

30. Ever pervasive social surveillance and sorting.
We will flit like (social media) butterflies
Image: Ohio State University

31. Thanks!
Dr Mariann Hardey
mariann@mariannhardey.net
Then we networked, swapped cards and had tea and cake…